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"Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clark, 1972
The Rank Magic BlogTotally Free 411 Service From Google
Simply dial 1-800-GOOG-411. State the location and the business type (restaurants, for instance) and get a list of matches. Choose the one you want and they'll not only connect you, but they'll text you the information too, if you want. Google has a nice video overview of the service.
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July
30, 2008 ::: I've been using a service called Free 400
(800-free-411) for a long time to avoid the excessive fees for normal 411
service. But now Google (what DON'T they do?) has come up with a better
solution. Much better.
Look
Out
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Reputation Management
July 16, 2008 ::: A new mini-industry has sprung up to protect or repair the reputations of companies and individuals online. A client of ours was recently featured on national TV and was the subject of a high level of searches on her name. Prominently displayed in these search results were some unfair and untrue rantings of a disgruntled individual. How to minimize the impact?
In this case, simply showing that the rant was untrue resulted in it's being removed. But far too often people and companies find such negative material on the web totally intractable. Enter the reputation management companies, who employ numerous techniques, many of the quasi-SEO techniques, to minimize the visibility of the bad press. Jordan Glogau explains in a recent article explains the kinds of reputation problems that are frequently encountered, and outlines what's necessary to correct them. He works for Internet Reputation Management.
There's a resource site for the subject you may find of value at Reputation-Info.com, and Internet Reputation Management has a good article entitled Ten Easy Steps to a Positive Internet Reputation.
I hope you never need it.
The Mythical Google Sandbox And How To Escape It
July 13, 2008 :::
A recent article on Site-Reference.com explains what the author (Bill
Platt) thinks the Google Sandbox phenomenon is and how to hasten your web
site's emergence from it. He believes it's all about
link popularity and
PageRank. If you can get a new web site's PageRank into a competitive range
quickly enough, you'll show up just fine in Google's listings, no matter how
new your domain is.
He subjects himself to a testable challenge and sort of proves his point. If
the Google Sandbox is a myth, it's a very persistent one. Just do a search
on our blog to see a number of other posts on the subject. Persistent as it
is, we have seen some clients' web sites defy conventional wisdom and appear
in Google's results more quickly than expected.
13 Ways to Increase Link Density
July 8, 2008 :::
There are lots of approaches to increasing your link density, or link
popularity. Many are ones that we and other SEO consultants employ. But
there are some that can only be effectively implemented by you, the web
site and business owner.
Cross Browser Compatibility is More Important Than Ever
July
1, 2008 ::: One of our brand new clients has a web site that
just doesn't look right when viewed in Firefox. It looks great in Internet
Explorer (IE), which is the only browser it was checked in. But it doesn't
look right in Firefox and probably not in Opera or Safari, either.
So as part of our client's SEO, we'll have to make sure his web site
appears properly in all the major search engines. Sadly, this is a problem
we run into far more often than we should, so if you have a web site, you
should check it out in other browsers to make sure it still looks right.
Cross browser compatibility is increasingly important because
more and more people (especially the more savvy ones) are switching to Firefox. You probably should, too, if you haven't done so already.
Here's why:
Quite a few years ago, Microsoft and Netscape engaged in The Browser Wars,
and Microsoft, by including IE for free in every copy of
Windows since Windows 98, won the battle handily. Sometime early in the
current decade, Microsoft stopped improving IE. so complacent were
they in their indomitable market share among browsers.
But a few years ago the Department of Homeland Security (yes, it's true)
encouraged users to use browsers other than IE because IE is such a
security nightmare. There are some web sites that can infect your PC as
soon as you visit one of them with IE. Some make your PC into a "zombie",
sending spam and other viruses out to people without your knowledge.
There are a number of reasons to switch to Firefox, but the most important
is security. On July 7, PC World published a blog entry entitled
Study Finds Firefox Users Safest, IE Users Unsafe - it's
not very long, and is worth the read.
Firefox seems to load web pages faster than IE, and includes some neat
features like a popup blocker, a password manager, and alerts when you
visit phishing sites (ones that try to steal your identity). One of the
most obvious difference is all the add-ons you can get for Firefox. As an
example, there are several we use here at Rank
Magic for SEO analysis purposes..
Finally, Firefox is free. If you haven't tried it and would like to, you
can download it for free here:
July 2008
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