http://www.flickr.com/photos/matsiltala/

In the world of SEO, meta tags likely get more time on the debate stand than any other. You’ll hear from one SEO expert that Meta Data is critical to help the search engines in understanding what your page is about. You’ll hear from another that none of the engines pay attention to this anymore – it’s an archaic tag and shouldn’t be an area of focus.

This debate will undoubtedly continue, but in this post we’re hoping to clarify how best to use Meta Data on your site. (more…)

If you weren’t able to attend our recent webinar on CMS (Content Management Systems) and their relation with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you missed an informative session on a hot topic. Hosted by Becki Dilworth and Brian Bolton, we spent an hour drilling into the important issues. For years now, businesses have understood the importance of search engines and how SEO can drive prospects to their websites. But with websites having a shelf life of one to two years, businesses often perform redesigns. Along with redesigns come new web development vendors and new Content Management Systems.

(more…)

Google has launched real-time search on their search engine result pages. In addition to typical search results, users now running a search will be exposed to real-time results from sources such as Twitter, Facebook, identi.ca, Jaiku, and MySpace. Some users already see this implemented, while most others will notice real-time results in the coming days, including mobile users!

The Inevitable is Available

Most people are saying this was an inevitable milestone. I agree. I just have a few questions and concerns.

(more…)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/ / CC BY 2.0

Despite the old adage, it’s fair to say that most of us often choose a book by its cover. First impressions reign king in our busy world – where we are inundated with choices.

What’s interesting, though, is how very little thought goes into the first impression a Web site may make. Though it can vary, one of the primary introductions users have to a Web site is within the search results. It’s a common behavior. Users perform a search, quickly scan the result set and generally make a choice on what site to visit based off the limited information that is displayed.

Countless usability studies performed here in the Bridgeline Denver offices confirm this – time and time again we see users perform a search, quickly scan the titles of each page and generally gravitate toward a page that is toward the top of the results with the most relevant title.

Hence the title of this blog post – writing digestible, relevant titles is key to a public Web site’s success.

(more…)

We recently participated on a panel at an excellent MITX event focused on getting relevant website content to your audiences.  I think we could have spent the entire day on the topic and the speakers were very knowledgeable and passionate which always makes for a good seminar.

I hoped the audience would be able to take away a tangible list of action items and at least a starting point for thinking about content personalization.  So I thought I would jot those down here for everyone.  While some folks may be well beyond the basics, I still believe these principals work for everyone.

1) Define your audience segments (understand what their intent is and what message/interaction works best).

2) Create content, imagery, messaging, branding (i.e., overall user experience) per segment.  Don’t get too granular to begin with as your website is a marathon not a sprint.  If you start too granular, you have significant risk of missing the target completely.

(more…)

Previously, I wrote about how to maximize your website’s SEO with your CMS. This post covered what you can control from a content manager perspective. But what about some other factors you can’t control? Content Management Systems are great vehicles for non-technical users to update their website, but often don’t take care of some more technical SEO areas.

A great CMS will automatically supercharge your website’s SEO.

We’re always launching updates to our own CMS, and we’re particularly excited about a recent update which addresses automatic 301-redirects and sitemap.xml file creation.

Auto 301-redirects

301 redirects are extremely important to SEO. But what exactly is a 301-redirect?

(more…)