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Thursday, April 17, 2008

Top 5 Ways to Keep it Up - Rankings That Is

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 1:06 PM

Today I was kindly offered the opportunity to participate in Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm with Jim Hedger and Dave Davies. The discussion we had was all about what it takes to keep rankings high in search engine results after successfully attaining them. Here is a link to the episode on the Webcology page where our show will be archived and to Jim's article on Keeping it Up and here are a few tips from me on the essentials of maintaining rankings:

Keep adding content to your website in the form of a blog or informational pages and where appropriate provide relevant textual links to the pages you want to maintain rankings. Check out our comprehensive tutorial on how to create, market and manage your own blog.
If you write articles for your blog(s) try submitting them to article sites like ezinearticles.com. If your article includes links to your website these external sites will provide link juice to your content and help you maintain visibility.
PRWeb is a great tool for telling the world about your company's accomplishments; see this video interview on link building and publicity with PR Web. By submitting a carefully written press release to PRWeb you can (depending on the service you choose) attain a large number of incoming links. These links will not necessarily provide long term impact because they tend to devalue after a week or two but inevitably you will get additional long-term links out of the process. By the way, if you don't know of a topic to create a blog about consider creating one that just offers company news releases - there is nothing wrong with that.
Submit your blog's RSS feed to the multitude of RSS aggregation sites (news sites) online. These sites will help pump up the visibility of the content you write. This is particularly important if you rarely have time to write new content for your blog because it will give you the most bang for your effort.
Keep in tune with the changes at search engines by monitoring sites like Search Engine Guide, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and of course StepForth's SEO News Blog. If you hear of a pending or current algorithmic update on a key search engine find out all you can about it and prepare your website to bear the change - if necessary. If you find you aren't sure what to do in response to an algorithmic update just contact a reputable SEO and get their opinion. You can find reputable SEOs in many places but to be sure you know who you are asking do a little digging to find out just how long they have been practicing SEO.

These are just a few tips but they cover the main points that everyone should know about maintaining rankings. If you have any SEO questions just use our Free SEO Questions submission form.

Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating Over 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: Interviews, Ross Dunn, SEO, SEO Answers, SEO Tips

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 1:06 PM.

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Tuesday, March 04, 2008

An Interview with Jeremiah Andrick of Live Search Webmaster Tools

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 11:34 PM

On Feb 28th at SMX West I was fortunate to spend some time with Jeremiah Andrick, Program Manager of Live Search Webmaster Center. To start I let Jeremiah give an introduction to Live Webmaster Tools and soon after we began discussing some of the latest additions to the tools and he gave an inkling that some major stuff is coming down the line. I hope you enjoy the interview because I had a lot of fun doing it. Microsoft is very lucky to have a talented down-to-earth guy like Jeremiah on the team. I am surely going to hit him up for more interviews in the future but he won't get off quite so easily... I will have more pointed questions next time around ;-) This, however, is a great introduction to Jeremiah and the tools that Live Search Webmaster Center provides.

And now, the video:

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating over 10 years of web marketing excellence

Labels: Interviews, Live Search, Microsoft, Ross Dunn, smxwest08

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 11:34 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: An Interview with Jeremiah Andrick of Live Search Webmaster Tools

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Friday, February 08, 2008

The Art of Competitor Analysis Discussed on WebmasterRadio.fm

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 1:09 PM

Yesterday I had the good fortune to be invited to speak on the Webcology Webmasterradio.FM radio show with Jim Hedger and Dave Davies about my experience with competitor analysis. The show was a part of a 10 part SEO series where experts in their select field of SEO are invited to discuss their artform. In my case I discussed some of the most interesting tactics involved in competitor analysis and some of the other tactics I didn't have space to cover in the companion article on competitor analysis in the WebProNews Expert's column.

Click here to listen to the radio show
(my interview starts about 15 minutes into the program)

Near the end of the interview, as a final touch, I asked a website analytics analyst by the name of Andres Galdames to come onto the show to discuss the other side of improving website visibility; using website analytics to improve performance of your site instead of focusing on a competitor. In addition, Andres and I touched on how analytics plays a major role in tracking the success of web promotion strategies implemented on a website as a result of a competitor analysis. We had more to discuss at this point but unfortunately Andres lost his connection to the radio show and Jim and Dave wrapped up the show.

All-in-all it was an exciting experience and I look forward to being invited again onto Webcology. A big thanks goes out to Jim Hedger and Dave Davies for the opportunity to discuss competitor analysis - a field I am so passionate about.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Labels: Competitor Analysis, Interviews, Jim Hedger, Ross Dunn, StepForth, Tutorials

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 1:09 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
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Thursday, February 07, 2008

How to Avoid an SEO Horror Story on Your Website

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:40 PM

The following was the second interview I did with Dr. Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today while I was at PubCon Las Vegas. In this interview we discussed the horror stories I have seen over my 10 years of SEO. The focus was on how important it is to involve an SEO in the initial planning of a new website because you never know if you are going to use a technology that may hamper or completely block search engines. A SEO consultant doesn't need much time to tell you if you are on the right track and it will save you a lot of headache down the line.

Without further adieu, here is my interview:

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Labels: Interviews, Ross Dunn, SEO News, SEO Tips, Tutorials, Video

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:40 PM.

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Competitor Analysis for SEO - Ralph Wilson Interviews Ross Dunn

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 3:21 PM

Back in December I attended the PubCon conference in Las Vegas and I was fortunate enough to meet my friend and Internet celebrity Ralph Wilson for an interview. Ralph has me regularly contributing tutorials and articles to the SEO section of his popular Web Marketing Today website and decided to interview me for a feature video on the website. The competitor analysis interview turned out pretty well I think - thank you Ralph!

Labels: Competitor Analysis, Google, Interviews, PubCon, Ross Dunn, SEO Tips, Video

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 3:21 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
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Friday, January 04, 2008

Competitor Analysis Discussion with WebProNews in Las Vegas

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 2:39 PM

The following interview was conducted at PubCon Las Vegas and it focused on StepForth competitor analysis/competitor intelligence services. In hindsight I didn't give much away in the terms of competitive analysis and frankly the interview could have gone better (what with the sun glare and a lil'memory loss). So feel free to view this and then follow it up with my notes below where I will provide a couple examples of the strategies/resources used in our basic and advanced competitor intelligence reports.

Additional Competitor Analysis Tips
We provide a listing of our recommended competitor research tools which Mike McDonald kindly previewed the link to but let me give you a few more tips... it is the least I can do if you watched my interview ;-)

Use Technorati to determine the networks that publish your competitors content. Often I identify some great sites that are more than happy to publish the material my client has... which in turn can build valuable links.
Use Compete.com (the one I forgot in the interview) to get a hint of the keywords your competitors may be focusing on and to gauge their success in each one. Please note, however, that I definitely do not recommend accepting everything from Compete.com as writ; accept it with a grain of salt because their intelligence network is far from flawless.
Use OptiLink to create a maximum list of backlinks for each competitor using Yahoo and have the system fetch PageRank and Alexa ratings. Then copy the results into Excel and then sort the results from highest Alexa rating to lowest first and then highest PR to lowest as the secondary sort rule . Now you will have the beginnings of a very useful list of likely respectable sites. Review each to determine which ones may accept your content/links as well.

Note: I sort by Alexa first because Google's paid-link PR penalty has caused many high quality resources to falsely look like low quality ones.

Here is more information on StepForth's SEO research services that focus on competitor analysis.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: Competitor Analysis, Interviews, Ross Dunn, SEO Tips, Video

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 2:39 PM.

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Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Link Building and Publicity with PRWeb

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 4:20 PM

On the 6th of December at Pubcon Las Vegas I was fortunate enough to speak with Karla and Lacy of PRWeb.com; two wonderful ladies who were running PRWeb's exhibit booth. After a short discussion I decided it was time to put Karla and Lacy in the spotlight. You see I have used PRWeb many times in the past and I have always been impressed by its excellent press release promotion network. PRWeb is the perfect vehicle to get the word out on your new products/services and the circulation of your press release can provide valuable incoming links to your website.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: Interviews, Link Building, Ross Dunn, SEO Tips, Video

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 4:20 PM.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

An Introduction to Citizendium by Editor Russ McGinn

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 4:27 PM

Back in August I wrote an article called "Is Wikipedia Corrupt?" which looked at the concerns caused by controversial editing in the popular Wikipedia online encyclopedia. In the closing section of that article I stressed that Google needed to move away from highlighting Wikipedia in favor of increasing the diversity of its encyclopedic references. In that regard I would like to introduce a great introduction to Citizendium written by Russ McGinn, a Citizendium Editor and former participant at Wikipedia.

Dear Ross,

Responding to your invitation at SiteProNews, I am an author at Citizendium (http://en.citizendium.org.)

We believe the world needs a more reliable free encyclopedia. We are creating a trusted general reference work by giving people a place to work under the direction of experts, and by expecting personal accountability, professionalism and by requiring the use of real names. Our goal is to capture humanity's multivariate understanding of reality, and thereby to paint a maximally broad and detailed portrait of our universe as accurately as we understand it. An indispensable means to this end is the involvement of many experts who will help guide and, ultimately, approve many of our articles. We expect our approved articles to be, in the long run, as authoritative, error-free, and well-written as encyclopedia articles can be expected to be.

As to quantity, we hope to grow to hundreds of thousands of articles within a few years, and millions a few years after that. This is not the traditional goal of encyclopedias, which has been to offer up only mainstream views of the most important aspects of the most important topics. Cheap disk space and bandwidth, and the potential of participation by ultimately millions of people, means that we can capture humanity's understanding of reality with far more nuance and detail.

We are also creating a new sort of online community. We welcome experts as well as the general public; we will be built not by top-down orders but as and where contributors wish to work; and we will be organized as a republic governed by a rule of law. This means that there will be no "dictators," but a regularly changing group of people tasked to manage a public trust in conformity with a relatively stable code of rules. It also means that we will have very little tolerance for the sort of immature disruption, abuse and gaming that plagues so many other Internet communities.

On a personal note, I left Wikipedia, because whilst there are a number of competent editors there, the combination of anonymity, people gaming the system, an overemphasis of 'style' over 'reliable content', and a lack of interest in the management to manage, leads to endless unproductive arguments. In part, it's success is due to exactly those factors - contributors start writing a few articles and are then seduced by the politics - see <this Wikipedia link> as just the latest appalling example - people either burn out become 'wikidrama' addicts.

Not for me I'm afraid.

Kind regards,
Russ McGinn

Thank you Russ for your detailed description of the Citizendium and your thoughts on Wikipedia. The establishment of a comprehensive community-written encyclopedia is no doubt an incredibly difficult task; one that I cannot even pretend to grasp. That said, the values that Citizendium is trying to uphold are extremely worthwhile and I wish you and your fellow editors all of the luck and assistance in the world.

I would also like to turn some attention to Wikipedia; the current forerunner in the online encyclopedia landscape. I understand Wikipedia continues to sort out some complaints and dissent but that kind of controversy is bound to come with the enormous success it has gained over the past few years. The editors at Wikipedia deserve a lot of respect for their hard work and for keeping their heads above water and their spirits high.

Ultimately the best option for everyone would be to have a wide array of resources to consult in order to prevent a single entity from controlling public opinion and knowledge within the Internet.

A Call for More Introductions
Again I request that any online encyclopedia contact me with a description of their site. Tell me why your site should stand out from the rest and I will be proud to post it for all to see. Mail me at ceo at stepforth dot com and I will review your submission for publishing ASAP.

Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: Interviews, Other Engines, Reputation Management, Ross Dunn, SEO News, Social Marketing

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 4:27 PM.

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

SES NY Keynote Video: Windows Live Chief Steve Berkowitz

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 4:03 PM

The following video is an excerpt from the 2007 Search Engine Strategies Keynote discussion between Danny Sullivan and Windows Live Chief, Steve Berkowitz. In this excerpt Steve Berkowitz explains that "it is not ever satisfactory not to be number one" in the search engine industry. He further explains that Microsoft's first goal is to reach critical mass from an advertising standpoint and how Microsoft's search platform will continue to evolve.

This video was shot by Ross Dunn, CEO and Founder, StepForth SEO Services and was originally posted at The StepForth SEO Blog.

A special thanks goes out to Matt McGowan of Incisive Media for allowing StepForth to tape segments from Search Engine Strategies New York 2007.

Labels: Conferences, Interviews, Microsoft, MSN, Ross Dunn, SEO News, StepForth, Video

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 4:03 PM.

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Monday, April 16, 2007

SES NY - Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder Discusses Click Fraud

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 5:47 AM

At the 2007 SES New York, Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder responds to the question: (abbreviated) "How is it possible for Google to identify click fraud when an aggressor utilizes rotating proxies?". Shuman responds by discussing the Clickbot A botnet case and how Google deciphered the click fraud in that situation. This video was taken during the "Auditing Paid Listings and Click Fraud Issues" seminar that took place on April 12, 2007.

This video is courtesy of the StepForth SEO Blog. Video taken by Ross Dunn, CEO of StepForth SEO Services. Special thanks to Matt McGowan of Incisive Media for allowing StepForth to record this footage.

Labels: Click Fraud, Conferences, Google, Interviews, PPC, Ross Dunn, SEO News, Video

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 5:47 AM.

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

A Video Interview with John Marshall, CEO of ClickTracks Web Analytics

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 8:28 PM

Introduction

I have long been a fan of ClickTracks and it's professional line of analytics software. In my experience ClickTracks is leaps and bounds above its competition both for quality of software and quality of service. In the interests of full disclosure StepForth has been an advocate of ClickTracks since we bought our first copy in 2003 (or thereabouts) and I (Ross Dunn) recently completed my Professional ClickTracks Certification.

The following video interview was recorded at the ClickTracks presentation booth at the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference, yesterday, April 11th, 2007. To view the videos just click on the question and you will be taken to the appropriate YouTube page to view it. I hope you enjoy StepForth's first round of video journalism.

The Interview with John Marshall of ClickTracks
Just click on a question to see John's answer on YouTube.

And for all of those fellow Certified ClickTracks Professionals out there here is a question that maybe of interest to you: When will ClickTracks create a private forum for ClickTracks Professionals to network, discuss the software and share information?

A big thanks to John Marshall for his time and excellent, thoughtful replies. For more information about ClickTracks visit ClickTracks.com

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth SEO Services
Celebrating 10 Years of SEO Excellence

Labels: Analytics, Conferences, Interviews, Ross Dunn, Video

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 8:28 PM.