newmediaMike

SEO Best Practice - On Page Relevancy

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I have been practicing SEO since 1998. Since my first site I have always practiced a very basic On Page SEO formula, and it is based upon the simple concept of relevancy.

My theory is based on the reasoning that if all of the elements which make up On Page SEO are relevant then you will get a good ranking. These elements consist of the appropriate absolute path, Meta Tags and content. For 10 years now this theory has held up. Today it is the cornerstone of my SEO consulting practice.

How this theory works is like this.

The absolute path should contain the main topic for the page. The absolute path is of course the file name in the page URL. Instead of naming your page something like page1.html; call it what the main topic of the page is. If the page is talking about the Season 2 ending for MadMen then the absolute URL should be something like /MadMen-Season-2-final-episode.html. This is the foundation for the rest of the On Page SEO. You can use dashes or underscores to separate words, don’t leave spaces in the absolute path.

After the absolute path, look at your page title. Give the page a title! There are approximately 167 MILLION pages on Google that are Untitled. Sticking with our foundation absolute path, the correct SEO title meta tag for this page would be “MadMen Season 2 Final Episode”
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Tags: MadMen, MetaTag, relevancy, SEO

New Feature on YouTube - Deep Linking

YouTube has added a feature which on the surface may not have much use, but could have some potential down the road.

YouTube will now allow you to send users to a specific point in a video by adding a short tag to the end of the video’s URL. Apparently Google Video introduced the same feature over two years ago, (who knew?).

To specify a point, add a tag to the end of your video link with the following syntax: “#t=1m45s” (you can change the numbers before the ‘m’ and ’s’ to edit the minutes and seconds, respectively.

For example, my friend Ian posted a video on YouTube from our College days. if I wanted to send you to the point in the video where I enter the room and walk towards the camera the link would be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osto3TLCVyg#t=0m07s

Pretty cool eh?  The linking - NOT my pleather jacket!

The feature just went live and there isn’t any easy way to do this though the YouTube User Interface without manually adding the tag.

Tags: video, YouTube

Virtual divorcee kills virtual husband

I will readily admit that many years ago I was very active in the online chat world. It was rather boring, yet engaging at the same time. I still remember my ICQ number 2868783. I didn’t get in too deep, but some of my online friends had very deep online relationships, almost virtual marriages.

Today I came across this story about this 43-year-old Japanese piano teacher, whose sudden divorce from her online husband in a virtual game world made her so angry that she logged on and killed his digital persona.

The woman has been jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data. She used his identification and password to log onto the popular interactive game “Maple Story” to carry out the virtual murder.

She has not yet been formally charged, but if convicted could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine up to $5,000.

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Tags: interactive, second life, virtual divorce, virtual marriage, virtual murder

I’m the number 9 Twit in Toronto

From the fine folks at HubSpot comes Twitter Grader it’s a fun, online add on for your Twitter use. Simply enter your Twitter name and hit enter.  Moments later your “Twitter Grade” appears.

I scored 97.7!

The Twitter Grade measures the relative power of a Twitter user. It is calculated as a percentile score. A grade of 97.7 means that the user scores higher than 97.7 percent of the other user profiles that have been graded. Here is how they calculate your grade.

• How many followers do you have
• Who is in your network? They look at the power of this network of followers, almost like a Google PageRank
• How often do you update your Tweets?
• How complete is your profile?
• …and knowing HubSpot, some proprietary codes as well

Twitter Grader also shows a snapshot of your profile listing your name, bio and location. It said “Twitter Elite in Toronto” beside my location. When I clicked on it there was a list of Twitterers in Toronto and yous truly was #9!

If you are on Twitter (and if you aren’t why not?) check out your Twitter Grade and be sure to follow me if you aren’t already - http://twitter.com/newmediamike

Tags: fun, Google PageRank, Twitter, twitter grader