Was reading about a study the other day, one whose sad and startling results I wanted to share with readers of my distracted driving web site. Problem was, the article's author didn't identify the study -- by title or sponsor or anything -- a flunking matter in any Journalism 101 class. Even worse, although the article was online, there was no link to the study. The first offense is unusual in professional publishing, but sadly the second is not. Newspapers are among the biggest offenders … [Read more...]
The title of this article is …
March 21, 2014 by
The title of this blog post is exactly 32 characters long. Did I bother to count them all? Nah. I used a handy web-thingy called Text Mechanic. Or I could have used Word (tools > word count). More importantly, why do I care? In this case, the headline and title tag of this post are identical. I'm looking out for the Google bot (or Bing bot), which considers the title tag the No. 1 clue to what the content is all about. That's also the headline/title displayed in the search engine result pages … [Read more...]
SEO black hats: Out of style
March 12, 2013 by
To me, amateur SEO is a bit like amateur dentistry. Or amateur hair styling, if you prefer. In all likelihood, nothing good is going to happen, and quite possibly something really bad will happen. Every now and then I have a client or friend who experiments with some hot new SEO technique. Never once have I seen one of these DIY efforts succeed. Most jailhouse SEO advice out there is outdated or dangerous or just plain stupid. And even if it were good advice, most non-pros wouldn't know … [Read more...]
