Conflict Between Branding and SEO Are branding and search engine optimization (SEO) two competing forces fighting over the same territory? Sometimes it seems that way. There are articles that discuss achieving the right balance between SEO and branding, as if these were two competing goals in a zero sum game. It does happen, people worrying […]
Yesterday, we mentioned a widely reported potential change to Google’s algorithm. Today, after further investigation, we believe most of the reporting to be over-hyped. This is what we found. Over the past few days, a number of websites have reported that Google will begin using the “facts” on a website to replace the links that […]
There is indication that Google may be planning a fairly major change soon, one that could disrupt a lot of current search engine optimization practices. The story is that Google will start to include fact verification of content on a website in their rankings. Like many of the changes Google has made over the years, […]
Note: This is the final part of a series of posts about the past and future of back-linking. We can never be sure what changes Google has made or is going to make to their complex algorithm. But there has been a huge wave of anxiety flooding the community of SEO professionals, especially the ones […]
This is part of an ongoing series on the history and future of link-building. Previous entries can be found here, here, and here. Somewhere around 2006 I started doing most of my internet marketing and search engine optimization work for federal agencies. Because the websites we were working for were .gov sites, this raised a […]
This is part III of a series on the history and future of link-building. Previous parts can be found here and here. Google was the biggest thing in search in the early 2000’s. Many of us who were optimizing for multiple search engines began to focus more and more on this emerging powerhouse. The use […]
Imagine you’re at a large cocktail party. You need to quickly identify those few people important enough to spend your limited time talking to, or about. There are a lot of signals you could use. Perhaps it’s a super-fancy party and people are announced as they come in the door, along with any titles they […]
Recently a dark wave went through the search engine optimization universe. Established practices are being uprooted and the tried and true methods are being questioned–again. This time it’s one of the oldest techniques, the time-tested practice of acquiring high-quality in-bound links. While we don’t believe the threat is serious, at present, we do think this […]
Recently the National Science Foundation released a long document reporting the results of a survey of American attitudes towards and knowledge of science. The whole report is called SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING INDICATORS 2014. It includes 600 pages of text and over 900 additional pages of graphs and tables and such. The whole report received some […]
Do you like to wait? I don’t mean the kind of waiting where you go off and do something else, knowing that sooner or later some promised event will come to pass. I mean the kind of waiting where that is what you’re doing. Sitting there, thinking about the passage of time. Waiting. Probably not. […]
Many companies hire firms to do their search engine optimization, then ignore the process. I’ve talked to several clients who have someone doing something mysterious that is supposed to be helping them get better rankings on search engines. Usually, when I take a look at the analytics, the results aren’t there. SEO isn’t magic, and […]
2013 was a big year for Mobility Labs. We grew significantly and took on much bigger and more challenging projects. There were also several major technology stories last year; some of them have permanently changed the technology landscape, others merely predict major changes to come. Here are our picks for the top four Mobility Labs […]
Back in September, we talked about Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Those who regularly work with federal agency web content know how Section 508 can spread fear through the management of any project. For those who aren’t as familiar, Section 508 requires the information on a website to be accessible to visitors […]
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, is known for being a loose cannon when he talks. One of his more noted statements was: “In America, there’s a sense of fairness that’s culturally true for all of us,” Schmidt said. “The lack of a delete button on the Internet is a significant issue. There is a […]
No, “Don’t be evil” is not Google’s mission statement. A lot of popular media gets that mixed up, but the actual mission statement is: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google Helpouts is the latest big thing from Google. While searching and filtering is a big […]
After thinking further on the coming keyword apocalypse, I’ve realized that my previous thinking has been too narrow. I have, in other places, talked a lot about how the decline in keyword data may affect the future of search engine optimization. For those who haven’t been following, Google has decided to restrict what information is […]
Four words can kill a brilliantly innovative approach, scuttle a long-term project, and add unexpected time and cost to a marginal project: “Is it 508 compliant?” If you much work on web content, or electronic documents of any kind, in DC you will eventually hear section 508 invoked—and you will see the effect this invocation […]