Heading to Columbus tonight to meet up with Jake for dinner, then speaking on link building & social media at tomorrow’s SEO seminar.

Read all the SEO seminar details & register online. There are just a few spaces left…

When registering, enter discount code: JENNIFER to receive $50 off.

YouTube.com is quickly becoming the fastest growing resource for online searchers.

Internet searchers are looking to video sharing website, YouTube to provide them with the information they’re looking for. Gone are the days of soley using Search Engine’s to find what you’re looking for.

I know, this is old news….but some companies have yet to connect the dots.

Years ago, being at the top of Google’s search results was the #1 goal for most companies regardless of the phrase.  Then, it was getting to the top of the heap for the phrases that would increase sales/leads. Over the last few years, with the emergence of social media, companies are finding that “SEO” doesn’t just include optimizing for the Search Engine’s anymore, but rather optimizing where your customer base is…

If you need to fix a leaky sink, searching in Google could provide articles that you’d have to  read — OR, a user could just as easily search YouTube and watch a DIY video! Understanding the need for this type of marketing is vital to any company’s web marketing initiatives.

The shift for some searchers to YouTube versus the other Search Engines requires a need for YouTube users to be employing optimization efforts in this space (as well as on all other domains). It’s now just as important to show up at the top of YouTube’s search results as it is to be visible at the top of Google’s results for those targeted converting phrases!

Want to read more about the shift to YouTube? Check out:

TechCrunch & DMNews

Social media has opened up a whole new world when it comes to link building.
Gone are the days of the massive directory link submissions,  begging anyone and everyone for a link, and praying to the DMOZ god of directories for a link (well mostly, anyway).

Contextual link building is not new, necessarily, just the more current way of building links back to your site.  For those who would like a definition, you see this all over the place; it is when you find a link within any body of copy. This blog is littered with them. People often link back to a product or interesting piece of information.

Bloggers are often sought after sources for contextual links, especially those bloggers who are  popular.  Some will review a product or service for a fee. Some have been successful in selling ad space on their blog because of their popularity, so advertisers know that their ads are being seen.  Most bloggers will only promise to do their best to present and honest and fair review of a product, so hopefully, if you would decide to go this route, your product is a good one. Might be wise to ask to review the post before it is published. You’ll have to pay the fee either way, but at least they should give you the option of whether you want it posted or not.

Other places you might find contextual links are articles, emails, marketing materials, breadcrumb navigation and most websites include them right in the copy, where appropriate (sometimes where it is not appropriate, but that’s up to the site owner).  You need to make sure if you are doing a contextual link in your copy that it is relevant to the page you are on, that the anchor text (the actual wording of the link itself) lets the user know where the link goes, or what type of content they will find. Also, make sure that the page it points to holds some type of relevancy to the page it is coming from.  It would be silly to just stick a link to a page about frogs when the page you are on has nothing whatsoever to do with them.  Also its not advisable to stick purely gratuitous links in for the sake of passing on link love to your boss.

For the second year, The Karcher Group is getting naked…on the web!
On April 9th, TKG.com will be stripped of all CSS to show support for CSS Naked Day! Also participating is http://websense.thekarchergroup.com and our very own SEO Blog.

CSS Naked day was created to

promote Web standards, which includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your <body>

Visit http://naked.dustindiaz.com to learn more about CSS Naked Day!