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Since I just bought my new Macbook Pro, I had to reinstall all of my Firefox extensions, plugins and tools. So, I figured, hey, why not write a detailed post with examples about my "Top 7 Firefox extensions, plugins, and tools" that are near and dear to my heart! Top 7 Firefox Extensions, Plugins, and Tools: 1. Firebug: If you haven't used this yet and you are working on something internet related then you are surely missing out. I love the fact that I can pull it up to either fix issues, work on making adjustments on the fly, doing ...

If you know me at all by now, you will know that I am typically a very humble and modest person that just sits back and enjoys the show. I never usually rant or get involved in heated discussions because I hate drama and thats why I have grown to LOVE the SEO industry. So, I apologize in advance if any of this seems out of character or if this is off topic from my general posting. First and foremost, I want to start by thanking all of the great people I have met throughout the years of being an SEO ...

I have been inundated with communities over the last couple years and recently it has been almost the only thing I am working on lately. I have learned so much about managing volunteer groups, creating an offline community of web geeks called "San Francisco Geek Dinners," and in consulting roles. There are many methodologies that I have learned over the past couple years and I am even learning all different forms daily by being thrown into it. What I find extremely intriguing is how there is no two communities or groups that function in the exact same way. This can take ...

Keyword research is the base for any good SEO campaign and a large amount of your success will be truly dependent on how well you did your keyword research. Of course, this will be built into your overall SEO Strategy, but it should be the very *FIRST* item on your SEO to-do list. When you start you really want to think about your industry and use a top down approach to the seo keyword research and development. What I mean by that is, start by understanding the audience that you are marketing to. This is a very basic marketing ...

Being an SEO Evangelist within an organization requires lot of energy, a lot of knowledge, thick skin, and a lot of relationships. Success is hard to come by and will require a lot of hard work, but it is definitely attainable. I would almost say that this does not apply to just SEO, but to all programs launched within an organization. Along with all that being an evangelist for the entire industry requires the same amount of tenacity. I have spent a lot of time doing this through consulting efforts by convincing SMB's to embrace the web and most importantly (at ...

Tonight I updated Wordpress from Wordpress 2.0.2 to WordPress 2.5 and ran into some issues with permanlinks. Turns out that Yahoo! Web Hosting does not allow you to do Permalinks the standard way with WordPress and you have to use the Yahoo! Plugin for this. Essentially what happened was that standard permalinks in WordPress go 404 and Yahoo! Permalinks Plugin continuously re-directs with the following error "The page isn't redirecting properly." So, here is what I did to get Permalinks working: 1. Active the Yahoo! Permalink Plugin 2. Download the Disable Canonical Redirects Plugin. (which i probably should have had installed a ...

Part of any link building campaign should always include the internal Link Architecture that you have within your domain and off the domain for link building activities. I tend to use the term Link Architecture because it is similar to the Information Architecture (I.A.) that is used within your site. The Link Architecture will give you a naming convention for text links and image alt text used for links on your domain or for any other link building. To preface, I would say that it is important to have some sort of I.A. for your site prior to building out your ...

Over the past week I have seen two of the most horrific examples of why research is so important. It is what we base our decision making on in our work lives, it is how we evangelize our expertise on to others, etc. Doing the right amount of research sets you up for success. Here are some examples of how little to no research and/or bad research can leave you in a very sticky situation. Speaking at a conference: At the SXSW "Social Media Metrics" panel, there were 5 so called industry experts attempting to speak to this. The problem was 30 minutes ...

Over the years I've been practicing a lot of different techniques with my internal link architecture. One of the things that I have been doing more and more of is evaluating when to use the rel="nofollow" tag on the internal links. Why is this important? Well, in order to make the content within your site more relevant, you need to tell the search engine what is and is not relevant. Using rel="nofollow" within your internal link architecture is a great way identify links that you do not want ranked well within the SERPs. For example, contact us pages, FAQ pages, help pages, etc. ...

This last week has had some interesting events occur over the big revolt against Digg. Now, big news sites like Wired, NY Times, etc. have posted stories, many people are talking about it on twitter, etc. The question is whether or not these constant issues being brought to the forefront are going to effect the Digg site and brand in a negative way, especially in a time when it seems Digg is entertaining a buyout opportunity. Over the past month I have seen this topic thrown around in person, via twitter and now a live stream on