Sub domains are always an interesting part of SEO and we often get questions about their status and when to use and when not too, use of keywords in the domain.
Using say this bedwetting example of a subdomain of a well known bed wetting product used in Australia. While this subdomain will appear if searched in the toolbar it does not appear when searched in the main results, in fact it appears non existent, just the main site is in the results. It is however in the index.
Any other experiences with subdomains, rankings and use of keywords in the domain.
We have long been building paid and unpaid Youtube channels for clients, The great video shows some research on Australia specifically, using 3,000 participants. These go further to proving what Nielsen and Comscore say but with more detail. Great insights, you cannot afford to ignore youtube as a channel to market.
Having said that, you cannot ignore SEO. As more and more clamber onto the Youtube wagon if you want proper ROI, make the extra efford to optimise your videos propely. Also ensure you have an appropriate strategy for the videos on your site and those you make available on youtube.
Consider:
Whats your objective, Youtube to website? or brand recognition?
Do you know how to differentiate videos between those onsite and those on Youtube? Keep in mind hosting source and productID
What search terms are you trying to rank for?
Are your videos and video content aligned to the search terms?
Great video on traditional and online advertising written to Bye Bye Miss American pie. If you are in marketing or advertising and pitch against some of the larger more traditional agencies you may relate to this.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Training Course from Bruce Clay here in Australia. We ran it in Tasmania, ratings and feedback were good, so now we are running it in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane during October 2009. Bruce Clay training is well known and our 3 day training course highly rated (4.8/5 average) for the 3 years it has been running to date. We now have added a 1 day curriculum which will run more regularly than 6 monthly as in the past. You can register here.
The course includes detailed material, live examples and
Where and when will the SEO training be held? Brisbane – Wednesday the 14th of October, 2009
Novotel, 200 Creek St, Brisbane.
Melbourne – Tuesday the 20th of October, 2009
Stamford Plaza, 111 Little Collins St, Melbourne.
Sydney – Thursday the 29th of October, 2009
Menzies Hotel, 14 Carrington St, Sydney.
What is covered in the SEO course? • Achieving better rankings in search engine results
• How to increase click-through rates
• How to make your site more relevant
• How to identify the best keywords for your site
• What is PageRank and how to increase link popularity
• How to identify and characterise your competition
• How to analyse and edit your own content
• How to avoid Spam
• How to include Engagement Objects™
• Designing and structuring your site in the right way to achieve better search engine rankings
• Optimising the technical structure of your site to improve rankings
• Ensuring your site is able to be spidered by the search engine robots
• How to develop links worth having
• Monitoring you and your competitors positions within the search engine rankings
• Being ethical whilst optimising your site
• How to measure your success
What is included? Fees include the 1 day training course, meals and refreshments, a 1 year free subscription to the SEOToolSet® (valued at over $1,000) and a detailed course manual.
Bookings Bookings can now be made at the following url: https://www.seotoolset.com/training/register_au.html
More information More information on the 1 day SEO training course can be found at http://www.bruceclay.com.au/training/one-day-SEO-course.htm.
Having recently undertaken this process of moving after many years from PC to MAC, here are the things nobody tells you but you should know before you buy and when you’ve bought. I recently moved from my Dell XPS 12″ running XP and Office 2008 to a Mac Book Pro, 15″ 2.8GHz.
Some considerations before buying a MAC
Everyone keeps on saying the Mac will run Windows. Yes, and in so many ways. This can be done using Bootcamp, i.e.. when you boot the machine it will boot straight into Windows, VMWare Fusion or Parallels. Both of the last 2 seem much of a muchness and the same price from reading up and talking to sales people no one could point to a clear advantage in either, other than VMWare was written later and thus could have better coding?. Price is around $120.00 and they allow you to run Windows virtually.. Remember when you buy a Mac the OS is built for the machine, so running Windows loses all those little tweaks, you are running standard software on a standard laptop not built for it. Also Windows will cost you. To get XP which most seemed to be recommended by most required buying Vista Business (The cheapest) at around $420.00 and then requesting a downgrade to get back to XP, ridiculous!
While the VMWare is neat and works well, it does crash every now and then and seems to affect the performance of the overall machine if not shut down properly.
Small thing. The power adaptor is white. This will get dirty and look untidy quickly
Accessories, while of high quality are expensive, and there are not as many options as you would find for PC, obviously
Its going to take you awhile to learn you way around the Mac OS. The logic is different but not impossible. After you a few days you realize it is actually a lot easier and better and makes Windows, dare I say it look a bit clunky.
Entourage and Office for Mac are not industrial grade. If you are used to large spreadsheets and documents and heavy Outlook usage then Office for Mac and Entourage will seem a little basic. The Apple guys will tell you it will do everything except Macros which is sort of true. I have found large Excel, Powerpoint and Word files with complex formulas or other inclusions will crash or open as Read Only. Also take a long time to open, even on a more powerful machine. If you are used to Office 2008 and rely on it, you may be disappointed with Office for Mac and Entourage. There are also little bits of functionality, that are either well hidden of not easy to find, like dragging margins when printing, requesting read/ receipts for email and so on. Read more…
The global financial crisis means the economy will flow down. While things look bad there are opportunities out there, just not where you maybe looking. If you sell things that people really don’t need, then this may not be for you.
While hair dressers might be doing it tough, sellers of hair treatments and dye are doing very well as more people do their hair at home to save money
While weekend getaway hotels might be doing it tough, flower deliveries are up as people choose cheaper options to treat their loved ones
While air travel is down, regional hotels are getting the business as people stay closer to home
People are moving away from media advertising to search marketing due to the ROI and from paid toward more SEO based approaches. Social marketing is big, why do you think?
In every industry there is a flow down economy. Are you tapping into yours?
How is your GFC?
I meet a number of business owners, corporate managers and CEO’s and the first question usually how is business? In other words, we seem to be doing OK, are you guys doing OK? With all the bad news around, we are not sure if things are good or bad. On average I would sum up responses and the feeling toward the economy as such:
So far we seem to be tracking OK, given the bad economic news
We are not rushing out to hire and have not replaced certain people
Revenues are in a range of 10% up to 10% down on prior year
Keep in mind these companies are generally still profitable and thus engaging my services or about to. I accept sometimes people are frugal with the truth. So if you are reading this and doing it tough I accept there are real issues out there in certain industries. If you look at the Classifind job index, that also tells part of the story.
Consider your business model?
1. Marketing & sales
Have you reconsidered who your customer is, your customer profile?
Have you considered whether your customer needs have changed? They may still be buying but for different reasons.
Have you considered new customer markets on a needs basis, and how to reach these people?
Are you still paying to market to the wrong target customers?
Where is the current spend and are you tapping into it?
2. Customer service
Where is your customer service dollar being spent, still on the upper end? Are you servicing customers who are no longer buying? Read more…
Reading George F Colony’s Blogcalled the Counterintuitive CEO on how what CEOs will face next with respect to the recession and how it will act a s a gateway connecting 2 different era’s got me thinking on the top things CEOs should be considering to get them through this gateway or portal with business intact.
There is always opportunity. It just looks different, maybe now it is less abundant, but it is there. Opportunity + Planning = success. Testing ideas online is cheap.
There is no such thing as an unprofitable business. Just unprofitable business models.
Stay clean, squeaky clean. The digital trail never dies. Manage your life and your associated online reputation carefully.
Invest in your digital properties and digital footprint. Proactively managing your online customer and future customer base is key. Make sure your selection processes for vendors and software are sound.
Educate yourself on all things digital. Take a course. Invest some time. Understand search engine marketing (SEM) and especially search engine optimisation (SEO) and how it applies to your business. Read more…
Competition minister Craig Emerson it appears has decided that competition is not such a great thing and out an end to the new Choice Grocery website, which was due to go live next week. Read the full article on News and The Australian, or maybe there is more to it and we the citizens are not considered sophisticated enough to understand why anything that will help manage duopolies and potentially keep prices down should be a good thing.
This was a well funded website, with good resources involved. The first effort is reported to have cost around $6m before being canned and the Choice Grocery, to date reported at $7m of the $13m. With 1 week to go before the site goes live, why would you cancel such project? The only possible reasons maybe:
The supermarket lobbyists are a lot more convincing than we might think
The supermarkets can bring a lot more pressure to Government that we might think
Some powerful people out there really do not want any sort of spot light brought onto grocery prices
The site was really really bad, $7m how bad can it be?
According to Livenews, they just come out and say it. Pressure from the big supermarkets is believed to have caused the Government to abandon their election promises and admit the site is not feasible. Seven million dollars later…
Choice was not told direct and Mr Emerson communicated the news after meeting with Grocery retailers. Hang on a second. if this is correct, he decided this was not feasible with the very people it is meant to manage and potentially cause to reduce their prices and profits. So the players decided the aims of the site which is being developed by an independent part, being the trusted consumer brand Choice, were not feasible. There just has to be something wrong with that picture, I cannot put my finger on it right now though.
This is interesting. Michael Kordahi, a Microsoft employee built the blind search engine I think to sell more Tweetshirts. The search engine comparisons exclude any blended search compnents such as News, Blogs etc.
Sometimes we are not only searching for information but also for answers. The homeproject, hosted on Youtube is an exception piece of work. Well worth a watch and will get you thinking. SEO just isnt going to help when it comes to searching for answers of this magnitude:
Bruce Clay SEO training in Sydney in April 2009. Training will be at a luxury venue in Sydney. Consistently rated #1 by TopSEO's. Training now fully booked. More information at Bruce Clay.com.au/Training
