Situated Research's Blog

As online marketers become more aggressive with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns, there can become a point at which businesses begin to over-optimize. When focusing purely on SEO, many companies lose sight of the end goal, which is to provide information to users.

Even when you are following all of the more recognized SEO rules, when is optimization overdone and how can you prevent this from happening on your website? Are there Tsunami warning indicators to get out of the game before Google’s next Panda or Farmer update? And how do you find the ideal balance for your site, not overdoing SEO but also not leaving organic search traffic to your competitors? Read more »

When it comes to on-site search engine optimization, few elements are more important than the title tag.

For those unfamiliar with the term “title tag,” it describes the text that appears in the top line of a user’s Web browser. It is also used by search engines as the actual title of a search listing.

If you run an SEO campaign, then you should be very interested in how title tags are currently used — and how they can be improved — on your site. If you run an SEO campaign and are a savvy SEO, you’ll also notice how competitors use title tags on their Web properties. Read more »

Few Web professionals should be surprised by the 2011 forecast in SEMPO’s recently released State of Search Marketing Report. If the words “social” and “mobile” are at the top of your business plan, pay close attention to the following.

If they are not, drop what you’re doing and pay even closer attention. Read more »

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the only means by which any Web professional should be measuring SEO (Search Engine Optimization) success.

So, what are the right KPIs to use when measuring how well the techniques and tactics employed by in-house SEOs or consultants/agencies actually work? Today let’s look at a few important KPIs to monitor, whether on the front line or in the executive suite.

Before you begin digging deep into your analytics and working to understand the most essential SEO KPIs, recognize that their best use will ultimately be for learning what works and where a site/domain can be improved. The role of having (setting up and establishing) KPIs at all should be to provide empirical data as the site moves closer to the desired result. The goal is to disseminate meaningful information through the business/organization to facilitate communication and provide a basis for analysis and decision-making across all levels of the organization. Read more »

Why would you want to convert your website to run on a popular blogging platform?

WordPress, one of the most successful open-source blogging platforms, has become a powerful tool for integrating Web 2.0 features on your website. Besides an excellent Content Management System (CMS), WordPress offers thousands of free plugins (created by a community of developers) that can add a variety of features and functionality to a website.

Even if you’re not ready to host a blog on your website, your website’s theme can be converted to WordPress to maintain your current look-and-feel while adding useful features such as social media integration and search engine optimization (SEO), which could otherwise be expensive to implement.
Read more »

As social media keeps providing new marketing opportunities, in addition to a way for online users to simply pass the time, the need for social analytics is becoming more pressing.

Utilizing reporting tools that are available online today can help Internet marketers continue to shape their social media strategy and overall online interaction methods.

Some of the most important metrics to track when it comes to social media include the ROI – how time spent marketing on sites like Facebook and Twitter translates into revenue for the company – and the growth and interaction factors surrounding a company’s online profiles and communities.

Any metric can be broken down into granular parts for a closer look or to add quantitative micro-metrics to an overarching qualitative metric. For example, the number of links acquired on shared or viral content pages via social media is a key factor for the SEO-minded. Read more »

IBM’s Supercomputer Has Implications for Healthcare, Information Tech and More

Wouldn’t it be nice to have your very own supercomputer in your pocket?

If your laptop crashed while you were working on a major presentation, you could ask your portable expert to help diagnose the problem. If you wanted to bone up on Middle Eastern history, you could ask it to comb every document available and then wrap it all up in a simple summary (annotated, of course). Read more »

How many times have you heard someone say, I just want that top search result on Google? For a business website, the top spot in the search engine returns can be a lead generating machine.

Think about it. Google is where most people go when they are researching. What if there was a way to get your company’s website on that first page?  Well there is…

One of the best ways to gain that top spot is by blogging. Incorporating a blog into a website can have a huge impact on the overall website’s search engine rankings. Read more »

A group of students in China produced the image montage software, and had the following to say about it:

We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet. Read more »

Last week, we saw that order of presentation of a small number of products dramatically affects consumer preference. (See Order Effect Affects Orders.) But how do our brains cope when choices number in the hundreds or thousands, and how do websites best match products or services to their visitors? Read more »

Advertising for a business in this economy can be tricky. More and more I find myself helping local businesses optimize their companies for local search exposure. One item that really grabs the attention is the Google Map listing using the Google Local Business Center.

How can Google Local Search help my business?

When searching for a company, Google returns a set of local businesses related to that industry, along with a map. The heading Google often uses is, “Local business results for (you search phrase) near (your location).” A majority of the listings that appear here are inserted by business owners themselves or by third party sources like yellow page listings.

Google Local Business Listings also allow for companies to list their contact information and website address for additional information. Once you click through to the actual business listing, you are taken to a Google Maps page. Here you will find third party reviews on the businesses, photos, video and other related business information. Read more »