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SEO
Useful insights in your website speed issues
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Mon, 05/13/2013 - 19:57
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As you create a website, you generally first want to create a site that works. That makes total sense, obviously!
Once the site functions, however, you probably want to wait a little bit for things to settle and see how it generally works. What gives you best results what doesn't help, etc.
Then, you will want to optimize the site for speed. This means making sure that your website appears as quickly as possible to your users. A site that's slow is most often left behind very quickly. I've been using such sites so I know what I'm talking about! (One site I still use that's very slow: ...
Snap! SEO: What is Cloaking and why search engines do not like it?
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Sun, 06/17/2012 - 18:51
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Search Engines are dumb robots1. Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs are Smart Humans (or so they think... 
) It is therefore rather easy to outsmart the dumb robots. Today on the Snap! Website blog I will show you how you create a website for the purpose of gaining a higher rank using a very simple cloaking technique.
There are several things that determine your rank, but the main factor is how many links point to your website. To increase the number of links you can increase the number of posts you make on other websites.
- 1. Yes. I know. They are already pretty smart, but these are generally not as smart as a human being. They do not know how to automatically adapt to new situation without having a few humans tend to them and increase their intelligence.
SEO Snap! New Search Algorithm Released by Google...
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Tue, 05/08/2012 - 17:45
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Guys! Look at that ugly penguin hiding...
Google is constantly changing (improving...) and this time many got a hit because of their new Penguin update. In my case, the latest changes have been rather positive, but many people got hit the wrong way around and their ranking went down, possibly very much so (some talk about receiving a negative ranking and suing Google over it!)
The latest change can affect anyone, although if you've done nothing wrong, you should be just fine. This being said, the way this new release works can lead to your website losing its rank because someone else played a trick on you. Whether Google can detect and/or accept that you weren't responsible is a different question. At this point, it is still a bit early to say that it is all bad.
So? What did they do this time?
Snap! SEO: How NOT to do it!
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Sun, 01/22/2012 - 15:42
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I often receive spam in my mailbox and on my websites. It is expected that emails will include one link that's repeated several times so the readers are much more likely to click on it at least once1. If they don't click on the first one, they are likely to click on the second or the third. When they skip all of those links, maybe they'll click the one in the P.S. area? This technique makes it easy to funnel people to a specific location on your website.
Now this is completely different from good SEO.
- 1. As a rule of thumb, you do not want to have more than one link per paragraph, and if you have really small paragraphs, probably one every other paragraph. If the link doesn't really fit in the paragraph or you decided to send text emails, you may also place the links between paragraphs.
Snap! SEO: IFRAMEs are giving juice!
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Fri, 01/13/2012 - 22:14
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I learned today that in the last couple of months two people tested content using an IFRAME to see whether the links in the IFRAME would generate the expected juice1 to the destination page, and it does!
The image to the right shows you what the test is about:
1. You create a new page
2. You create a link from a low ranking page2
Snap! News: Google Search using SSL!
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Thu, 10/20/2011 - 12:42
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On October 18, Google announced that all the searches for logged in users (say you have a G+ account...) will make use of their secure pages (i.e. using encrypted data.) Our new upcoming Snap! Websites version will also let you log in your account using SSL.
This is important for users of Google+ since a bar appears at the top and the functionality of that bar includes a cookie. This is a security issue since your account could get hacked since your cookie is traveling on the Internet in clear while doing searches (unless you log out of G+ each time you use it?)
How to better benefit from your MerchantCircle account
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Fri, 08/26/2011 - 11:01
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I created a MerchantCircle account a very long time ago and at first did not see any value in it. Today, my account as a Google rank of 3. It's not the best of the best, but it points to all my main websites, such as Snap!, equally increasing their rank and this without having to do much work, really!
Link from your site
First, assuming you are a small business, you want to add a link from your main website to your MerchantCircle account. This will send some traffic to your MerchantCircle account and end up in some people connecting with you.
For this purpose, you can use your MerchantCircle vanity URL. This is done by going to your Dashboard and after clicking on Business Information, scroll down to Website Links (at this time, the last entry on the page) and then click the Edit link. Here you are given a way to enter two links: your main website and your Custom Link (or vanity link). In there, enter your preferred alias. In general, the best is your business domain name. Say your business website is http://www.example.com/ then use example. Finally, hit Save.
Who is that author? Increase your credibility with Snap!
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Thu, 08/18/2011 - 14:10
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As I keep up to date with Google Search Engine enhancements, I listen to a video (here on the left) yesterday explaining how you could increase your credibility (and thus increase the number of hits you get on your websites) by clearly specifying who the author of a post is. I immediately made the necessary changes to Snap! so it supports this capability.
For anyone who offers a blog or similar feature on their website, it is very likely that you will include the name of the author and a link to his or her account. The account should include a small biography describing the author
Snap! SEO: Get SEO links right at hand
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Fri, 05/13/2011 - 16:36
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Today I heard of a useful tool, especially if you are like me and like to track down your SEO progress with your Snap! Websites.
It is a very interesting and simple tool that sends you to all sorts of websites that give you detailed SEO information such as page rank, links to the page, whether you exist on DMOZ, etc.
I already gave you some of those URLs and tricks. Yet this tool is cool since it makes those links available in an automated way for all the websites that you visit making it very easy and quick to go check out your SEO information.
Make you Snap! RSS feed available on iPhone
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Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Tue, 04/12/2011 - 11:07
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Today I found a neat little Internet application which I think you can benefit from, especially if you have a blog or write news on a regular basis and your website supports an RSS feed.
The application retrieves your RSS feed titles and presents them as if you were in one of your iPhone menus. When the user clicks on one of the menu titles, it sends the user to a page with the RSS feed title and teaser. You can also provide an icon (57x57) to give your users the best visual way to find your feed on their front screen.
