Redesign Do's and Don'ts

My friends down in Fort Worth, Texas are planning a major redesign of the Star-Telegram.com website. A couple years ago, I helped them move from their old Knight-Ridder platform, to their new McClatchy CMS. The move was major, but the design was kept the same. Then about a year ago, they gave their site a [...]

Read the full article →

Google Updates PageRank On The Last Day Of The Year

If you don’t follow Matt Cutts on Twitter, you should, because you can get confirmation of Google Toolbar PR updates. Google’s PageRank is not the big deal it once was, it is now just one piece of the puzzle, and they keep adding more pieces. With that in mind, it still gives you some insight [...]

Read the full article →

Better metrics to measure your site's success

Google’s PageRank used to be the most reliable and easiest way to point at a hard number as proof of a “good” site. Many things have changed over the last few years. PageRank is still nice, but let’s face it, it’s not the be-all and end-all it once was. Tad Chef over at seoptimise put’s [...]

Read the full article →

What should I do now?

I hear this question a lot. Usually after someone has spent a week or two making a real effort at writing better headlines (which means better title tags). As usual, SEOmoz has done a lot of the legwork. Their “Ranking Factors” article is still must reading for people trying to figure out “what should I [...]

Read the full article →

Keyword Tsunami

You have a good site, well respected, but you want to have one particular page/post/story get some extra attention. Let’s pick on the Miami Herald for this particular post. Maybe there’s a hurricane headed towards Florida and you want your coverage to be ranked at the top of the search results. You write a story [...]

Read the full article →

What do you want?

For sites that sell something it’s easy to tell if their ideas are working, because their sales increase. Sites that only have as their goal, “more visitors”, would seem to be just as straight forward, but that’s not usually all they want. What do you want from your site? It’s a straight forward question, but [...]

Read the full article →

McClatchy Newspaper's Page Ranks

Top 10 MNI Newspapers by Circulation Kansas City Star 4 Miami Herald 6 Sacramento Bee 7 Ft Worth Star-Telegram 4 Charlotte Observer 4 News & Observer 7 Fresno Bee 6 The State 4 Lexington Herald-Leader 4 Witchita Eagle 6

Read the full article →

SEO as an afterthought

Working for one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States is sometimes surprising. When McClatchy bought Knight-Ridder I was in the trenches of moving those KR sites off their existing platform to ours. We thought through some things, but some we just completely ignored. SEO was one of them. About a year ago [...]

Read the full article →

Next Entries →