Chris Faron

Obtaining 1st position in organic results like Google used to be a perfect way of guaranteeing a large amount of targeted traffic to your web site, well not any more…. With the introduction in the organic results of universal search, which included images, news & videos among the standard results, the chances of being found via a normal organic result [...]

Sourcing images for your next blog post or new piece of content for your web site can be a real challenge at times, the cost of professionally taken photos from sites like istockphoto or Stuttlestock although worth the cost can be prohibitively expensive for the amateur blogger or small publisher. So I thought I would compile a list of sites [...]

A software to analysis the search positions in the major search engines is an essential tool for any SEO specialist. Advanced Web Ranking tool is certainly one of the most reliable, comprehensive products currently on the market. After you have completed all the onsite optimization including a detailed keyword analsys it’s important to verify the results before [...]

On 27 of Feb 2012 Google published on their Inside Search Blog, 40 changes made ​​to their algorithm when ranking various results. Among these, two concerned the geolocation results or local results: “Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal. Improved [...]

With the launch a while back of the Google Hotel Finder experiment (search for hotels in certain neighborhoods in the USA), Google Hotpot (a platform to review hotels and restaurants), hotel price ads (that shows price and availability for hotels) integrated into Google maps, the much rumored search giant’s expected entry into the travel space, just got [...]

At a recent event here in Italy (Ca Foscari Digital Week) on the changes in digital media, I thought I would highlight a few key points of the workshops that I attended. First was the “Social media: le nuove regole del gioco” ( Social media: the new rules of the game ). What was highlighted [...]

With all the talk about the new panda update penalizing sites that have low quality content, I was surprised to find a very poor result in the first spot in Google for the key phrase [google buys beatmyquote] . Clicking on the link to a Smart Company result takes the user to a virtually blank [...]

More bad news for SEO specialists still concentrating only on organic results in Google (surely not….). It seems Big G is testing first page results with only 3 “normal” organic listings and 7 map integrated ones. Considering the map listings are appearing for more and more listings, this is going to make it even harder [...]

While going through my Google analytics data for one of my domains, I noticed a very strange URL as a referral. It was domain.com/this_page_should_not_exist.fake (no page extension like html, etc). Being a curious type and working in SEO meant a further investigation was on the cards. I checked the location of the visitor which was [...]

Piwik is a free site statistics analyzer which is a valid alternative to the well known Google analytics product. Being open source means that not only is it free but you have the freedom to modify the underlining code to your specific requirements. I’ve been testing this product since 2009 and I must say the [...]