www.rochester-seo.com/articles/page-title-optimization.html

…then you can bet that a search engine will be able to figure it out, too. Search engines are just dumb humans. Here is a tip: Write your file and directory names like you were organizing a book. For example, if you were writing a online book about insects (and spiders, in particular), a good, human readable URL might look like this:

www.InsectWorld.com/spiders/spiderfood.html

A URL that looks like this:

InsectWorld.com/page.asp?cat_id=23&page=15 is bad. Very bad. Crazy bad.

See where I’m going here? If you can read it, so can a search engine.

BTW, don’t over do it. (e.g. don’t make them too long). You should be able to tell a friend what the URL is (out loud, using your own voice) without sounding like a complete idiot.

SEO is simple. Just give people the information they are looking for (when they are looking for it), and the search engines will richly reward you with a top-ten listing that includes your site (preferably above-the-fold, and before your competitors’ listing).

Okay, it’s not that simple.

But it is important to understand that good SEO is not about “tricking” the search engines into listing your site without proper merit. There’s no black magic or secret voodoo involved here. Search engines are all about “relevancy”. That’s how they make money and that’s how they keep people coming back again and again to use their services (so that they can make more money, so more people will continue to use their services, so they can make more money, so…). Okay, you get the picture. Besides, search engine are changing their algorithms all the time. Algos (as they are called) are heavily guarded secrets. “Tricks” today, won’t work tomorrow (and worse, they could damage your current rankings and reputation). Don’t rely on short-term gains by trying to cheat the system. You will lose in the end. Google and their search engineers are smarter than you, way smarter. The easiest way to win, is to play by their rules…you  just have to know the rules in order to win, that’s all!

It’s not in the best interest of a search engine to be easily manipulated. If they deliver crappy results, a user will go somewhere else. Google, for example, has billions and billions of dollars at stake here. That’s why they are such a hard nut to crack (as far as being manipulated goes), and that is exactly why they are the world’s most popular search engine. There is a very good reason why Google stock is trading at $529.06 (as of 04/27/10). They simply deliver the best results (in both natural organic and paid PPC), so people keep coming back for more and more. Other search engines (and I won’t name any names), are more easily manipulated, and so people trust them less (and their stock is trading at $16-$30/share, for perspective).

It’s the search engine’s job to get “into the head” of the searcher in order to deliver the best and most relevant results, based on their query. And that’s your job, too. Start thinking about how your customers think. What kinds of questions can you answer for them? Which of their problems can you solve? Provide your real life customers with this information and the search engines spiders and BOTS will discover it. And once the BOTS discover that relevant content, the algorithm will start delivering those answers (e.g. your website pages) to them. Simple, right?

This article is #1 in a series about Search Engine Optimization. The next article will teach you about how search engines work. Special thanks to Katharine at Marketing by Kat for kicking my ass into blogging again.

The Mykonos Secure Web Application Framework provides application teams with a full range of critical capabilities for coding, compiling, deploying, and maintaining the most secure Web applications.

For developers, these include a Web-based interface design suite, a large component library, and the widest range of security capabilities: input validation, XSS filtering, encryption, transport layer security, session management, authentication, logging, and code obfuscation.

For Administrators, a push service keeps production applications secure using Mykonos Managed Updates, a service that provides updates to the application layer, including security patches and new functionality.

The Mykonos Developer Kit is available today for free to developers, under a license that enables them to use Mykonos for application development and testing.

Visit the Mykonos Software website for more information.

It could only be better if it was called “Pixelpunk IPA”. It’s a nice-and-hoppy classic Scottish IPA with a spiky, bitter finish (with a slight taste of tropical fruits). It has an ABV of 6% and produced by BrewDog Brewery in Fraserburgh, UK.

It’s on tap now at the Tap & Mallet on Gregory Street in Rochester, NY. Ask for Kim, she’s a pretty awesome bartender and a great sport for letting me snap the photo.

- Sent from my iPhone

Edit: Learn more about the WordPress For iPhone app here.

In the screenshot above, you can see that quite a few users are bouncing off of the “Portobello Mushroom Lasagna” page on my cooking blog. It’s one of my top landing pages this week, yet 90% of my visitors leave after viewing it! The typical bounce rate is 30%. I value each one of my visitors and I want them to be engaged, so what can I do to improve their experience? Well, to start off, I could segment the visitors to find out where the traffic is coming from. If I drill down to the content details of the page and view the entrance sources, I can see that most of my traffic is coming from Google image searches. From this I can infer that people are searching for recipes (based on their intent). Maybe I need to reevaluate whether the photo is of high enough quality (it is not). Looking at the entrance keywords, I discover that people are finding the page using “Portobello” as their search word, so perhaps I should link to other recipes that contain Portobello mushrooms to keep them engaged (or I could add a “Similar Recipes” feature). Since they are on the page because they want a recipe, maybe I should create a printer-friendly version of the content so I can get my URL in front of them again after they print it out (and from there I can measure visitor loyalty and returning visitors). I could also encourage them to bookmark it on delicious.com and then measure increased referrals.

That being said, it is important to realize that you can’t always keep people from leaving your site. Sometimes you’ll receive unqualified traffic from a referrer and the visitor just isn’t interested in what you have to offer. Some people have short attention spans and they come and go in the blink of an eye (maybe your headlines aren’t compelling enough). But it could also mean your PPC campaigns aren’t working (you’re bidding on ineffective keywords) or that your page is optimized for the wrong keywords. Always remember that every page on your site is your “home page”. You never know how, or where, a visitor will end up entering your site. That’s why its important to not only measure the bounce rates at the site level, but at the page level, too. Treat all your pages on your site with as much care as you treat your main homepage.

The lesson here is that it only takes a little bit of data to gain many valuable insights into user behavior. Use this data to improve every page and get visitors to take a deeper dive. The goal is continuous improvement.

Overall the OMMA Publisher Conference was very worthwhile. The panel discussion on ad networks became extremely heated and then finally crescendoed with Adventive’s David Koretz challenging Rocket Fuel’s Richard Frankel to “make history” by guaranteeing to double CPMs for publishers on their own network.

I was very surprised at what a crazy low-tech world the advertising industry is still living in. There are huge inefficiencies in the display ad transaction process and an overall lack of dialog and bad communications happening in the media buy process. They are still relying on fax machines to get deals done. Fax machines! One panel speaker mentioned that he’d love it if someone could just design a simple way for buyers to easily do deals. The industry needs to figure out how to transact in a more digital way.

Yahoo’s panelist provided the take-away quote for me:
“Give the consumer a gift. Make advertising a gift to the consumer.”

We topped off the launch with a private party in San Francisco’s famous Starlight Room at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel where the famous rock jazz pianist Eric Lewis tore down the house. ELEW’s performance was unforgettable. It was an exciting end to an exciting launch.

A scan of my exhibitor badge for Ad Tech San Francisco 2009

CEO David Koretz talking with media buyers about Adventive's new technology.

Celebrating at the Starlight Room at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel after the show.

This is the super top-secret project that I’ve been working on for the last couple of months. I’m heading to San Francisco this morning with the team so that we can officially launch the new company tomorrow at ad:tech.

Adventive delivers a completely new form of online advertising that provides measurable impact on revenue for publishers and advertisers alike, while providing an engaging brand experience in which advertising feels like features. Adventive’s transaction technology enables publishers to sell a greater proportion of their inventory as premium, and lets advertisers capture transactions within the ad unit at the moment the user demonstrates intent, rather than just capturing clicks.

Learn more about Adventive