Archives : 2011 : September

“Creativity” Showcased at the Tower

Join us Friday evening, September 30, at the Tower Theatre for a special showing of the 2011 Cannes Lions awards. For 58 years, Cannes Lions has promoted the need to “think outside the box” and to think creatively. Lately, they are also promoting how being creative can also be effective by honoring creativity that proves a measurable impact on a client’s business.

All Bend WebCAM attendees with two-day passes or full-day passes for Friday, September 30 will be admitted free. Tickets may also be purchased for $8 in advance at the Tower Theatre website, or at the door.

Twitter Analytics Tools

For businesses using Twitter, it’s always been a hassle trying to track the impact of your tweets and links. Because Twitter has never offered Twitter business analytics or statistics, we’ve all had to use outside sources—Hootsuite, Tweet Counter and other Twitter analytics tools.

Twitter has Announced Twitter Web Analytics

This has now changed for Twitter users. Last week, the Twitter Developers announced Twitter Web Analytics—an analytics tool that you can access right inside of your Twitter account. No more using outside sources to track your reach, now you can do it straight from the source.

This new update is going to be a great tool for people using Twitter for business, and it’s certainly taken long enough for it to get here!

As you can read on the Twitter Developers blog post, the Twitter business analytics tool won’t be released to the general public for another couple of weeks, after the pilot group has tested it.

There isn’t any word yet whether or not this Twitter statistics update will be for a price, but it’s better than paying an outside source for things you can now get from the inside. This could be a hurt for Hootsuite and other Twitter analytics tools—we’ll have to see how it all pans out.

Let us know if you see the Twitter Web Analytics inside your Twitter account anytime soon, and follow us on Twitter for more updates like this!

SEO Ranking Factors

Google utilizes a series of search engine ranking factors to determine the results that show on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Although Google’s algorithms change all the time, there are some seo ranking factors that remain important.

Mashable came up with the Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors to illustrate the most important things that can help you gain traffic from major search engines like Google and Bing. The four major groups of search engine ranking factors are:

• On the Page SEO Ranking Factors
• Off the Page SEO Ranking Factors
• Violations
• Blocking

It is important to note that no one single seo ranking factor promises top rankings. You need to utilize a series of seo ranking factors to gain maximum success. Of course, each seo ranking factor is weighted differently. You will be able to see the different weightage on the Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors. For example, quality content (Cq) has a weightage of 3 while age of a website (Th) has a weightage of 1.

 

On the Page SEO Ranking Factors

The elements On the Page SEO Ranking Factors are those that are in the direct control of the publisher. You can determine the type of content you post on your website, decide on the keywords to use, decide how often you want to post fresh content and pick a good SEO friendly CMS that helps spiders crawl your site better.

 

Off the Page SEO Ranking Factors

Publishers cannot directly control Off the Page SEO Ranking Factors. These factors are used by search engines to provide an unbiased view as some publishers resort to black hat tactics to rank well on SERP. The Off the Page SEO Ranking Factors allow search engines to sift out quality sites and show them higher on SERP.

 

Violations

Because publishers resort to black hat tactics, as we’ve talked about earlier, there is a need for search engines to penalize websites in order to provide quality results on the SERP. If search engines feel publishers have violated in many areas, there is a possibility of their websites getting banned.

 

Blocking

Blocking is done by searchers themselves. They choose to have certain websites blocked from the SERP should they decide they don’t like your website. Publishers can get negative points depending on whether and how many people have blocked the website from search results.

Importance of Understanding Search Engine Ranking Factors

It is important to understand the search engine ranking factors and their weightage. Having more positive factors will increase your change of ranking well on SERP. For example, having fresh content won’t help if the content is not quality content. Having high quality links won’t help if the website is not spider friendly.

Smart Solutions understands the different search engine ranking factors and can help your business rank better on the search engine results page. As an added advantage, we utilize an SEO friendly CMS that can help you score points on the architecture aspect of the On the Page SEO Ranking Factor. Contact our search engine optimization team to hear about our success stories.