Categories
seo

Cutting The Wire

Cutting the Wire - iStudioWeb Blog on Technology, Marketing and Small Business Although this blog is not about search engine optimization, the company I run – Zealus Web Design Studio – is providing search engine optimization services. Which means we do conduct some in-house experiments. One of the experiments we did was on anti-optimization. In other words – we were trying to figure what actions may lead to web site’s loosing certain position in Google’s output.

Aside from obvious things, like decreasing the number of external links and their quality, removing links from social services and so on, we found that some things don’t quite work as expected. For example – removing pretty and fat links from other web sites don’t send the web site back to the position it held before. So for example, let’s say your web site was number 16 (or 6th on a second page). You’ve added a bunch of links from good web sites with some PR juice and your site jumped to be number 12. Now, if you kill every single link that you have added the web site will sink to (approximately) 14 – 15th position, staying one or two steps higher then before.

Not sure why is this happening, but it does. I’ll give it some time to see if it will sink deeper, but it looks like if you purchase links a little before Google’s PR update and remove them a little after – it may do the same trick as if you were paying for them all the time. All you need is just a sharp date of the next Google dance.

Categories
domains

Domain for sale – again!

If you are in limo, party bus or exotic bus industry, or know someone who is – than this announcement is for you. As I have discovered recently, one of the domains I possess and utilized as a testbed for a party bus and limo web site (because it’s short and convenient) turned up as high as on a top of a second page on some limo bus related queries in Google.

I know there are some people who may need this domain more then I do. So I am totally open to anyone willing to purchase that domain from me. Just bear in mind that it’s a good position if you don’t have anything near that, it’s a short 4-letter domain without low-quality letters and I am willing to let it go fast.

Having said all that – make me an interesting offer and next thing you know: your web site is alreay on a second page.

P.S. Unfortunately, I cannot sell the design and pictures for the web site that’s there (they belong to my client), but the core (scripts and database) are all yours. For an additional (negotiable) fee I even help you make your best to retain the position while updating the web site with your information.

Categories
business

Not Another Dumb Customer

Retail store - Small Business, Marketing and Web Design BlogDealing with customers who built their businesses in the old-fashioned brick-and-mortar retail stores and offices has its advantages. You get to learn from professionals how to build your business based on personal touch, attitude and having a feeling of your customers. It’s amazing if you think of it. Almost all the marketing techniques that we use on the internet came straight from offline world. But that’s not what I am getting at here.

The downside of talking to such business owners is that not many of them truly realize what internet can offer to them. For example, one of the prospective clients I get to talk to recently denied almost any attempt to build their store’s internet presence on the grounds that the one they already have built for them earned around $1,000 for last year. That’s for a store that sells merchandise priced between $10 and $300 dollars per item!