Search Engine Optimization News & Articles

My, how content strategy evolved during the past 12 months. In 2010 we spent our time talking about what content strategy was, while in 2011 we spent our time putting content strategy into action and then we kicked the tires and tried to figure out what made it work well, and what makes it fail. While digging through the archives, we uncovered a few common themes for content strategy in 2011.

Web content management provider Sitecore (news, site) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm Jungle Torch have announced a partnership that adds SEO and social media monitoring to Sitecore’s platform. The tools make it easier for organizations using Sitecore to manage their social media programs and optimize search engine performance -- an activity that, despite an influx of vendors, many enterprises are struggling to grasp.

Last year Google's Rich Snippets launch initiated a big semantic web push. The snippets enable website managers to show richer search results, making it easier to determine content within a particular page before you've even visited it. The initiative was reviewed at this year's Semantic Technology Conference in San Francisco, revealing usage statistics that will likely influence the future of Google Search. 

To optimize content marginally well, companies can choose to focus on SEO, keywords and meta data or how text, image and multimedia content is presented and organized on a site. Yet in order to be competitive in the marketplace, companies should instead focus on incorporating elements of each into their web engagement strategies.

Customers crave speed on the Web, and they reward organizations that make things fast and simple.

James Dimick, a Web developer at WordPress (news, site), says, "When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, there are a slew of options out there. Some good and some not so good."

We're inclined to agree. Thankfully, Dimick's got your back. His recent list of what he feels is the cream of the crop when it comes to SEO plugins for WordPress is, as far as we can tell, pretty thorough. Here's his top 5, which range from full packages to simple solutions:

Combining web content management and SEO is a smart move in our estimation. Companies like Lyris, Pixelsilk and MOGI have their eyes on this ball.

Now it's Preation's turn. Preation is a sister company of iContact, the email marketing folks. Last October they launched the Eden Platform. It does content management and it enables marketers. Let's take a peek.

In the world of search, all that once was lost can now be found. Be it through Google Search, semantic search, green search or using your nose to sniff through the web-o-sphere, search functionality and optimization is the latest and greatest trend.

Capitalizing on this, O’Reilly introduces a new conference, simply called Found.

Touted as a search acquisition and architecture conference, Found has been scheduled for June 9-11, 2009, at the San Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, CA.

Who says it’s better to build your own than buy someone else’s? Well not many actually. Omniture seems to understand this, because they have chosen to expand their solutions for site search and merchandising through the acquisition of assets from Mercado, another search provider.

Businesses of all sizes get taken by a bad breed of online marketing firms that shamelessly over promise and then shamelessly under deliver.

Last week we discussed some of the on-site factors that affect search engine rankings within a CMS implementation. This week, we’ll revisit these factors and present guidance for addressing and automating these strategies during your CMS implementation.

Content management systems (CMS) place the responsibility of content creation and maintenance squarely in the hands of non-technical users. With the promise of reduced IT involvement and expenditures, the benefits of CMS are clear. Or are they?

For those leveraging Web CMS tools to manage their online content, there is a risk to be mitigated while implementing your WCM solution. In a series of two articles, we explore how a CMS deployment, without careful consideration, can have a detrimental effect on your search engine rankings and the general findability of your content.