Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

The Tune Your Site and Web Apps to Maximize Traffic course on Microsoft Virtual Academy covers Bing Webmaster Tools , Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM) topics from the Bing view-point. Key points & slides from the  presentation : Slice and dice to find your niche Watch what users respond to then amplify along those lines Data can help you uncover new niches or refine your focus Check your keyword research for inspiration m. domains produce unwanted duplication. Responsive design is your friend. Terminology: Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Maximizing the visibility of your website on search engines, typically by including targeted paid advertising Pay Per Click (PPC) - Bid for ad placement and pay only for clicks to your site Impressions - Number of times the ad displays. You do not pay for impressions, only for clicks Click Through Rate (CTR) - The number of times an ad is clicked when it displays. A percentag...

There are currently close to 400 videos on Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel featuring Matt Cutts who answers questions posted to the Webmaster Help Forum or to the Twitter handle @googlewmc. Occasionally, some Google secrets slip out in these videos . You can also pick up some tips & tricks on SEO by watching these typically 2-minute videos. If you are SEO inclined, the videos have some interesting titles that draw you to find out the answers. I track updates through their YouTube channel RSS feed. I sometimes wish the answer was part of the intro that comes with the feed so that I can find the answer immediately. For future reference, I plan to jot down summaries of these videos while I watch a few of them every week. Here goes the list ( Last updated: 8-May-2014 ) - *  Is there a version of Google that excludes backlinks as a ranking factor?  (19 Feb 2014) No *  How can you tell if your site is suffering from an algorithmic penalty, o...

Did you know, for high-volume search phrases, the Search Engines usually will NOT differentiate between singular and plural versions of a term ? Check it for yourself by seeing the search results on these phrases - cell phone vs. cell phones . I was under the impression, until I took the SEOmoz quiz , that this was a case of stemming & there should be differentiation. Here is my compilation of all the interesting SEO Quizzes I have found (work in progress) - SEO Expert Quiz - the 75 questions there will take about 30 minutes. The answers to a  few questions are debatable but the quiz is educative nevertheless. SEO Professional's Litmus Test - 11 Search Engine Optimization Questions & Answers  for newbies. Google WebMaster Quiz - 40 Q&A based on issues commonly seen on the Google Webmaster Help Forum. StackExchange Pro Webmasters - although not really a quiz, you can follow the hottest Q&A that have got the most votes Trivia:  Pa...

There are many Web Analytics tools & the following bunch are free - Google Analytics  StatCounter  Piwik  Woopra  Clicky SiteMeter Simple Analytics  (free for hobby projects but not part of the comparison table) Each of them has something unique.  The Clicky website compares all the above across some 40 odd parameters.  (updated broken link on 1/Oct/2013) click to enlarge image Except for Google Analytics & Piwik, the rest have limitations on features with their free editions. They restrict the data retention size & period. Simple Analytics claims to overcome the following limitations of Google Analytics  - With the default settings of Google Analytics you are required to use a cookie banner for your European visitors. While Google Analytics can be GDPR compliant it’s very complicated to have it setup like that. Its defaults (which are used most often) are not privacy-first and do require consent from your visitors. This is no...

That's something some governments may start investigating as well. While going through an article by SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin, I came across a pie chart that shows components of Google's Ranking Algorithm as perceived by 72 SEO experts -   -o- As I've been increasingly blogging about things other than Web Development, I felt it would be more appropriate to rename the blog title to Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia . I will probably start referring to it with the moniker T4   :-)

Google ran a SEO quiz using Google Docs a few weeks back and the answers are now online . Developers building a public-facing website can benefit from learning tricks of the SEO trade as it can significantly boost traffic to their site. This area also needs continual learning as new things emerge frequently. One of the question there was about how to move a site to a new domain name while retaining it's original search engine ratings.  The preferred way is to permanently redirect traffic using a HTTP 301 (permanent) redirect as this will inform search engines to update their index with the resource’s new location. If the change is going to be short term such as a special page that is seasonal, a 302 (temporary) redirect would be a better choice. I never had a chance to try this out but implementing this in IIS 7 or older versions is pretty easy. This can also be done programmatically - private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { Response.Status = "3...

Undermining the exagerrated fears of some SEO consultants about all the changes happening at Google Search in recent times, randfish over at SEOmoz Blog says - SEO remains, at its core, remarkably similar to what it was in 2002: Make pages accessible Target with keywords that searchers employ Build content that users will find useful and valuable Earn editorial links from good sources The Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide  from Google has another nice advice - ..you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. Also see - Google SEO resources

If you are keen about optimizing your website for search engines, Google has several resources - Webmaster Tools, Webmaster Help group, Webmaster Central Blog. Ocassionally they also conduct free Chat sessions where Googlers share tips & tricks and also answer questions. Here is a sampler - Suppose my website supports English and French. Should the English version of a particular page and the French version have different URLs? Any other best practices for multi-lingual site architecture? Matt Cutts: If you can afford it, I would do domain.com and domain.fr. If that's not possible, I would consider doing en.domain.com and fr.domain.com. If that's not possible, then domain.com/en and domain.com/fr can work. In webmaster tools, you can geographically target a site (and I believe parts of a site such as r.domain.com), which will help as well. Does inconsistent capitalization of URLs cause duplicate content issues and dilution of page rank? For example www.site.com/abc vs www...