Cshel Chicago SEO, PR and Web Development

SEO 101 Call-In Show Tonight

Posted on 01. Jun, 2009 by Carolyn Shelby.

On the Monday, June 1st live broadcast of SEO 101, we will have four tickets to give away for the Market Saint Louis “Look At Me” seminar in St. Louis, MO on Thursday, June 11. The tickets are normally $249, but we’ll be giving them away to the four callers who give us the best reasons why their business needs this seminar.

Think of this as sort of like those essay contests the English teachers used to make everyone participate in, but the differences are 1) we won’t take off points for poor grammar or spelling (because this is all about style and ability to persuade!) and 2) the prize is way cooler than some lame $50 savings bond that you can’t do anything with for 20 years.

BEHOLD, the Details

1. Listen to SEO 101 tonight at 9p Central
2. Call (646) 716-6190
3. When you’re on… give us your most compelling reasons why YOUR business needs and can use the information and tools you’ll learn at the seminar.

Just remember, the seminar is near St. Louis, Missouri. You have to be able to get yourself there and home again because we’re only supplying admission to the event ;)

Popularity: 7% [?]

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SEO 101: Mike Moran discusses Search Engine Marketing, Inc

Posted on 25. Nov, 2008 by Carolyn Shelby.

Mike Moran, author of Do It Wrong Quickly and whom we have had the pleasure of interviewing previously, talks with Brian Mark, David Brown and moi about his book Search Engine Marketing, Inc.

In addition to the obligatory, heymybookisgreatsogobuyit stuff, Mike talks with us about developing and implementing a search marketing program in your business, the ins and outs of exploring new media and social media (again, in the context of “how will this benefit my business”), and then finally, the absolute importance of optimizing your internal Web site search.

P.S. If you’re looking for something to keep you from dying of boredom at the relative-who-has-no-wifi’s house over the holidays… grab a copy… good readin’

Popularity: 50% [?]

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SEO 101: Google Revelations

Posted on 26. Sep, 2008 by Carolyn Shelby.

Brian, David and I discuss two Google Webmaster Central Blog posts and the impact of those announcements on how we build sites, review our stats and logs, and how we deal with clients.

Specifically, we discuss:

• Crawling through HTML Forms — Friday, April 11, 2008
• Dynamic URLs vs static URLs — Monday, September 22, 2008

In a nutshell, Google says they pull “important” terms from surrounding pages and use them to populate search boxes and other forms in an effort to get more content. Some of the terms they pull don’t seem like things normal people would be searching for, so we’re not sure how exactly they decide what terms to try or not try. You should be able to scan through your access logs and pick out examples of the bot filling in forms to see for yourself.

As for the 180 degree flip on dynamic URLs vs. static URLs, we’re pretty much in agreement that it’s not a green light to shut off URL rewriting or stop doing “pretty URLs”. Pretty URLs enhance the user experience, and in cases where you have an existing web site that is already turning ugly, dynamic URLs into pretty static strings, you should DEFINITELY not deviate from the status quo. Changing all of your existing URLs will cause a horrendous drop in traffic while the engines try to figure out what you’ve done and get everything sorted out.

Popularity: 53% [?]

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