The Rank Magic Blog

Disgruntled GoDaddy User Says Stay Clear

March 27, 2008 ::: After some really bad experiences with GoDaddy, a disgruntled user is encouraging people to avoid using them for domain registrations. His web site, NoDaddy.com claims to be "Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names".

Whoever you use for your domain name registration, always make sure they will give you plenty of warning when you need to renew it. One client of ours got no warning from his domain registrar (probably someone other than GoDaddy), and didn't realize he no longer owned his domain name until his web site disappeared. That can play havoc with your search engine rankings, and is to be avoided at all costs. Domain registration is cheap anyway at about $25/year. It can be a false economy to look for bargain rates.

How to Fire Up Your Link Building

March 21, 2008 ::: You know you need inbound links to your site to improve your rankings in the search engines. What you may not know is, you don't need to spend a dime to get them. In fact, we advise our clients not to purchase links.

We've written recently in our blog about Google's vendetta against paid links. Stop paying for links now! Google is now "punishing" websites for having paid links, because they feel it's cheating the algorithm.

So how you do get natural links? Site Pro News has a recent article on just that subject. Here are the bullet points, but see their original article for the necessary details.

The Importance of Keywords

March 18, 2008 ::: Many SEO consultants simply ask a client what keywords they want to be optimized for, and then optimize for those keywords. At Rank Magic, the first thing we do is take those keyword suggestions from the client and do research to reveal all the related keywords searched over the past year, and identify the ones that will provide the best return on investment.

RyanShamus.com has an excellent keyword research tutorial on the importance of selecting the right keywords, with good information on how to identify them and what to do with them once you know what they are. He has some suggestions of keyword research tools, too. <Check it out!>

Keep Important Stuff "Above The Fold"?

March 17, 2008 ::: Web designers and usability professionals have debated the topic of web page scrolling since 1994. When the web was brand new, users were unfamiliar with the concept of scrolling and didn't find it natural. Many webmasters would try to squeeze everything on a web page into the small amount of space that could be seen without having to scroll down the page. Some still do, and it's not uncommon for a new client of ours to think that anything important needs to be "above the fold". That's a newspaper expression for what's visible on the front page when the paper is folded in half in a stack of papers.

Now, though, while people may be irritated when facing a small block of content on a page that they need to scroll to read, they are completely tolerant of scrolling an entire web page.  Scrolling is also associated with web 2.0 design because big, clear text and “spacious”, “clean” content implies longer web pages. Blogs (like the one you're reading now) almost always require scrolling.

ClickTale has some interesting research that leads them to conclude that it's almost impossible to figure out where "the fold" is on a web page, but more importantly leads them to conclude that it doesn't matter after all. <more here>

There's More to Keyword Strategy Than the Long Tail

March 14, 2008 ::: Choosing which keywords you want to chase in your SEO strategy can be a challenging task. Go after terms that are too competitive, and you might not get there in time, or at all. Go after terms that are easier to rank high for, and you're likely to get there much faster, but at what cost?

Helping clients choose the best keywords to optimize may be the hardest part of what we do at Rank Magic. In his recent column, "There's More to Keyword Strategy Than the Long Tail," Eric Enge suggests adopting a keyword strategy patterned after an NFL quarterback, with lots of options for short, medium, and long passing routes.

SEO Myth: Clicks On Your Site in the Search Engines Improves Your Rank

March 10, 2008 :::  It's a persistent myth that many love to believe. If lots of people click on your site in the search engine results, doesn't that mean your site is particularly relevant to that search? And shouldn't that earn you a higher ranking?

That's just the question someone asked recently in the High Rankings forum. Boy did that idea get slapped down quickly! You can read the discussion here.

Top 10 Ways to Raise Your Search Engine Rank

March 4, 2008 ::: Of course there are many more than ten ways to improve your rankings in the search engines. But this list of the top ten is certainly a good start. You can read more about them in the original article on Web Pro News.

Using SEO for Reputation Management

March 1, 2008 ::: Regardless of your impeccable practices, a single negative event can tarnish your brand image for a long time. Simple things like a negative product review in a blog can be detrimental to your brand, especially when competitors are standing close by to snatch up customers. When such negative comments show up in search engine results for keywords that are important to your business, you're right to find it distressing.

One way to combat that threat is through a reputation management strategy, which can begin with search engine optimization. A recent article in Search Engine Watch discusses how these stories can show up in search results and offers some guidance on how to deal with them.