SEO Answers From the May 6, 2009 SEO Meetup
The conversations at the May 2009 DC SEO / Social Media / Affiliate Marketing Meetup (whew, that’s a mouthful) covered a range of topics. Here are the questions I heard along with recommended answers.
How can my law firm’s events show up better in the search engines?
Submit to eventful, upcoming.org, zvents, craigslist and Google Base.
- http://eventful.com/washingtondc/events
- http://upcoming.yahoo.com/place/Fz2_YE6bBJ2_FxtS
- http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/cal/
- http://www.zvents.com/search?st=event&city=Washington
- Google Base – DC Legal Events (URL is too absurdly long to show–we’re talking Lotus Notes link long)
What’s that URL you just shouted across the table – is it plural or singular?
Someone asked our host, Miles, whether his security alarm systems in Washington, DC domain was singular or plural. UrbanAlarm.com is singular, but after taking a look at the handy dandy mobile version of AjaxWhois.com, we saw the plural was available and Miles snatched it up.
Tip: If a plural of your domain name is how someone might hear it, grab it.
How can I get links to my blog?
Come to the next Meetup and chat me up! I’m always happy to share some link love and drop some sweet anchor text.
- Remember Dean Megginson, NovaHomeGuy.com, who we profiled before? He’s added DullesHomeGuy.com to his publishing empire. Take a look.
- Looking for graphic illustration in Washington DC? Check out Will Carroll’s http://www.Geoill.com
Why is your hand resting on my thigh?
This one wasn’t directed at me, but I think it’s best if we move on to another question.
How can I tell if I have duplicate content penalties? I have an old site I copied from one platform to another. Both sites are still out there, but I change the headlines and added pictures to the newer one.
It’ll probably take more than that to look different in the eyes of the search engines. One way to tell is to conduct some searches on unique phrases from an article that appears on both sites. Do both show up in the results? If so, you may be okay for now. If you see the following, you may have problems:
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the x already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.
It’s always good to 301 redirect, but that’s not always an option if you’re using a free blogging service rather than your own hosted site.
How can I get in touch with the social media scene in DC?
Follow @1p on Twitter. Paul hosts a bunch of social media events and is usually at these SEO Meetups.
How can I tell how well the search engines are picking up my Flash pages?
Search for site:yourdomain.com to pull up all of the indexed pages on your site.
Do you see all your pages listed? Are there descriptive headlines and blurbs that would make a newcomer want to click? If so, that’s good.
Or, are you seeing
[FLASH] Loading:
File Format: Shockwave Flash
Loading:
If it’s the latter, go fix it.
How do I handle SEO for Flash?
How can I make Flash show up better in searches?
- Embed Flash using SWFObject and JavaScript. You’ll have one version for Flash users and a back-up one for search engine spiders and other HTML-only visitors
- Fill in meta tags in Flash editor
- Read How to SEO Flash http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/seo-friendly-flash.shtml
- Review: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/wiki/documentation
- Read: http://searchengineland.com/080411-101105.php
http://www.beussery.com/blog/index.php/2008/10/google-flash-seo/
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/flash-and-seo-compelling-reasons-why-search-engines-flash-still-dont-mix
How can I leverage my photos better for SEO?
Label them well in Flickr, geo tag them, include links back to your post, pick appropriate rights for sharing (Skelliewag has a handy overview).
I’m trying to get more leads from PPC. Any other ways to track these?
Try displaying a unique phone number or extension used exclusively in your PPC ads. Or a coupon code.
What’s the conversion rate for real estate agents using social media to generate leads?
One attendee reported about 5 percent of contacts become actual clients.
What’s the best way to learn HTML?
I recommend http://w3schools.com/html/ because you learn by coding HTML on screen and immediately see the results.
(I’ve heard good things about http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/gettingstarted/ , too.)
Is there a course or program I should enroll in to learn SEO?
- Use SEOmoz.org’s expansive free resources to get a great understanding.
- Beginner’s Guide to SEO (an oldie but a goodie)
- Try SEOBook if you want to invest a little money
- The best way is to learn by doing. Start your own blog or website.
- Another attendee recommended Hubspot http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-resources/
I follow Hubspot’s Mike Volpe on Twitter, who shares some good stuff.
There you go — you get all that for the cost of a Cosi sandwich along with a dollar donation to the Meetup facilitator.
Anything you want to add? And are you gettng questions ready for the next SEO Meetup?
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You can use http://thedomainsearch.com for finding domain names instantly as you type.
Thanks for the tip. After trying it out, the site looks handy and I like how the results include links to registrars to buy the domain on the spot. The only drawback was that the .org results served up this message: “This server exceeded whois server quota. Please try again later.”