FabFriday: An SEO Thanks to Google!

Friday is the end of the week….so I thought that to wrap up the week, I’d pass along a couple of things that impressed me big time and to begin with, my hat’s off to Google!

Huh? Google? Well, yes….a large part – well in fact just about every hour or so, I am running web searches for clients, on clients, on client products, on channel partners, on just about every single thing that you can imagine. And when you do that, when you run search after search, using everything from the Google tool bar to google.ca to tools that wring those results from the Google index….you find out quickly that yup, Google fights back.

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The Right Angle:Social Media with Process & Purpose

It was my pleasure yesterday to have attended a great marketing session entitled “The Right Angle:SHAPE UP YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA WITH PROCESS + PURPOSE” at our beautiful Art Gallery of Hamilton for the whole morning – and was it a great event, eh!

And I mean that and would think that as they sold out the audience seats, I wasn’t alone in those thoughts – especially as we were all well entertained by Scott Stratten of Un-Marketing who spoke for almost an hour on his thoughts and practices on marketing – Social Media marketing best practices if you will!

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BubBye Zagat Restaurant Reviews:Hello Stars!

Okay, you may not have heard of the Zagat review system for restaurants in the US (learn more here) and the fact that this firm was bought by Google back in the fall of 2011 to be used it was stated “to aid it’s local search rankings” and that seemed to hold some promise for the veracity of same.

What I thought back then (blog link here) was that as Zagat had some real authority in the restaurant review world, that when Google bought same, it could only work well for those rankings and at the same time spin away from Yelp et al  and the plethora of phony reviews.

At least that’s how it looked to me…at the time – but as I’ve learned….things change muchly in the Canadian SEO world, eh!

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SEO: Your On Page Optimization Checklist!

Okay, you’re an SMB who is trying to get your own website optimized for better keyword rankings for your new potential leads.

You have read a lot on same, you understand your challenges and lastly, you think you have it covered.

You can be using any kind of a CMS (content management system) like WordPress or Joomla or you are using simpler editing by making page by page changes to the basic HTML.  No matter but what the issue will be for you to consider is – did you get all the items done in order and in full.

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On Responsive Design: A Idea has Legs

Okay, I’m one of the first to admit that I like tables. I do not like CSS. The reason for same is that at my age the old adage about “old dog and new tricks” may have some bearing but for the most part, I believe that when you find something that works perfectly, you use it. In other words, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Hence, my reliance on tables for site page layouts and CSS only for formatting fo fonts etc…. A few years back I was hired to be a part of the team that did the canada.com website re-design and development – a set of tasks that I totally hated due to the HUGE CSS dependencies!

That said, I’m wrong! Or at least, I’m admitting that CSS may have a place in my new site layouts and designs and that comes from it’s ability to react to the “responsive design” principles….which I define here from Wikipedia -

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Google Analytics Reports: New from Visual.ly!

Making things more “visual” is  how the firm known as Visual.ly promotes their work – and as a new convert to their banner, I am more than impressed! What am I talking about here?

First click this link to go to their site, to learn more about what this visual design firm does with numbers – IMHO, about the best part isn’t all about eye candy as the most utilitarian of work-a-day tasks can benefit from a fresh coat of paint and an attempt to simplify and clarify information – and here’s how they put it -

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#HamOnt Chamber has a new CEO!

 

I am so proud today to be adding my own comments to this great news for both our city and our business community! We have a brand new CEO at the Chamber and it’s just been announced that our Innovation Factory COO Keanin Loomis will be taking over those duties soon!

Kudos to the Chamber BOD for this choice and to Keanin too for the new job!

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StartUpWeekendHamilton:3 – Another Great #HamOnt Success!

Once again, it was my pleasure to be involved as one of the Mentors for the weekend just past’s big #HamOnt event – our third StartUpWeekend and what a great success it was too!

Held downtown on James St South, at the popular Radius Cafe building, this event was ably led by our Innovation Factory, Software Hamilton, KiteString agency and Vana Workforce and each of same had their top-notch talent there to present and run the whole event.

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Friday SEO Share: Usability is STILL Best Practices!

Okay, so your site is pretty. You’ve gotten your branding and images all perked up and the aesthetics look pleasing to your focus groups and testing has shown that yes, your value proposition is succinct and believeable. But no clicks. Huh?

It’s a stage I think that many many SMBs go thru and that stage can be headed ‘little usablity’ and yes, we see at least 50% of our potential SEO clients coming to us and being “stuck” in that rut. Pretty site, but is it visitor friendly or usable? And the answer is usually no, it’s anything but.

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#HamOnt: Women Entrepreneurship Quick Pitch Competition

 

Not often that I get surprised here in my community, but I bumped into this great Pitch competition totally by accident.

I dont know if that’s because it’s gender specific, i.e. women competitors only, or if I’ve just been too deep into my own Canadian SEO practice, but here’s the skinny on this great event for our #HamOnt women entrepreneurs!

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DIY Search:Using Google Effectively Requires Skill, eh!

Okay, you know how to search….but do you?

What I mean by that is, sure anyone can simply type in say “Hamilton SEO companies” and get a web results page….but did you do that because that’s all you know how to do or because it was the simplest string to use or perhaps as we suspect, that’s “all” you know how to use for a search term? Because you love seeing that your search term has 41 million results and you love to wade thru them all, looking for the perfect URL..right?

Yeah, I thought so….

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Friday SEO Sharing: Use Color to Attract Leads!

Color. Color as in blue or red or yellow. Color as in what color might I use for my Call-to-Action or my infographic to attract new clicks….and thereby increase the top end of the sales process funnel by gaining new leads. Color as in are there any colors that work better than others? And the short answer is both yes – and no!

So….what do I mean firstly about color and the attributes of same? Well as you know or maybe you don’t, colors contain “built-in” perceptions that are both assumed and passed along by the use of specialized colors for specialized uses….and that’s a great place to start today.

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