December 28th, 2005 by Jonathan Kemp
And the Perfect Title Tag is… by Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz.org reports that the formula for the optimal title tag is
“keyword phrase” : site title
according to Michael (Graywolf) at his site, Wolf-Howl.com. Many people agree with this, including me (I’ve been using the formula for years,) but I wonder how many keywords you could include in the title and whether or not Google will recognize that as spamming. I would think that as long as they describe the content, appear on the page and are not repetitive, it would be okay.
December 27th, 2005 by Jonathan Kemp
The future of online search on CNN.com is an interview with John Battelle, Wired magazine co-founder. This is an edited version of the full interview from his recent appearance on Spark. Battelle recently wrote a book about the future of search entitled “The Search.” Battelle has become somewhat of an expert on search and Google, and the interview is pretty interesting. In it, he emphasizes the importance of online search by saying, “search is the holy grail of computer science.” For more from John Battelle, read John Batelle’s Searchblog.
December 26th, 2005 by Jonathan Kemp
High Web traffic means sales on CNN.com reports that the pre-holiday online shopping leaders are Wal-Mart, Amazon and Apple Computer according to Internet measurement firm Hitwise for Reuters. Hitwise is determining that these sites have the most sales by analyzing traffic between their Web sites and shipping company Web sites at UPS, DHL and FedEx. Prior to Christmas, online retail sales are difficult to determine because retailers typically hold off reporting their result until early January. However, analyzing traffic to determine whether retailers are converting the web site traffic into shipments is a good indication.
According to the article, online shopping is expected to grow 24 percent this holiday season over 2004, although traffic to online shopping sites is up only 9 percent this year over last year. On analyzing the data though, Hitwise says that it appears that web sites are becoming more efficient at converting window shoppers into buyers this year.