Welcome to Natural Search Blog
Natural Search Blog provides articles on search engine optimization including keyword reasearch, on-page factors, link-building, social media optimization, local search optimization, image search optimization, and mobile SEO.
In addition to natural search optimization topics, we also cover internet marketing, ecommerce, web design, usability, and technology.
Recent Entries
Google Puts News On The Map
Google has partnered with the New York Times to put news on the map — the NYT has apparently begun geotagging their news stories so that Google can associate news items with particular locations around the world. The Google Earth application can now be used to browse around a map of the world, and headlines are associated with their places of origin.
Newspapers have been very fearful of the internet and have lost revenue from their print side to free internet alternatives. But, it’s clear that embracing greater integration with interactive technologies is one viable way to remain competitive.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/08/2008
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Filed under: Google, Maps, News Google-Earth, Maps, New York Times, Newspapers
Asian & Chinese PPC & SEM – Netconcepts Marketer Allen Qu to Speak at SMX China @ Timev
Many of you know that Netconcepts not only operates out of Madison, Wisconsin, but we also have offices in New Zealand, and we do quite a bit of internet marketing and website design work in the still-nascent Asian and Oceanic markets.
For those interested in our work in SEO & SEM in Asia, one of Netconcepts’ marketers, Allen Qu, will be speaking at the upcoming SMX China @ Timev conference in Xiamen, China during April 18 & 19.
I had a chance to visit with Allen back in February, and I can tell you he is extremely savvy in managing our client’s PPC campaigns that are running in Chinese search engines such as Baidu and Google China. Allen will be speaking at SMX China on a panel focussed on PPC ad management, although he is also expert in natural search marketing as well.
Chinese and Asian search markets are considered to be the new frontier in terms of areas for greatest potential future revenue and search audience growth.
If you’re interested in contacting our New Zealand office from the US, their morning office hours overlap US afternoon hours on Mondays through Thursdays. Our NZ office can be phoned at: +64 9 476-4601
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/02/2008
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Filed under: Advertising, Conferences, Marketing, Monetization of Search Asia SEM, Asian SEM, China SEM, Chinese SEM, SMX China
Dallas Wordcamp 2008 Followup
I spoke at Wordcamp here in the Dallas area (in Frisco, actually) this past weekend, and had a great time meeting the participants. I spoke on SEO for Bloggers, and provided a number of tips on building a blog’s traffic and promotion of blogs. Many of the tips were material that I’ve learned from Netconcepts’ company president, Stephan Spencer, and others in our company.
WordPress is probably the best blogging platform around in terms of search engine optimization features, both built-in and available through plug-ins. Netconcepts sets up highly-optimized blogs for many of our clients and we even recommend setting up entire websites on WordPress due to the ability to easily delegate editing functions among many employees as well as for the SEO potential. Our Netconcepts and GravityStream websites are both set up on WordPress, for example.
One question someone asked during my session which I didn’t know the answer to was whether our SEO Title Tag Plug-in works on the new version of WordPress (with built in wp tags) and the answer is yes – it has been updated to work with wp built in tags and tested on 2.3- not tested on 2.5 yet. (Thanks to Kerry Mann for helping me answer this one.)
Finally, here is a copy of the presentation I gave that a number of attendees have requested.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/01/2008
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Filed under: Blog Optimization, Conferences blog promotion, blog search engine optimization, blog seo, WordPress
Corporate Blogging: Too Legally Dicey To Allow?
This article at CNET, “Corporate employee blogs: Lawsuits waiting to happen?“, caught my eye. Large corporations definitely feel nervous about allowing all their employees to have a public voice, but I think it’s now something that must be allowed, and good common-sense management can be used to help avoid some of the risk of lawsuits such as the one mentioned in the article involving Cisco.
Some companies’ legal departments think that blogging is just too risky to allow, and that it’s not worth the time and administrative headache to try to manage. The problem that I see with this is that it causes a company to be stuck in a Business 1.0 world of the past, disallowing the grass-roots-level public relations that employees can provide — blogging allows a big corporation to have a human face and can help explain and communicate what the company is up to. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/26/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, General, News blogging, corporate blogging, employee blogs
Flickr As New YouTube Killer?
Michael Arrington at Techcrunch reports that video is coming soon to Flickr.
This is great news, and I think it could become an overnight major competitor to YouTube — having both types of media available via one site/service makes for a lot of convenience.
Though, people may not realize that it’s already been possible to a small degree, if you upload an animated GIF to Flickr (see this example where I uploaded an animated sequence of a glider’s movement from Conway’s Game of Life).
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/17/2008
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Filed under: General, Image Optimization flickr, Yahoo, YouTube
Network Solutions Guarantees Search Engine Rankings
I received a note from Network Solutions today with the subject line of “Good Luck Isn’t a Guarantee – Getting Found Online Is”, promoting their search engine optimization services. Nothing remarkable in that, since lots of large hosting companies and related firms are pushing SEO to small businesses as another line of value-add services. However, what is remarkable is that they push this promotion out with a guarantee of top 10 rankings in major search engines:
“Guaranteed Top 10 Rankings on Major Search Engines”
Now, if you’ve been around the search marketing industry very long at all, you’re probably aware that most of the guides for “picking the right SEO firm” or “how to choose an ethical SEO” recommend staying away from companies which guarantee rankings. For instance, check out the advice from Shari Thurow, David Wallace, MarketingProfs Thought Leaders Summit, and Chris Sherman. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/03/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, Worst Practices Keyword-Rankings, Network-Solutions, search engine rankings
Online Reputation Management Through Search at SMX West
I was interested to hear the presentations in the Reputation Monitoring & Management Through Search session at the SMX West Conference yesterday in Santa Clara, and the five presenters didn’t disappoint.
First up was Andy Beal, who I was particularly interested in hearing since this presentation came just after he announced his new online reputation management monitoring service, Trackur, and he also announced he’d have a number of free copies of his book at a booth in the exhibit hall later.
Additional speakers included Chris Bennett, Veronica “Niki” Fielding, David Wallace, and Jonathan Ashton. (more…)
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 02/28/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, brand names, Conferences Online Reputation Management, Reputation Monitoring, reputation-management
LinkedIn Beta Tests New Homepage Layout
So, I’m at the SMX West conference tonight, hopping around networking with people and every so often updating my Flickr pix or sending work emails when I noticed that LinkedIn is apparently beta-testing a new homepage layout on me. Check out the screengrab of what I see now when I login to LinkedIn:
So, they want feedback on their new design, so I’ll give it here. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/28/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, Design, Social Media Optimization linkedin, Social-Media, website-design
Google’s Ranking Advice in Blended Search at SMX West
Just a quick post here on some simple tips that David Bailey of Google advised in this morning’s session on “The Blended Search Revolution” at the SMX West conference in Santa Clara:
- Publish high-quality, well-captioned images;
- Have pages which already have good PageRank (use traditional SEO to achieve);
- Create a Google Video Sitemap;
- Update business listings in Local Business Center;
- Submit your feed to Google Product Search;
- Create a high-quality company blog;
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/26/2008
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Filed under: Conferences, Content Optimization, Google, HTML Optimization, Image Optimization, Local Search Optimization, PageRank, Search Engine Optimization, SEO blended search, David-Bailey, Google, SEO, SMXWest08, Universal-Search
Flickr Starts Nofollowing
A couple of my colleagues, Brian Brown and Jeff Muendel, identified that Flickr has begun NOFOLLOWing hyperlinks in their photo profile pages. I’ve confirmed this and have a few more details to add. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/21/2008
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Filed under: Image Optimization, Link Building, PageRank, Search Engine Optimization, SEO flickr, image SEO, Image-Search-Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
