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SEMLogic versus SEMiologic : Round 1

February 6th, 2006 Tony 2 comments

SEMLogic vs. SEMiologicI was just about to head out to catch a flight when I decided to procrastinate for 5 more minutes and catch up on Andre’s blog. Immediately I noticed a new Wordpress theme. Me likey. Then I discover a recent entry in which Andre explains the new theme and promotes a friend’s CMS plugin for Wordpress called SEMiologic.

Ok, so chicken or the egg. Who came first guys? SEMLogic or SEMiologic?

Categories: Search Engine Optimization Tags:

Picking the Best Keywords for Your Geotargeted Pages

February 1st, 2006 Tony 7 comments

raleighSince the days of creating my first geotargeted site for Raleigh, NC I’ve struggled with the best sequence of (or ) combination to target. For instance, which of these combinations would capture the largest number of visitors?

• Raleigh Real Estate
• Raleigh NC Real Estate
• Real Estate in Raleigh
• Real Estate in Raleigh, NC
• Raleigh North Carolina Real Estate

Tough call. A few years ago I took a guess and went with a combination of two keywords and tackled it like this:
Raleigh Real Estate in Raleigh, NC.

Well I think that looks a tad spammy so I want to find a better practice that can achieve the same results. So I have been polling family and friends by asking things like “If you were new to the area how would you search in Google to find a place like 518 West?” (Its a local Italian restaurant). Of course my sample size is way small but the response I’ve been getting are all over the board:

• Raleigh Italian Restaurant
• Italian Food Raleigh
• Italian Restaurant in Raleigh

and on, and on, and on. There seemed to be no consensus. So my advice for the best approach is to create multiple pages if possible targetting different variations. If you have enough trust rank and inbound links with varying anchor text you can probably nail two variations on one page.

I also did a few high profile queries like Chicago Accountant and Accountant in Chicago and it seems that the SEOs out there are targetting and nailing more than one term by mixing up the inbound links and displaying several combinations on the page. You’ll also begin to find that Google is getting good at the LSI thing and they can relate North Carolina to NC as seen in this query for Raleigh North Carolina Real Estate where my raleighlist site shows up in the middle of the SERP’s even though the page has no mention of ‘North Carolina’.

If you are SEOing for local geotargetted pages how do you go about it?

Categories: Search Engine Optimization Tags:

Marketing the Google Video Angle

January 28th, 2006 Tony No comments

Google Video
There is no doubt that video.google.com is going to be a success story despite the negative press this week. My good buddy str0ud pointed this poker affiliate video out to me this week. This thing is done really poorly but I think the guy is bleeding edge. Although his shot of the luxury cars is far too short at only 1 second and he doesn’t even tag his URL once in the video, and his video is amateurish and ends abruptly, he is still the first to market and does a nice job of showing off his leased vehicles and Cessna.

Now I know that I’m probably one of the techie few that actually visit Google video but I also know that I regularly show cool stuff that I find there to my wife, friends, and family and they are totally sucked in.

So what is the future of marketing and Google video? Well str0ud has piqued my interest and we are certainly going to move in the direction of producing a series of videos. Afterall, I don’t imagine that its that hard to manipulate the ‘Popular’ section thanks to HTTPClient. :)

Categories: General Marketing Tags:

Hosted Solutions in Cary, NC Doesn’t Want New Business

January 27th, 2006 Tony No comments

Hosted Solutions is supposed to be the best facility in the Raleigh NC and Triangle metro area for dedicated hosting or colo according to everyone I’ve asked. I’ve been to the facility (when they were called Springboard Hosting) and indeed it looked quite nice. Well now that I’m really trying to get some cabinet space there I can’t get my foot in the door! I called once, left a message, no call back. Waited a week, submitted an email through their contact form. No response. Waited a month, called again, and left a message. Finally a salesman called me back and he sounded nice and even mentioned that he remembers my email (uhhhh, why didn’t you call me then) and tells me he would put together some packages and email them to me. That was two weeks ago.

If I have to chase down the sales team like this, whats it going to be like when I need customer support?

Still waiting for that price package Hosted Solutions…

Update:
Hosted Solutions has since been very generous with their time. The salesperson, head of sales, and even the CEO have been in touch with me and provided me with more than enough information. I was invited to the new north Raleigh facility and they gave me a tour along with some very flexible options for my hosting needs.

Thanks guys!

Categories: Hosting Tags:

More Employment Opportunites at NotSleepy Inc.

January 27th, 2006 Tony 2 comments

Here is one more position available for immediate hire:

Web Designer

There have to be some pure CSS folks lurking in Raleigh. Pack up that PowerBook and come over for an interview!

Categories: Uncategorized Tags: