Category Archives: SEO

Let’s do a little link research

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Ken Shafer

I’m going to put this link right here. This is part of some research I’m conducting.  Just a little personal research about indexation through social media channels, along side another experiment about nofollow links.

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Using rel=”prev” and “next” and Canonical Tags for Pagination

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Ken Shafer

I’ve been thinking a lot about pagination and how to navigate the rel=”next/prev” and canonical tags. I wrote a fairly detailed article about how I think rel=next, rel=prev and canonical tags should be implemented over on the Ironworks blog. I wanted to re-iterate some of the basic points that article attempts to address here in my own blog. Do not … Continue reading →

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Be The Search Engine

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Ken Shafer

Often times the best way to diagnose an SEO-related problem with your site is view the site as a search engine would see it. Today I’m going give you a few tips that will help you do just that. Shall we? Step 1 – Download the Firefox browser, if you haven’t already I can’t begin to tell you all the … Continue reading →

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HTML5′s Semantic Markup and SEO

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Ken Shafer

I believe it to be common knowledge that search engines would want to place a lower emphasis on links or content located in a repeating nav bar or especially a footer.  Greater emphasis is, and probably should be, placed on the more unique content and links found in the “body” of the page. Currently with HTML4, mark-up coders are working … Continue reading →

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New Discussion Group at MultifamilyInsders.com

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Ken Shafer

As some of you know, I am the SEO Manager at Apartments.com. Among other things, I try to engage in conversations regarding SEO and the multifamily industry. To that end, I have created an SEO-specific forum on MultifamilyInsiders.com. It’s open to everyone. Join the group and let’s talk SEO! http://www.multifamilyinsiders.com/home/apartment-groups?action=gj.core.groups.showgroup&groupid=81 See you there!

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Impact of Rich Snippets on Traffic

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Ken Shafer

On January 22nd, Google announced the inclusion of event-related information in their Rich Snippets. The protocol will be based off the hCalendar microformat and will look like this: Now, let’s consider another post that covers Rich Snippets as well as something called “Answer Highlighting” which looks like this: “Consider the example, [empire state height]. The first search result used to … Continue reading →

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Stuff I Liked This Week

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Ken Shafer

Here are the articles I “starred” in my Google readers lists. January 20th One Giant Leap for Link Data: Announcing Open Site Explorer + Page/Domain Authority Metrics – Awesome tool. Making me consider becoming a Pro Member, honestly. January 19th Keyword Targeting: How to Employ Multiple Keywords for SEO & Conversions – SEOMoz breaks down keyword research January 18th Browse … Continue reading →

Posted in Engine News, Other Stuff, SEO | Tagged | 4 Comments

Matt Cutts On Links From Facebook and Twitter

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Ken Shafer

Interesting video post from Google’s Matt Cutts. Watch first and then let’s discuss. Video source: How do you rate links from sites like Twitter and Facebook? Original Article: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/01/answering-your-december-grab-bag.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/amDG+(Official+Google+Webmaster+Central+Blog) Points of interest: Links aren’t any different if they come from .gov or .edu. “It’s not like a link from an .edu autmatically carries more weight.” (1:58) Most links on Twitter … Continue reading →

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Digging For Buried Traffic

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Ken Shafer

Using a Site Analytics tool? Got a Rank Tracker or some free time to manually check some rankings? Here’s a way you can find and predict how much traffic you might be missing out on. Aside from the fact that I just ended that sentence with a preposition which drives me nuts, let walk through the process, shall we? Super. … Continue reading →

Posted in Reporting, SEO | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Search Engines Get Canonical

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Ken Shafer

Say goodbye to duplicate content, folks… Basically, all the search engines will let you suggest the preferred URL you’d like them to focus all the SEO juice on: To use Google’s example, all you put in the head tag is something like this: link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish” That’s all there is to it, folks. Here are the links to the new … Continue reading →

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