SEO Egghead Consulting Group

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Excerpt: This is a compilation of stuff Matt Cutts has said historically, minus some of the more recent stuff here, here, and here.  I decided I'd dig backwards and document some of the older stuff.  I dated it accordingly.  Here it is:1. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/Matt recommends using dashes over underscores to delimit words in urls. 2005.Google does not algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url despite the fact that some have raised it as a possible heuristic for spam detection. I think WordPress pretty much precludes this anyway. 2005.2. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-sneaky-javascript/Google takes action on individual instances of spam when they find it, but they…

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Excerpt: This is a terribly simple but useful WordPress plugin that puts an interactive counter-style Reddit interface on your blog — but only when someone has already bookmarked the URL.  It looks rather lame when everything isn't bookmarked, but the JavaScript interface with the arrows is a definate enhancement over a simple icon.  So why not show it only when applicable?  I'll narcissistically bookmark this post to demonstrate.  Just call the function "reddit_this()" and specify one of the styles enumerated here.  Enjoy! <? /* Plugin Name: Reddit Plugin URI: http://www.seoegghead.com/ Description: Creates an interactive Reddit button. Author: Jaimie Sirovich Version: 1.0 Author URI: http://www.seoegghead.com/ */  function reddit_this($reddit_style = 1) {     global $id; …

Last month I reviewed a web hosting company here. This month I'll make sure to do something different.  Submit your site by leaving a comment!

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Excerpt: Many people hate automated emails.  I especially hate emails that look like this:From: do-not-reply-or-we-will-sacrifice-your-children@somecompany.comHi,Your order (#12345) has been shipped.  Thank you for your business.  This is an automated email.  Do not reply (because we hate talking to people, and besides we will sacrifice your children if you do!).Thank you,Some Company Inc.We've all gotten these emails.  What I don't understand is why.  It's just bad marketing.  You can argue that some people are used to this — but it's just plain anti-social.  Large companies especially can invest the time and money to create a Procmail script that parses out the order…

Here are a list of my favorite WordPress plugins that are SEO-related.  My install also includes quite a few hacks directly to the source, but only because I didn't do it the "right" way.  These are the essentials:

Chicklet Creator http://www.twistermc.com/shake/RSS-index.php
Adds feed subscription buttons to a WordPress blog.

WP-Email http://www.lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming.php
Enables users to send a post to a friend.

Sociable http://push.cx/sociable
Automatically adds links on posts to popular social bookmarking sites.

Google Sitemaps http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-generator-v2-final
Creates a Google-compliant sitemap of a WordPress blog.

I will also mention Mudbomb's WSYI-Wordpress, which is much better than the WYSIWYG editor included with WordPress, and allows for hand-editing conveniently.

Anyone else have anything to add? Leave a comment.

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Excerpt: It's now pretty clear that companies must monitor their online reputations.  It's also not such a great idea to tick off bloggers in the first place.  News is likely to spread, and fellow bloggers may send links freely.  Reporting something stupid is great link bait!  As a result, a small company may suddenly find flaming on page 1 of the SERPs for brand-related queries.  "Fixing" that can be frustrating.  Let's take a look at some blatant spam that someone working for a company posted on my blog — here:"Data is not real time is delayed by 15-20 minutes depending on…

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Excerpt: It has become popular for companies to create corporate blogs for promotional purposes.  Blogging, for various reasons, just seems to facilitate "buzz."  Strictly from a "mechanical" SEO perspective, though, does it make sense to house the blog in a subdomain — that is, blog.yourcompany.com, or a subdirectory — yourcompany.com/blog?To be honest, I believe that if your primary focus is to harness the "juice" from links, a subdirectory just plain makes more sense.  On the other hand, many SEOs who I have respect for have gone the subdomain route.  Maybe nobody really thinks about it.  But the way I see it,…

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Excerpt: It's funny that of all the bloggers in this little SEO-blogosphere, it is one of those "evil" black hatters who had to admonish us for our poor grammar.I'm often very surprised at the horrible grammar mistakes in major SEO blogs.  I'm not going to point any fingers either, but the "then vs. than" mistake is my personal pet peeve.  "Then" is an adverb, and "than" is a (coordinating comparative) conjunction.  Mixing them up just looks really bad. You know who you guys are — there are many.  But when a spammer uses better grammar than you do in his Viagra…