SEO Mentor

Reading a very recent post at Davidmihm.com about Local Search and Ranking Factors David talks about a new survey and study that was launched about local search and “Participants were asked to rate the importance of 47 criteria with respect to their influence on rankings in the Google and Yahoo Local “Universal” search algorithms”

David says the following about his study:

“It is my hope that this study will help small business owners confused by Local Search, or those strapped for time, to prioritize their marketing efforts.”

The results and discussion are worth taking a look at with regards to his Local Search Survey!

Below I found a couple articles that I found very informative on the Local Search subject:

Local Search Ranking Factors

For businesses that are truly local in focus, targetting local search ranking factors is a very effective SEO strategy if for no other reason that it enables you to weed out your global competitors and focus more on ranking tops for …

Yahoo Offers Local Search Tips

Anytime a search engine rep. hands out SEO/SEM advice, I think it’s generally worth listening to. I did my best to get some local SEO advice from Yahoo’s Brian Gil when I interviewed him a couple months ago. Be sure to read that if you …

Everyone needs to remember that the “SMX Local & Mobile 2008” in San Francisco, July 24-25 and my good friend Jordan Kasteler will be speaking so you can’t miss it!

So I was on Sphinn.com today and found a blog post called “301 Redirect Explained” and was plesantly surprised to see something of this nature get to the top. Originally posts on Sphinn were more based on great articles like this that gave the users great content with articles that really brought value to it’s users (don’t get me wrong, there is still great stuff at Sphinn.com and I go there everyday). But finally an article full of great content that really gives value and education to the readers.

So I have titled this post “The long lost subject of 301 Redirect” because it has been a while since this subject has come up in the SEO community lately all it has been about is Jason Gambert (loser), Microsoft/Yahoo mess, Advanced Blackhat SEO, etc.

So getting to the point of this post I wanted to bring back the topic of the 301 Redirect. In the article posted by Ron Tovbin where he guest posted at Shimon Sandler’s blog ShimonSandler.com, he gives some great content with much value to help those understand in great technical depth what as 301 Redirect is and how it works.

Here are a couple things that I really liked from Rob’s post:

The new URL can also be 301 redirected, this is called chaining and should be avoided if you want play nice with the search engine spiders.

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I know you have heard of the Google Sandbox and have probably even had an experience of having one of your sites in it. But some have been asking what it is and why it exists. Ann Smarty of SeoSmarty.com recently wrote an article about this subject of the Google Sandbox at SearchEngineJournal.com. Ann is one of my favorite bloggers when it comes to basic and simple SEO, when she writes something you know it is top notch. So what does Ann have to say about the Google Sandbox:

“Well, let’s first start with the theories behind the term “Google Sandbox”. It appears webmasters understand it as two a bit different phenomena:

1. “Google Sandbox” is supposed to mean a period of time before a newly launched website is properly indexed and ranked. They say, Google deliberately holds back indexing new sites before they “earn its trust”.
2. “Google Sandbox” can also mean a sudden drop of SERPs that happens about 3 months after a site was launched.”

Here are some other great articles about the subject:

Will Mass Directory Submission Get Your Website Into Google Sandbox?

There is an SEO theory which suggests that mass directory submission will get your website into Google sandbox. The basic idea is if your new website has too many links all of a sudden, usually due to mass submission in a short time, …

What is the Google Sandbox?

The Google Sandbox is an unconfirmed theory about how the top search engine indexes web sites which were recently created. If it truly exists, the Sandbox puts new web site operators at a disadvantage in Google search results. …

How to Avoid the Google Sandbox

There is still a lot of discussion going on wether the Google Sandbox exists or not. Some say it exists some say it doesn’t. Just pretend it does exist, how is it possible that some SEO’s don’t get hit by the sandbox filter? …

The SEO Cartoons have arrived! You will probably notice the new cartoon logo to the right on the sidebar that looks like this:

You can check out all our SEO Cartoons

I have teamed up with Mike Dyson a professional cartoonist/artist who is great to work with. Mike has a ton of experience and in my opinion is a great artist.

So if anyone needs some great artistic work done feel free to visit Mike’s portfolio at Caroflot.com and you can also check out his blog at Atomsplit.wordpress.com!

So check out our first Cartoon about Twitterholics!
 

So it is official we have a winner of the SEO Baby Contest! Before I announce I just want to thank everyone for participating and having fun with my family and I. If you have not watched the video that my wife made of our new baby Gracie’s birth then go to An SEO Baby Is Born!.

Drum roll please…. The winner of the SEO Baby Contest is……

Stephanie Sharp

Here was her guess:

Birth Weight: 7 lbs 6 oz
Gender: Female
Birth Date: May 23, 2008

Here were the correct answers:

Birth Weight: 7 lbs 1 oz
Gender: Female
Birth Date: May 21, 2008

Here is what Stephanie wins:

• Free iPod Nano (value: $149)
• Dave Harry’s “The SEO Handbook” (value: priceless)
• Free membership to LearnSEOLive.com (value: $37)
• One month banner ad at Kimberly Bock’s LearningSEOBasics.com (value: priceless)
• One month banner ad at YourSEOMentor.com (value: $50)
• Bill Slawski of SEObytheSea.com is giving away two books: Don’t Make Me Think, from Steve Krug, and Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, from Avinash Kaushik

My wife and I are so blessed and happy to have little Grace in our lives and soon begins the SEO training for this little one! lol

So I have had a lot of people wondering where I have been for the past week and wondering if the SEO Baby was born or not. Well I am finally truly back in the saddle and wanted to let everyone know that Grace (Gracie) Pierson was born on May 21, 2008 at 7lbs 1oz and 20 inches long. Your SEO Mentor is now a proud daddy.

We are so happy and blessed to have little Gracie in our lives. Just to let you all know how it all went here is what happened:

On Tuesday night at 9:30 PM we went in to the hospital and at about 10:30 PM they started Lindsey on Pitocin to get her started. Family was there until about 12:30 AM and all went home to sleep and we tried but failed to sleep. At 6:30 AM that next morning the doctor broke Lindsey’s water and at 7:30 AM she received a Epidural for the pain. Family then started coming around 8:30-9:oo AM.

We then continued to wait, wait, and then wait some more. Then at about 2:30 PM the nurses had Lindsey start pushing and then 10 minutes later the doctor was there and Grace was born at 2:55 PM.

The next day at about 11:00 AM Grace’s pediatrician called and said that she had high CRP and Band Cell levels (whatever the heck that is) and was worried that she had an infection. At 12:00 PM the nurses took Grace to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). We then proceeded to go to the NICU and feed Grace every three hours for the next 3.5 days. Her levels continued to drop down to where they needed to be and we were able to bring her home at 11:00 Am on Sunday May 25, 2008.

Here is a little video of her birth that my wife put together, ENJOY:

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The winner of the “SEO Baby Contest” has been announced and is Stephanie Sharp. Thanks to everyone that participated.