Monthly Archives: February 2008

Q and A: Where can I find interviews with SEO experts?

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QuestionHi Kalena,

Why haven’t you ever put together a list of interviews with every SEO expert you can think of in one tidy blog post?

Kalena

Hi Kalena

Because I’m a lazy cow. And because Dazzlin Donna thought of it first! Yep, everyone’s favorite DoubleD has compiled a list of over 300 interviews with various SEO experts and wannabes, including yours truly.

Oh and if you can’t get your fill of interviews from Donna, my new friend Manish Pandey has started his own interview series. I was in his spotlight last week and he’s posted a transcript of our chat on his blog.

Industry Flashback: AltaVista Boasts Larger Index

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flashbackIt’s time for another episode of: Search Industry Flashbacks!

Date: 3 July 2002Original Post: AltaVista Boasts Larger Index

Summary: It’s July 2002 and AltaVista have been steadily losing market share to Google and Yahoo for some years. In an attempt to turn things around, they dramatically increased the number of files being indexed and updated their news feed:

Content:

According to AltaVista, their index now contains 1.1 billion pages, representing over 120 million video, audio and image files. They’ve also increased the frequency of their news feeds, updating news sources every 15 minutes.

Not only that, but AltaVista have also improved their Express Inclusion offering by increasing their refresh rate. Effective August 1, 2002, all URL’s using their Express Inclusion service will be visited on a daily basis.

They said it couldn’t be done, but it seems AltaVista are proving the critics wrong by finally turning things around and offering a better user experience.  Let’s hope this new customer focus will help them regain market share lost over the past 12 months.

Postscript: At the time, I (rather optimistically) thought it could be AltaVista’s big comeback. How wrong was I?

Search Industry Job of the Week: Internet Marketing Sales Trainee Program

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Job Title: Internet Marketing Sales Trainee Program
Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: Endai Worldwide
Location: New York, NY
Date Posted: 25 February 2008
Position description:

Start a great fast growth career today – in Internet Marketing Sales.

Endai Worldwide (www.endai.com) is an award-winning, Internet Marketing Services Company in New York City since 1999. They are hiring full-time candidates with strong communication and negotiations skills interested in a career in Internet Marketing Sales.

Position background and basic requirements:

You will be responsible for selling guaranteed-performance online marketing campaigns through their ProfitCenter Network. ProfitCenter is a unique marketing tool offers marketers guaranteed lead generation and sales generation on a guaranteed basis.

Endai Worldwide client’s and prospect’s love their product because it directly and measurably increases their sales with no upfront costs, and no risk. Customers buy guaranteed results from sales people –not ads or empty promises. All sales people are trained to help prospects be more successful.

The sales process is focused on identifying the right buyers, not selling to every prospect –in fact; they “fire” many potential clients long before they ever can become a customer.

You will be exposed to serious, top notch training in Internet media, sales and negotiation. Your performance will be measured both by your sales results and your relative contribution to your team.

A unique Internship Program is also available for qualified seniors. An Internship Program offers the opportunity to roll into full time positions for successful grads with the following skills and background:

1. Above average poise and confidence
2. Ability to maintain focus on goals
3. Interest in a sales career and willingness to learn
4. “Hustle” and the ability to think “on your feet”
5. Previous business to business sales experience a plus

Compensation:

Full time positions – Total compensation in the range of $50,000 to $75,000 for performers including:

Base Salary starts at $35,000 with Annual Increases
Excellent Flex Compensation Plan and ongoing, recurring commissions
Company Sponsored Healthcare
Matching 401K Benefits
About Endai Worldwide
Endai Worldwide provides a comprehensive Medical and Dental Plan for their employees. In addition, Endai Worldwide provides a very generous Vacations and Holiday Time-Off schedule, as well as a Company sponsored 401(K) Plan with an employer paid contribution match.

To be considered for this opportunity, please submit your resume to Tracy Eisenberg at teisenberg[at]endai.com. Qualified candidates will be contacted for an interview.

Salary range: Base Salary starts at $35,000
Closing date: Unknown
More info from: [www.endai.com]
Contact: Send resumes to teisenberg[at]endai.com

Q and A: What files do I need access to when optimizing a site?

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QuestionHi Kalena,

No question is a stupid question, right? So please don’t put me on the Dumbass of the Week!

I’m getting ready to optimize a website for someone. I know I would need their files for each page to add title tags and meta description tags, etc, but I don’t know what files I need to ask them for as they are completely unaware of how their website was created. If I wanted to add alt image tags and link title attributes and add keywords and more body text, then wouldn’t those be in separate files? I guess what I am asking, is when you work for a client, how do you get access to all of this stuff to change things? Wouldn’t I need ftp access to his host server too?

I have only worked with WordPress and of course it has its nice little interface where you can edit things right there. But when I go to my host server, I can’t even find the files myself if I wanted to change them there instead of in WordPress. I see my website files, but I guess just not the ones I am looking for to change all those things mentioned above.

So if this client doesn’t have any user friendly interface to work with, I would need to work strictly with the files off his hosting server, right? I just don’t know what to ask for. Please tell me how you handle this? Oh, and if it helps, here is the website: [URL removed]

Thanks again for you time!
Amanda

Hi Amanda

To optimize a web site successfully, you really need access to the site’s HTML code for each page. Sometimes you can grab this straight off their web server. For example, most home pages are stored as index.htm or index.php or index.xhtml or whatever other file extension based on the programming language that the site was built in.

But sometimes client sites are built using a CMS or Content Management System, meaning they login to a web page and edit their page content in a WYSIWYG page editor similar to how you edit a WordPress blog. This means they never access the actual HTML code. This is more tricky because CMS sites are notorious for being difficult to SEO as they don’t usually allow access to the raw HTML code or the ability to edit Title and META tags for each page.

But in some cases, the job is even more tricky. Some sites are free-hosted or piggy-backed onto other sites. And this is the case with the site you’ve sent me a link to. If you look at the source code for the page, there are 2 BIG problems:

1) It’s a frames-based site. This is ancient technology and neither humans or search engines like frames-sites, so they are very difficult to SEO.

2) All the content for the site is actually sitting on another URL and is just being pulled from this location to display on your client’s URL. This means that your client’s domain is virtually invisible to search engines and has no content to speak of. No wonder it’s not performing in search engines and they are seeking help! A search engine indexing that domain will simply find the link to the main site and all link popularity is attributed to that site rather than the sub-site which belongs to your client.

Here’s what I recommend you do: Encourage the client to ditch their piggy-backed site and create them a new site from scratch using WordPress or another WYSIWYG site builder you are comfortable with. I assume they own the domain you sent me? If so, I recommend you install WordPress on their server and build them a new site, optimizing it as you go. Provided you know how to optimize a WordPress site, you should help this client perform very well compared to where they sit now. There are a lot of resources for how to optimize a WordPress site (email me if you want a list) and you can install the SEO related plug-ins that allow you to optimize the Title and META tags for each post and page on the site.

Once you get the WordPress template installed you can easily grab the HTML files from the client’s server if you want to edit the code directly. But most of the optimizing on WordPress occurs in the post edit pages themselves.

Hope this helps!