Web Worker Daily

This weekend I was on an “SEO Smackdown” panel at our local WordCamp Portland. Two of us were from the content side, while the other two panelists were SEO experts. My take on SEO is that writing compelling, interesting blog content that people will want to talk about and link to will get you around 95 percent of the way to good search engine rankings. If you don’t have great content, SEO is not going to be very useful for you. Read the rest of this entry »

For any web worker with a blog, web site or online portfolio, knowing how to optimize it for search engines is a must. After all, what’s the point of having an online presence if no one can find it? By using some simple Search Engine Optimizations (SEO) techniques on your web site, you can increase the chances that your target visitors will find it through Yahoo, Google and other search engines.

In this post, I’ll discuss some basic SEO techniques and how to apply them. Read the rest of this entry »

As companies strive to get discovered by customers on the increasingly crowded Internet, demand for the skills of search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) experts has grown.

Could a search engine-related career be right for you?

Types of Search Engine-Related Careers

Search engine marketing and pay-per-click advertising (PPC) responsibilities involve creating, launching, managing and optimizing paid search campaigns. Critical thinking, problem solving and analysis play an important role as this job requires reviewing data and creating reports. The reports provide needed information for tweaking campaigns in order to boost their effectiveness. These jobs often require knowing how search marketing applications work. Read the rest of this entry »

Sitemasher

I wasn’t sure what to make of Sitemasher when I first heard of it. With Sitemasher, you can build a web site, manage the content, get analytics, implement basic SEO, and you get managed hosting to boot.

But at $99/month, I felt the kerpow of sticker shock. I knew that I had to think about Sitemasher differently to fully appreciate its value.

So after a demo with the company, here is what I’ve learned.

Read the rest of this entry »