Author Archive: Casie Gillette

When most people think “search engine optimization” they think “title tags”, “keywords” and “content”.  The majority don’t realize that the technical elements also play a very large role in how successful a site becomes.

The cleaner a site is “technically” the easier it will be for search engines and users to find it.  All the on-page optimization in the world can’t help your site if no one sees it.

What got me thinking about this?

Today I was day dreaming about food (per usual) and I decided to see if there were any deals on gift certificates.   I typed restaurant.com into my address bar and what did I get?  An error page!  ... Read the full post

Businesses are constantly hearing about the new “hot” site or the success of someone else in social media and think they too should be jumping right in there.   What people fail to see is that social media isn’t something you become great at overnight.  These success stories didn’t happen because someone at the company simply signed up.

Social media takes work and it can certainly be overwhelming to get started with.  The good news is that there are a number of people out there who know what they are talking about.  ... Read the full post

Over the past ten years we have seen link building strategies come and go but they never really disappear.   There is always something that can still be done.

I have listed three such tactics below that not only can be used but should be used.

1. Reciprocal Linking

I can’t tell you how many emails I sent and received asking for links when I first started in this industry (and trust me when I say they weren’t very good emails).  Links were links and it really didn’t matter whether the site had anything to do with your own, as long as they placed a link on their site, you’d do the same.  ... Read the full post

Yesterday in the search world the big news was Google Japan being caught buying links.  Doh!

Well quick to act on it was Google who assured us that Google Japan did not realize it was against the G-man’s guidelines and a penalty would be assessed accordingly.

Here is the apology from Google:

“Google Japan is running several promotional activities to let people know more about our products.

It turns out that using blogs on the part of the promotional activities violates Google’s search guidelines, so we have ended the promotion. We would like to apologize to the people concerned and to our users, and are making an effort to make our communications more transparent in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.”  ... Read the full post

Whenever I attend a search marketing event I am always impressed by the number of people who are self-taught in SEO and PPC.  I graduated college around the time search marketing was gaining ground and fell into a job where SEO was already a big part of the marketing strategy.  I was fortunate enough to be taught by people who had been practicing search for several years already.

For those marketers who didn’t start out in search, the time has certainly come to learn about it.  More and more marketing jobs are requiring online experience and in the current job atmosphere can you afford not to?  ... Read the full post

One of my favorite things about search is that it is always evolving.  For example, what used to be a focus on keyword “dense” content written specifically for the search engines has turned into quality content written for the user.

I also appreciate the fact that usability and SEO, once two separate entities have really started to come together.  It makes my job more interesting, my clients more successful and the internet a better place (ok, I made that part up).  That being said, I got to thinking about some tactics that benefit both usability and SEO.   ... Read the full post

Where oh where has the time gone?  With the end of 2008 upon us we can finally sit back and reflect on the past year’s events.  Presidential election?  Economic crisis?  Britney comeback?  Nah, we’ll just focus on search news.

Here are some of the top stories in search from 2008:

Want to Trademark “SEO”?
Jason Gambert sure did and needless to say, it didn’t go over well with the search community.  ... Read the full post

• “Reputable SEO Firms Don’t Promise Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings” says SEOmoz.
• “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google” gloats Google.
• “There are no guarantees in SEO except change… and maybe Danny Sullivan.” SEOrefugee states.

But I laugh in the faces of all of them!  I see my clients in the number one positions every day!  Yup, I – am – the – master!  Wait, what?  You don’t have that on your screen?  Those are personalized results?  Oh…crap.  ... Read the full post

A friend of mine in the Sales industry sent me this email the other day:

What do you think of this article?  (“SEO is Dead”) Think it is crap or is there some truth to it?

My response to him:

There is certainly truth to it.  The conversation has been going on the past few years as to whether SEO is dead or if SEO can survive, etc, etc.  The thing is, yes, if you are ONLY doing SEO, straight up, old school, meta tags, keywords, keyword density style SEO, you are probably in trouble already.  ... Read the full post