I’m a dedicated Google Reader user, spending hours each day using it to keep up on any number of topics. So my knee-jerk reaction to the news that Google will close the service as of July 1, 2013 was one of shock and anger. I immediately Tweeted #savegooglereader and posted on Google+ in hopes of getting […]
2012 was a fantastic year for Blind Five Year Old. I met most of my goals, came to a few epiphanies but often found it difficult to juggle everything at once. In all, this is what I learned. Stop Comparing There are a number of ‘names’ in the SEO community and there’s a growing trend […]
Tracking keyword rank is as old as the SEO industry itself. But how you do (and use) it is changing. Are you keeping up? This post covers how I create and use rank indexes and introduces a new and improved way to track rank in Google Analytics. Rankaggedon In December of 2012 both Raven and Ahrefs […]
I’ve made predictions for the past four years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012) and think I’ve done pretty well as a prognosticator. I’m sometimes off by a year or two and many of my predictions are wrong where my predictions were more like personal wishes. But it’s interesting to put a stake in the ground so […]
“Produce great content.” No doubt you’ve heard this phrase over and over again as content marketers bask in the sun of Google’s animal algorithm updates. You’ve probably even heard it from me. But what is great content? It’s a dreadfully fuzzy term that often disintegrates into a less that satisfactory ‘I know it when I […]
I don’t guest blog. Resist Penguin Panic You can’t throw a rock these days without hitting upon advice and tips on guest blogging. It’s not a new practice but interest and activity has spiked now that the Penguin update has made getting links more difficult. The theory goes that you’re trading your content for exposure and a […]
On Thursday Twitter announced something called Twitter Cards. What are Twitter Cards? They’re essentially rich snippets for Tweets and I predict they’re going to be essential for making your content more portable. Twitter Cards There are actually three different types of cards: summary, photo and player. The summary is the default card while the photo and […]
Yesterday Bing launched Linked Pages which allows you to “have more control in how you show up on Bing.” Is this Bing’s answer to rel=author? If it is, it’s not a very good one. Here’s my experience and analysis. Bing Linked Pages Linking Pages on Bing is very easy. To start you simply go to […]
Did you implement your Recipe markup correctly? Is your review microformat being recognized by Google? Does Google understand your address mark-up? The best way to find out is to run it through Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. Structured Data Testing Tool Bookmarklet I used Google’s old Rich Snippets Testing Tool heavily as I helped readers diagnose […]
What is SEO? The acronym stands for search engine optimization. But the definition of SEO is a more difficult question. It’s not what it once was, that’s for sure. It is not just a niche edits service, but much more. The problem is, I see references to outdated definitions of SEO on a fairly regular […]
