A.M.Sall's Motivational/Inspirational Ramblings: Top Ten Search Marketing Standard Posts From 2009

Over the past year, we’ve posted items on a lot of different topics here at Search Marketing Standard. The following are what, in my estimation, are the top 10 posts of the year featured on our site.
10. Are Too Many Links Damaging Your Search Position? – by Rebecca Appleton (October 13) – One of the constants in search engine optimization strategy is the need to build links. While other factors change and the search engines swap in and out different weightings for various elements, having a large number of good-quality links has stood the test of time.
9. Grandpa Says, Use Your Brain – Microanalytics and Observation – by Jaimie Sirovich (December 15) – A long, long time ago, computers didn’t exist. I wasn’t actually there, but I heard about such a distant time from a wise old man over a beer. Back then, he said, business owners often made decisions based on casual observation over time as they managed their shops. Sometimes they did some math and reporting based on limited data. Then came computers, databases, the Internet, gigabytes of trackable structured information — and powerful web analytics software. Most marketers now dismiss the old practices as an inferior and less-analytical approach in every respect.
8. Is It Possible To Optimize PDF Files? – by Rebecca Appleton (October 6) – Optimizing your PDF files for search engines can lead to better visibility and increased visitor numbers, particularly if you have an e-book or technical manual useful to your target demographic. The optimization of PDF documents is relatively straightforward and has become easier over the last few years as search engine spiders have developed their understanding of the file structure
7. How Your Landing Page Can Affect Quality Score - by Chris Stiner (November 30) – One of the primary components of a keyword’s quality score is its landing page. Second only to clickthrough rate, the landing page is an important factor in determining the quality score. However, landing pages are often overlooked by pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers.
6. URL Structure And SEO – by Rebecca Appleton (August 24) – The URLs of your website are a lot like the bricks and mortar of your house – they hold the different layers and materials together and give a coherent shape to the entire structure. URLs essentially underpin your whole site; without them there would be no means of traveling from one page to the other or joining various pages together to gather a coherent collection of web pages into a single website.
5. Should You Include Keywords In Domain Names? –
by Rebecca Appleton (April 15) – Including keywords in your domain name is the vanity plate of e-commerce. Businesses from coast to coast regularly agonize over whether or not to buy new domain names incorporating vital keywords.
4. 5 Free Must-Have Keyword Research Tools – by Andrey Milyan (July 9) - Whether you are doing search engine optimization, social media optimization, or running a pay-per-click campaign, the right keywords are the basis of any successful marketing effort.
3. Hiring Your Own SEO – by Rebecca Appleton (November 18) – If, despite your best efforts, your website is not making the inroads you would hope in the search engine rankings, it may be time to consider recruiting an SEO to the team. Hiring a professional gives you the benefit of their expertise and will ease the workload of team members currently required to carry out SEO-related tasks that they may not be fully trained to do.
2. Analyze This! Lesson Two: Issues Affecting Accurate Reporting – by Joe Whyte (July 29) – In this week’s post, we are going to discuss issues affecting data collecting accuracy. The first involves cookies. Everyone’s heard of cookies (yes, the non-edible kind, sorry, Mrs. Fields). Cookies are small text messages that a web server transmits to a web browser so that it can keep track of a visitor’s activity (typically anonymously).
And the top post of 2009 …
1. How To Scare Your Readers, Dilute Your Brand & Squander Link Equity With Tiny URLs – by Jaimie Sirovich (February 2) – Tiny URLs are convenient and very effective at doing exactly what they’re designed to do. They turn a long and/or ugly URL into something short-and-sweet. This gets around URL length limitations on some websites; and they do just look neater sometimes.

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About the Author

As a writer and former historian/market researcher, Frances lived in California and Minnesota. She now lives on an island off the West Coast of Canada, her country of birth. She has worked as an Editor and then Associate Editor of Search Marketing Standard print magazine since its inception (where no one has ever heard her append the word "eh?" to the end of a sentence LOL).

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SEM, SEO, Top Posts

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