For all those SEOs with a few minutes to kill, try this cool SEO Crossword puzzle to test your knowledge

SEO Crossword Puzzle

Enjoy!

Today I am deliberately taking a lighter approach to blogging with a collection of my ’5 Funniest SEO Cartoons’.

I know what you are thinking – and the answer is Yes!! I am lazy to write a blog that some of you may not have time to thoroughly read through. Besides, like Mani Karthik says, “SEO is not always serious stuff you know” (I also took the liberty of adding a short explanation to the terms in each cartoon: For my non-SEO folk). Enjoy

Happy Birthday

Keywords and phrases strategically placed and crafted into your website can significantly boost your ratings in search engine results

Rankings

SEO is no longer about ranking anymore. The significance of ranking has disappeared with the use of personalized search, universal search, real-time search and local search in the SERP’s. Search Optimisers are crazy about this factor, often worrying about drop in their rankings for competitive keywords.

Changed Algorithm

Search engines like Google are frequently changing their ‘algorithms’ that can help your site rank number 1 for targeted keywords. Just imagine there was an algorithm to get to heaven?! – a constantly changing one at that.

No Follow

Basically the No-Follow attribute instructs the search engines how they should value a particular link, in this case not to index the link.

Socialitis

Not only Search Engine Optimisers suffer from “Socialitis” – addicted to social media (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr).

Click here to see more SEO cartoons. Props Mani Karthik for insipiring this blog with his blog post.

The growth in the Mobile Industry over the last decade has made it paramount for all businesses to have Mobile Sites in order to reach this growing new target market.

Current local (South Africa) trends show that:

• There are ten million mobile Internet users in SA (Five million PC Internet users in SA)
• One in six Google searches in SA originates off a mobile device.
• In South Africa about 40 percent of mobile phone users have WAP-enabled phones.
• The top Mobile Applications currently in South Africa are: Mxit – with 15 million+ users – and Facebook.
• Mobile search and eCommerce will be a large area of growth in 2010.

In short, this indicates an importance for businesses to target mobile searchers and users of mobile applications.

Some of the best Mobile Site examples I can give include BBC, the Goal mobi site, and College Humour (N/B: “these examples obviously look better on your mobile phone – feel free to suggest your favourite mobile sites below“).

However, when creating a Mobile Site it is also imperative to build and optimise the Mobile Sites so it is user-friendly and accessible on the Mobile Web.

Mobile Design and SEO Best Practices
When designing a Mobile Site one aspect to consider is that one must understand that mobile searchers/users are different from PC searchers/users. In order to cater for Mobile users designers must:

• Provide an elegant experience by considering whether individuals possess a smart phone (for example an iPhone with fully featured web browsing) or a standard mobile phone (with stripped site features).
• Consider that phones are not used like PC’s – users are usually on the go therefore the site should be more goal oriented – Relevancy and Simplicity is key.
• Mobile designs are to conform to the new W3C standards in order to create mobile-friendly style sheets (CSS).
• Mobile Sites must be small, lightweight and fast-loading site – (< 20kb / page).
• Consider User Agent Detection –  this is another form of transcoding which takes into consideration the type of mobile phone an individual uses to search and provides more uniform browsing experience for various device types.

Once the Mobile Site has been built, Mobile SEO steps can now come into play. These include:

1.    Validating the page with the .Mobi Validator or the W3C Validator
2.    Following ‘traditional’ on-site  SEO Best Practices such as:

• Major keywords in the title tagging
• H1′s and body text
• Rich keyword Meta Titles and Descriptions
• Keyword-rich anchor text for internal links

3.    Mobile Search results tend to reflect ‘Local Search results’ – your site must be optimized for local type searches. Also submit your business info to local directories making sure your site is verified and included in sites like Google’s Local Business Center.
4.    Get the Mobile Site spidered and indexed – submit to major search engines:

• Google Sitemaps
• Yahoo! Submit Your Mobile Site

In short, the above Mobile Design and SEO factors are to be strongly considered when building a Mobile Site. These aspects help provide a solid Mobile Site foundation for your Mobile Campaign or Strategy. For further Mobile Campaign or Strategy enquiries, visit our Virtuosa website.

Chris Crum from Web Pro News covers the topic of how the search industry is constantly changing and how SEO’s and businesses must adapt to this change.

SEOs know that adaptation and ongoing education are crucial. The problem is that businesses don’t always understand just how much the search landscape actually does change. This can present a whole different set of challenges for both the small business and the professional SEO.

In the following Video, Searching for Profit founder Amanda Watlington recently discussed some arising trends in the search industry and how understanding the changing search landscape is of vital importance.

Chris continues to cover some of the things Amanda mention in the video and ends by saying that if you are the client of an SEO or a business trying to get things done yourself, don’t stay hung up on old tactics that might be outdated. Here are things you should keep in mind:

• Site Speed (it’s going to matter, so don’t ignore it…here are some things to consider)
• Personalized Search (Not everyone is going to see the same Google results)
• Universal Search (Showing up here requires attention to different indexes)
• Real-Tme Search (look for more evolution in this area)
• Changes in Local (there are frequently tweaks made by Google here)
• Some things do stay the same (things like reputable links will always be in style)
• Most importantly, stay informed (just keep up with the latest in industry developments)

I recently wrote an article for our November Newsletter and thought to make a mention of it before most of us go on leave for the Christmas Holidays.

What Influences The SEO Landscape Today? talks about how quickly our online world has changed and the role that SEO still plays. If you are finding it hard to stay ahead and don’t know too much about how Social Media is integrated these days, then I suggest you have a read. Enjoy.

Want more people to follow you on Twitter? I was looking for tasteful Twitter strategies on how to get more people to follow me the other day, and I came across a horde of uninspiring articles offering just that: Tips on how to get more people to follow you on twitter. Continue reading

It is with great pleasure that I write my first blog post as part of the Virtuosa team. Not only is it cool to be working for such a great company with such creative minds but I’ve finally landed a job doing what I love – internet marketing.

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We all know that in terms of SEO, Flash is considered less than perfect, and completely Flash driven sites are considered by some in the SEO world as a complete ‘No no’, however the times are changing.

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Many small business owners and even large corporates fall into the trap of only investing into a short term online marketing strategy. Some think that they only need to promote their website once by sending a once-off email campaign, or running a PPC campaign for a couple of months to promote a special of some kind or even just optimize their websites to get a better ranking or get indexed in the Search Engines.

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If you’ve got the time for a little bit of self-study, here are some great articles that you will find useful. I am simply mentioning the articles and have thus provided links to the original source.

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