Nov 7, 2012

Google's Shakeup: To SEO or Not to SEO

Many folks in the SEO circles as well as individual website owners noticed a lot of changes to Google's ranking recently. There talks about the "end of SEO" and how Google essentially put out of business a lot of SEO companies and SEO tool providers. I hear these talks even in the educated Ottawa SEO community.

Well, there are changes for sure! I don't think there is a reason to worry about the "end of SEO" because it is like saying "the end of search". Website owners will always need to optimize their websites for search engines so there will always be SEO work that has to be done on a website. The question is how "secretive" this work can continue to be.

There are many SEO tools that uninformed website owners sign up for and pay $50-90 per month. Well, most SEOs know that you can get the same results free of charge - just need to know where to look. And there were always 4-5 different places where you would go and run your reports.

Well, now, Google Chrome has come up with a web store - and it has everything your soul can desire for SEO and it is all in one place. Hip Hip Hurray!  But of course, those "secretive" SEO tools will probably go our of business, unless they lower their prices significantly or offer something of real value.

We noticed that on-page content matters much more. Google loves words. Lots of them. And it now pays more attention to the word order. In the past, "website design Ottawa" or "Ottawa website design" were almost interchangeable, but not now. Now you have to optimize your copy individually for each.

We also noticed that links from websites and blogs and forums specialized in your area of expertise give very fast results.

Oh well, all this is not new to us, and as a result, not much has changed for us. Our ratings did change, but slightly, we did not experience a serious shake-down.

SEO has been and still remains the three things: content (lots of it), keywords stuffed everywhere, and quality back links from other websites in your field.

Feb 19, 2012

Mystery Solved: Joomla 1.8 renamed to Joomla 2.5

We were a little embarrassed to find out that the mystery with the numbers between Joomla 1.7 and Joomla 2.5 was solved so easily.  Joomla 1.8 was renamed to Joomla 2.5 and voila  - a whole new Joomla. The next version is going to be 3.5 we hear. We look forward to new changes and hope they will be for the better.

In the meantime, I am doing an SEO seminar for the Ottawa Catholic School Board next week. Very excited!

If you need a website, please review website design Ottawa website. Check out our website portfolio section.


Feb 14, 2012

Joomla 2.5 Released

It is now Joomla 2.5.1

Our question is - what happened to all the numbers in between version 1.7.5?

We are eager to try this Joomla version, but will be very cautious about using it for large projects. Joomla 1.7 did not make us fall in love with it, and it took a while for all the plugins and components to catch up.

With all that said, we will use Joomla 2.5.1 for one of our small web design projects this month and will report back the results.

Our main search terms are: web design Ottawa and website design Ottawa.

For SEO help, please contact me via my SEO Ottawa website.

Jan 20, 2012

SEO for Website Design Ottawa

It is probably not warranted to create a special post for such a small topic, but I couldn't resist the urge to announce that after a few months of arduous SEO efforts, my web design company finally got on the first page on Google.ca for our two main keywords: website design Ottawa and web design Ottawa.

We managed to get on the 2nd page quite quickly, within 4-6 weeks from the start of the original SEO work, but the fight for the 1st page took a few months. Mind you, we are competing with other web design agencies who are constantly monitoring and supporting their SEO standing. And Ottawa has a dozen of web design agencies per square foot.

Now the real battle begins! We need to move up a few links on the 1st page.

Wish us luck!