By Erik Small -

The SEOMoz blog is a great resource for webmasters. Here’s a recent article on the checkpoints to make before relaunching a website. Redesigning a site is easy, but the implications to search engine optimization and proper handling of links is paramount!

Here are the Top 10.
1) Put 301 redirects in place.
2) Add analytics code to every page
3) Robots.txt and Sitemaps
4) Update Google Adwords
5) Review all conversion endpoints
6) Full end to end test
7) Server logs
Ranking reports
9) Email footers
10) Monitor bounce rates

By admin -

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is releasing a new policy in which anyone can start a top-level domain (the part of a URL to the right of the period, such as “.com” or “.net”).

According to ICANN, this service will enable entrepreneurs to sell specialty addresses, such as .shoes, .ibm, .movies or .apple, to interested parties.

via ICANN Avails Top-Level Domains at High Price-Point – MarketingVOX.

By Erik Small -

Getting your website to appear higher in the search engine rankings is a very important tactic to increase website visits. Anchor text, or simply put, the text/words used in links, on your website can be an effective search engine optimization strategy. Website Magazine online has a nice article on the topic:
Optimize your Website’s Navigation with Anchor Text

By Hugh Garber -

Three people told me this past week that their New Year’s Resolution was to finally learn how to create a simple website.
There are lots of great tools that make creating a website pretty simple. Here’s a good overview of some of the “how-to’s” of website creation.
The article does a good job of suggesting tools and software to get you started. And it’s nice to see my personal favorite secure file transfer software is recommended: “Use a file transfer program (FTP) such as Ipswitch WS_FTP to upload and download your website creation and any updated pages between your computer and web site host computer.

By Erik Small -

I have come across a nifty online search engine optimization tool, called Website Grader, that scores a website and generates a ‘grade’ for website optimization purposes. It scores the website in areas relating meta tags, inbound links, indexed pages, etc. It’s free and worth a run through! A couple of simple tweaks can optimize your website to generate more no-cost inbound website traffic from the search engines.
Check out this website analysis tool at http://www.websitegrader.com