Posts by author:

Michael Gray

Is Sarah Lacy Making Sponsored Posts on TechCrunch?

Thumbnail image for Is Sarah Lacy Making Sponsored Posts on TechCrunch?

Post Updated See End of Post
If you read TechCrunch, you may have noticed a post this weekend about Blueprint Cleanse, a health product designed to cleanse your body. On the surface, the piece seemed to be a  “California” lifestyle piece, however, after doing a bit of research it turns out there’s a lot more intrigue, [...]

Read the full article →

TextBroker.com Copywriting Service Review

Thumbnail image for TextBroker.com Copywriting Service Review

Like most people who work in the marketing space, I’ve been hearing more and more about “demand media” and “content farms” in recent months and how they are either the death of quality writers or the greatest thing since sliced bread. Rather than sit on the sidelines, I thought I’d give it a test drive [...]

Read the full article →

Is Google Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic

Thumbnail image for Is Google Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic

Google has long been an advocate of “build great content”; however, in reality, it’s turning into “build great content … and if we like it we’ll take it from you, put it on our pages, and deprive you of that traffic. Without compensation.” Strong accusations, sure, but I’m willing to step up to the plate, [...]

Read the full article →

Google’s Social Search – Affecting a SERP Near You

Thumbnail image for Google’s Social Search – Affecting a SERP Near You

Late last week Google announced it was graduating social search from beta and making it active for everyone. I got a heads up from Barry Wise of KnowEm a day later, and we spent some time talking about what this meant for marketers. I thought I’d share some of our conversation with you.

Read the full article →

How to Use Tags on Your Blog or Website

Thumbnail image for How to Use Tags on Your Blog or Website

In my opinion one of the more powerful and underutilized tools of a blog or website is the ability to tag your pages and posts. That said, effectively using  tags isn’t easy or straightforward. In this post I’ll take you through some examples of how to use tags and get the most out of them, [...]

Read the full article →

How I Create and Manage A Wordpress Website

Thumbnail image for How I Create and Manage A Wordpress Website

While I do have some issues with Wordpress, it is one of my favorite CMS tools, because it’s easy to use, manage, and customize. In this post I’m going to give you a bit of insight into how I manage a Wordpress website.

Read the full article →

How to Speed up Wordpress

Tips for speeding up your wordpress installation.

At Pubcon this year Google announced page load time was going to become a ranking factor in 2010 (see video below). Shortly after this announcement, Google started showing load time data in webmaster central. Being a bit proactive, I decided to start looking at ways to speed up this site.

Read the full article →

Upgrade Your Hosting and Save Some Cash with TigerTech

Thumbnail image for Upgrade Your Hosting and Save Some Cash with TigerTech

If you’re like most people at the beginning of each year, you’ll review your business, look at where you are spending money, and look for things to cut or ways to save a few bucks. That’s why I’m going to bring up something we all have to deal with: web hosting. In all the time I’ve been [...]

Read the full article →

Thanks to this Months Sponsors

Thumbnail image for Thanks to this Months Sponsors

I’d like to say thanks to our sponsors this month and throughout the year. Without them, there wouldn’t be regular posts here.

Read the full article →

Google Local Suggest Nearly Broken and Mostly Useless

Thumbnail image for Google Local Suggest Nearly Broken and Mostly Useless

Chances are you’ve seen me complain about Google local suggest throwing local results in for queries that shouldn’t be local. IMHO unless I specify a local parameter you shouldn’t be suggesting one. I understand that might be personal preference. Recently, however, I’ve seen queries with local results that contradict the one included in the search term. IMHO [...]

Read the full article →

Is Google Playing Monkey Games With Real Time Search

Thumbnail image for Is Google Playing Monkey Games With Real Time Search

Last week Google launched real time SERP’s, which included the possibility for twitter and facebook updates to appear in searches for popular information, news, or for someone’s name. The potential for libel and potential for spam has already been discussed. What hasn’t been addressed is the problems it can create for reputation management. Specificall, how [...]

Read the full article →

Cleaning Up After Google’s URL Mess

Thumbnail image for Cleaning Up After Google’s URL Mess

Recently Google announced the release of their own URL shortening service, Goo.gl. If we put aside the data gathering aspects for a moment, this product is the third in a series of products that make the web a more difficult place to crawl. In this post we’ll follow a Goo.gl URL through its course and [...]

Read the full article →

Secure Pages, Shopping Carts and Duplicate Content

Thumbnail image for Secure Pages, Shopping Carts and Duplicate Content

Last week at SES Chicago, we were sitting in some site review panels and came across an identical problem on two completely different sites: duplicate content on both secure and non secure pages.

Read the full article →

Google Suggest – Broken and Filled with Porn and Children

Thumbnail image for Google Suggest – Broken and Filled with Porn and Children

In recent weeks Google has been launching a higher than usual amount of new products. Many will say they are moving in the wrong direction. Many of these products appear to have been launched without fully considering the weaknesses they will have to spam. Instead of rushing “shiny new cat toys” out the door that [...]

Read the full article →

testing something dont click till after 5:00

testing

Read the full article →

Eric Schmidt, The Wall Street Journal and Personalized Search

Thumbnail image for Eric Schmidt, The Wall Street Journal and Personalized Search

Early Friday morning the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece from Eric Schmidt on how Google can help the dying newspaper industry. Later that same afternoon Google announced they were “turning on” personalized search for everyone. While these two events were connected because the occurred on the same date, they are also a clear signal of [...]

Read the full article →

Easytweets Review

Thumbnail image for Easytweets Review

I get to see a lot of twitter products and software, some of it in beta version before launch, some of it just after launch. Truth be told most of them suck and only do one thing really well. Seeing how twitter has become an essential part of most websites’ marketing plans, it’s really hard [...]

Read the full article →

Shopping Cart SEO Tips

Thumbnail image for Shopping Cart SEO Tips

When you run an online e-commerce store with a shopping cart, it’s quite easy for your architecture and URL’s to enter into territory that’s not friendly for search engines. Here are some basic tips I recommend for everyone working with an online shopping cart.

Read the full article →

25 Things I’d like to See Google Fix

Thumbnail image for 25 Things I’d like to See Google Fix

While I’m well known for being critical of many of the things Google does, I’m also a power user of site and many of their tools. Being a power user gives me a unique insight to see some areas these tools could be improved. This post is written in the spirit of constructive criticism, since [...]

Read the full article →

Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors – November 2009

Thumbnail image for Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors – November 2009

I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn’t be regular posts here.

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries