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			<title>Florida Search Engine Optimization - SEO - SEM - Blog - Edward Beckett - Business</title>
			<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm</link>
			<description>Search Engine Optimization - Florida SEO Specialist - SEM Expert - Consultant</description>
			<language>en-us</language>
			<pubDate>Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:49:25 -0400</pubDate>
			<lastBuildDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:55:00 -0400</lastBuildDate>
			<generator>BlogCFC</generator>
			<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
			<managingEditor>edward@edwardbeckett.com</managingEditor>
			<webMaster>edward@edwardbeckett.com</webMaster>
			
			<item>
				<title>Flash Security Vulnerability? Not with Firefox &amp; NoScript</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/8/17/Flash-Security-Vulnerability-Not-with-Firefox--NoScript</link>
				<description>
				
				Apparently there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-10.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Flash Security Vulnerability&lt;/a&gt; deriving from the &apos;authplay.dll&apos; in Adobe&apos;s Flash Player on Windows, Mac and Linux for both Adobe Reader and Acrobat v9.x. Basically, an unsuspecting victim may be lured to a site that contains malicious Flash code to either crash or compromise the integrity of the victims computer ... Hmmm. 

A  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;CERT&lt;/a&gt; spokesperson stated ... 

&lt;blockquote&gt;The Adobe Flash browser plug-in is available for multiple Web browsers and operating systems, any of which could be affected ... An attacker could also create a PDF document that has an embedded SWF file to exploit the vulnerability. This vulnerability is being actively exploited.&lt;/blockquote&gt;

According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trusteer.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Trusteer&lt;/a&gt;, Two weeks after the press release, approximately 80 percent of Trusteer&apos;s installed base of 2.5 million online banking users still haven&apos;t received the Flash update.

&lt;h2&gt;What To Do? Use Firefox with NoScript.&lt;/h2&gt;

Here&apos;s just one more notch in the belt for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Firefox&lt;/a&gt;, and a prime example of why using &lt;a href=&quot;https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; Giorgio Maone&apos;s NoScript plug-in for Firefox&lt;/a&gt; is a must have.

For more info on NoScript ... check out Maone&apos;s Rockin&apos; Site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://noscript.net/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;NoScript.net&lt;/a&gt; ... 

If your still using I.E., That&apos;s a shame ... 

That&apos;s it. 
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				<pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:55:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/8/17/Flash-Security-Vulnerability-Not-with-Firefox--NoScript</guid>
				
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				<title>Florida SEO - SEO Fundamentals JavaScript vs Text Based Menus</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/6/9/Florida-SEO--SEO-Fundamentals-JavaScript-vs-Text-Based-Menus</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;h2&gt;SEO 101: Search Engine Robots Can&apos;t Follow Links in Pure JavaScript Menus&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve recently been receiving some interesting quotes for SEO services with &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/&quot;&gt;Florida Search Engine Optimization&lt;/a&gt;. As part of the standard procedure I employ when reviewing a prospective client&apos;s site, I inform them that site architecture is very important and therefore must be taken into consideration. On several occassions I&apos;ve suggested the removal of JavaScript based menus, and was met with a challenge. One of the prospective clients asked me why it was neccessary. So, I explained the mechanics of a crawler to him in some detail. The other prospective client wasn&apos;t all that trusting at first, so he decided to get a second opionion from another SEO before giving me the go ahead. I didn&apos;t have any problem with that ... I&apos;ve been doing SEO for a while now and I&apos;ve yet to find a client that accepted my opinion of a site review on blind faith regardless of the successful campaigns I&apos;ve demonstrated.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;SEO Experience Required - A Case for SEO Standardization?&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What happened next really suprised me. I expected the need to debate my case with the prospective client that was not all that warm to me. However, I was actually opposed by both client&apos;s SEO&apos;s. Yes, that&apos;s correct. Both of the prospective client&apos;s SEO&apos;s were baffled as to why I suggested having text based menus. Oh yeah ... we SEO&apos;s tend to think they know everything ...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After receiving the suggestion for the menu removal, one of the SEO&apos;s mentioned to my client, &quot;It&apos;s not important ... just make an XML sitemap so the robots can find you ... &quot; I found that rather amusing. However, I found the other SEO&apos;s comment to be just as interesting as the first&apos;s. He simply stated that &quot;He&apos;s even made Flash based sites rank on the first page ... &quot; Thing is, the client requested a quote for services with me primarily due to the SEO&apos;s lack of effectiveness ... said SEO didn&apos;t so much as provide one case-in-point example - Pwned. So an experienced SEO is essentially stating that by providing an XML sitemap to the navigation of a site, serious issues arising from JavaScript based menus can be resolved. Okay - I don&apos;t think so ... But, let&apos;s see how accurate this is ... or isn&apos;t.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;To Crawl or Not to Crawl? That Is ... Important.&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A web site&apos;s internal link structure is very important when considering SEO. Almost any Decent SEO will attest to this. So why is it important? Because a web site is really nothing more than a group of pages linked together. Granted the linking relationships can become quite complex but it&apos;s really just a&#xa0; Web of Links. When robots can&apos;t determine what is and isn&apos;t a link, they can&apos;t move from link A to B ... Link A was never realized. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To demonstrate ... Let&apos;s take a look at a site that employs JavaScript navigation and may not neccessarily require having highly crawlable links. I&apos;m going to use Deluxe-Menu.com for this example - It&apos;s a very nice site that uses a JavaScript based menu, and does so with impunity - The site&apos;s entire theme is provided on the home page.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;From the Eyes of a Spider - Where&apos;s the Web?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img title=&quot;JavaScript Based Menu&quot; alt=&quot;JavaScript Based Menu&quot; src=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/blog/images/deluxe-menu.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So what we see here is a screen shot of the site&apos;s navigation ... We can clearly see the links for Home, Product Info, Samples, Download, Purchase and Support in the menu. Simple enough. However, if we inspect the internal linking of the page through a text-only browser such as &lt;a rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;http://lynx.isc.org/&quot;&gt;Lynx&lt;/a&gt;,&#xa0; it also shows that there are no visible traces to these links. The screen shot below is from the SEO text browser over at &lt;a rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;http://domaintools.com/&quot;&gt;domaintools.com&lt;/a&gt; which, I have quite a habit of using ...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img title=&quot;Text Browser View&quot; alt=&quot;Text Browser View&quot; src=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/blog/images/links-dhtml-menu.jpg&quot; width=&quot;683&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So what are we&apos;re looking at here? This basically provides a detail of the elements a search engine robot would recognize when they visit a site. Blue signifies an anchor or link element. Red signifies images - for this example it isn&apos;t relevant to us whether those images are also links. The first link we see at the top of the page is for the site&apos;s logo, deluxe-menu.com. The next link we see in the document structure is for the site&apos;s sitemap which comes directly after the JavaScript menu. Notice how there are no links elements recognized by the text browser for the menu. A crawler would not identify this as a link either.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Okay, so I wouldn&apos;t expect someone in the C-Suite to be able to gauge the performance or effectiveness of a web site. But for an SEO? This should be first year&#xa0; ... I find an unusually high amount of people claiming to be a &quot;professional SEO&quot; that don&apos;t know the first thing about web design, web development, Server Side programming or even HTML for that matter ...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In short ... This is old hat.&lt;/p&gt; 
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				<category>Links </category>				
				
				<category>JavaScript</category>				
				
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				<category>SEO</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:13:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/6/9/Florida-SEO--SEO-Fundamentals-JavaScript-vs-Text-Based-Menus</guid>
				
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				<title>Business Getting Slow? Invest in SEO</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/5/31/Business-Getting-Slow-Invest-in-SEO</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;h2&gt;Search Engine Optimization Increases Business &#xbb; Any Questions?&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I&apos;m baffled by the lack of understanding most business owners have in the value of online visiblity. Even some of the clients I have worked with which have seen and realized fantastic results still fail to recognize the benefits. In this desperate economy isn&apos;t an increase in revenue a good thing?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I recently went through the effort of creating a detailed analytics presentation on the performance of one of my clients sites since signing with &lt;a href=&quot;../../&quot;&gt;Florida Search Engine Optimization&lt;/a&gt;. Self promotion aside - their site is performing and producing phenomenally well, which in turn evaluates to a significant increase in revenue. However, shortly after giving the successful presentation and discussing moving forward with increasing their search marketing efforts - their focus and committment waned and they haven&apos;t moved forward since.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Not trying to brag here ... but I feel it&apos;s important to mention that I hardly ever market for new clients - Almost all of the business that I get is through my own optimization efforts. When I first started out I did have to grab the 50 pound phone to get things kicked off, but I haven&apos;t had to do &quot;hard marketing&quot; in a long time ...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I feel partially responsible in not being able to effectively communicate the value of SEO to the &quot;C Suite&quot; ... I guess I just consider an increase in conversions and revenue a no brainer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s it.&lt;/p&gt; 
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				<category>ColdFusion</category>				
				
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				<pubDate>Sun, 31 May 2009 16:51:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/5/31/Business-Getting-Slow-Invest-in-SEO</guid>
				
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				<title>Google RESTful Ajax &amp;raquo; JSON Search in ColdFusion</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/4/14/Google-RESTful-Ajax-raquo-JSON-Search-in-ColdFusion</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;p&gt;While I was hacking and cursing my way through a routine to convert RSS feeds in to HTML ... I had an idea. I thought, &quot;Wow, maybe there&apos;s another way to do this ...&quot; Converting RSS can be messy so I opted for a much easier and cleaner solution ... JSON. For those Ajax pros out there ... have a heart ... I&apos;m definitely a nOOb at JSON ... I just wanted to share my experience because the introduction and experience was enlightening ... at least to me it was.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Before I go in to this, I am offering this obligatory warning. What I&apos;m about to do may not be in compliance with Google&apos;s T.O.S. So, if you get yourself in a pickle with the big G ... It&apos;s on you. You&apos;ve been warned.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What I wanted to do is create dynamic and fresh content for say ... Oh the news. That&apos;s a no brainer. Typically you could just grab some RSS feeds and embed them in your content. So, What if you wanted the HTML from say ... Google&apos;s news ... Hmmm? You could use a SOAP request to Google for the info ... But SOAP won&apos;t be supported by Google for much longer ... So, that&apos;s no good. That&apos;s where Google&apos;s RESTful JSON interface comes in. According to Google documentation for their &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/#fonje&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; title=&quot;Google&apos;s Ajax Search API&quot;&gt;AJAX Search API&lt;/a&gt;, The interface was created for developers that need to have access to Google&apos;s Search API in non-JavaScript environments. The docs provide the base URL&apos;s to retrieve results for several of their searchers. Here&apos; s a list of all the types of searchers you can access remotely.

&lt;ul style=&quot;list-style:none;&quot;&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Web Search:&lt;/strong&gt; http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Local Search:&lt;/strong&gt; http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/local&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Video Search:&lt;/strong&gt; http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/video&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Blog Search:&lt;/strong&gt; http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/blogs&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;News Search:&lt;/strong&gt; http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/news&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Book Search:&lt;/strong&gt; http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/books&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Image Search:&lt;/strong&gt; http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/images&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Patent Search:&lt;/strong&gt; http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/patent&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So I decided to have my hand at grabbing some news ... Here we go ...&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
&lt;code&gt;
&lt;!--- Create a Couple Vars for the Search Params ... ---&gt; 
&lt;cfset gQuery = #ReReplaceNoCase(&quot;ColdFusion&quot;,&quot;\s+&quot;,&quot;%20&quot;,&quot;ALL&quot;)#&gt;
&lt;cfset qRegion = #ReReplaceNoCase(&quot;Fort Lauderdale&quot;,&quot;\s+&quot;,&quot;%20&quot;,&quot;ALL&quot;)#&gt;

&lt;!--- Call Google&apos;s AJAX Service ---&gt; 
&lt;cfset gData = &quot;http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/news?v=1.0&amp;rsz=large&amp;#qRegion#&amp;q=#gQuery#&quot;&gt;

&lt;!--- Save the Result to a Var ---&gt; 
&lt;cfhttp
	url=&quot;#gData#&quot;
	method=&quot;get&quot;
	result=&quot;gDataResult&quot;&gt;
&lt;/cfhttp&gt;

&lt;!--- Make the Data is JSON ---&gt;
&lt;cfset gData = #SerializeJSON(gDataResult,false)#&gt;

&lt;!--- Clean up the Result Data with RegEx ---&gt;
&lt;cfset gData = #REReplace(gDataResult.FileContent, 
		&quot;^\s*[[:word:]]*\s*\(\s*&quot;,&quot;&quot;)#&gt;
&lt;cfset gData = #REReplace(gData, &quot;\s*\)\s*$&quot;, &quot;&quot;)#&gt;

&lt;!--- Make Sure We Have JSON ... ---&gt;
&lt;cfif !IsJSON(gData)&gt;
  &lt;h3&gt;Uh Oh ... Somthing Went Terribly Wrong ... &lt;br /&gt;
      But! Don&apos;t Fret ... Coders are Hard at Work to Get Things Up ... &lt;br /&gt;
      Right Away ...  ;)
  &lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;!--- If the JSON is Good, Deserialize It. ---&gt;
&lt;cfelse&gt;
    &lt;cfset gData = #DeserializeJSON(gData)#&gt;

&lt;!--- Create a Var for the Reponse Data	---&gt;
&lt;cfset response = #gData.responseData.results#&gt;
  &lt;cfloop from=&quot;1&quot; to=&quot;#ArrayLen(response)#&quot; index=&quot;ndx&quot;&gt;
    &lt;cfoutput&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;
          &lt;a href=&quot;#response[ndx].unescapedurl#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; 
          target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;#response[ndx].titleNoFormatting#&lt;/a&gt;
          &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
          #response[ndx].content# &lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;
      &lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;/cfoutput&gt;
  &lt;/cfloop&gt;
&lt;/cfif&gt;
&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Google Search API&apos;s Class reference has a list of all the arguments you can include as URL parameters that will give you plenty of options to customize your results ...
&lt;/p&gt; 
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				<category>Search Engine Optimization</category>				
				
				<category>JavaScript</category>				
				
				<category>Google</category>				
				
				<category>SEO</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:38:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/4/14/Google-RESTful-Ajax-raquo-JSON-Search-in-ColdFusion</guid>
				
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				<title>Mastering SEO Rankings with Analytics Data</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/4/3/Mastering-SEO-Rankings-with-Analytics-Data</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;script&gt;
$(document).ready(function(){
  $(&quot;a#single_image&quot;).fancybox({
  &apos;overlayShow&apos;: false
  });
});
&lt;/script&gt;

After reading this post you won&apos;t be able to &quot;Master Search Engine Rankings&quot; ... However, with some simple guidelines, you can create an effective plan to put your analytics data to work for you. Before I jump on my soapbox and start preaching the gospel of SEO, I want to state for the record that there isn&apos;t one absolute way to plan out an SEO strategy.To be honest, I don&apos;t think I&apos;ve ever taken the same exact approach for any web site I&apos;ve worked on ... and I&apos;ve worked on quite a few over the years.

&lt;h3&gt;SEO is to Analytics as Grapes are to Wine&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When I was in college I waited tables at a really exclusive restaurant because ... well, I could make decent money if I could sell steak and wine. Every day we would have lessons from an in-house sommelier that would instruct us about all the different features of what ever wine they had to offer. I really didn&apos;t know much about wine so I tried to get this guy to tell me everything he knew. So, I asked,  &quot;What do I need to know to sell the best wines?&quot;  and he said ... &quot;It&apos;s grape juice ... just tell the customers what&apos;s it tastes like ...&quot; That made it ridiculously easy to look at wine as nothing more than ... sour grapes ... my wine sales soared after that ... The point is ... SEO Analytics are  not mysterious, esoteric and complicated. People are though ... and many SEO&apos;s and web masters don&apos;t really &quot;get the point&quot; to having analytics data.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;SEO Analytics Data &#xbb; Looks So Good&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;
&lt;a id=&quot;single_image&quot; href=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/images/forbidden-data.jpg&quot; title=&quot;You Wish&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/images/Forbidden-Data-Small.gif&quot; align=&quot;left&quot; alt=&quot;Forbidden Girl&quot; Title=&quot;Data Like This ... Rocks&quot; style=&quot;margin:5px;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;

&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/images/grapes_to_wine.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Grapes&quot; title=&quot;The Grapes&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; style=&quot;margin:5px;&quot;&gt;I hate to be a buzz kill but in my book there really isn&apos;t anything exciting about ... data. Maybe if some hot naked blonde was presenting it to me ... I might be a bit more interested ... but that doesn&apos;t happen ... everyday. Now don&apos;t get me wrong, there are some great software applications that display visual depictions of rankings, conversions, click-patterns, visitor trending and heat maps, in uber cool Flash and Flex applications or snazzy charting and graphics, but the only thing these visuals are representing is data. That&apos;s it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3 style=&quot;clear:both; margin-top:10px;&quot;&gt;Analysis Paralysis is Not Good&lt;/h3&gt;

When I first started in SEO I was working for a company with a fairly large base of resources and tools at my disposal to research, review, study and learn all about the SEO field. That wasn&apos;t necessarily a good thing. Though I have a voracious appetite for knowledge ... I found that after a while I wasn&apos;t being all that effective with all of this stuff I learned. &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/images/confused-small.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Confused&quot; Title=
&quot;Damn ... I&apos;m Confused&quot; align=&quot;right&quot; style=&quot;margin:5px;&quot;&gt;I had to keep what I could use everyday and leave the rest for later. So, that got me looking in to some GTD solutions ... more stuff to learn ... but, this time the learning was definitely worth it.

&lt;h3&gt;Research &#xbb; Plan &#xbb; Execute&lt;/h3&gt; 

That&apos;s it. This is my big secret to mastering search engine rankings ... It&apos;s that simple. Please note that I said simple ... not easy. If you want your analytics data to work for you ... you need to know what metrics are important to you, and which one&apos;s are not. Since I do SEO work mostly in the services sector, most of my clients are interested in generating business leads. Based on that, the most important metric for me to measure is the value of a new client for my clients. Once I have that figured, I move in to action by setting up goals and objectives. SEO Analytics data is simply the information required to create ... A Plan. Once I know the key performance indicators for my campaigns, I set up a plan to either increase or maintain the positive aspects and reduce the threats and liabilities. As soon as I forge a solid plan of action ... I execute. After I execute ... I go back to the analytics data, do my research, come up with another plan and execute again. Guess what I do next. 
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				<category>ColdFusion</category>				
				
				<category>SEM</category>				
				
				<category>Business</category>				
				
				<category>Keyword Research</category>				
				
				<category>Analytics</category>				
				
				<category>Search Engine Optimization</category>				
				
				<category>SEO</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:11:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/4/3/Mastering-SEO-Rankings-with-Analytics-Data</guid>
				
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				<title>Florida SEO &amp;#187; Online Conversions &amp;#187; Analytics &amp;#187; Search Engine Rankings</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/2/2/Florida-SEO-187-Online-Conversions-187-Analytics-187-Search-Engine-Rankings</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;h2&gt;Goal Conversions are The Bottom Line&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Recently there seems to be a big shift in focus in the SEO industry regarding the importance of conversions over search engine rankings. This concept really sounds like a no-brainer to me ... probably because I was trained in SEO by a company that earned income solely from their lead generation ... If our rankings didn&apos;t turn into conversions for our clients ... We didn&apos;t complete our goals ... We lost our clients. The bottom line for my SEO strategy has always been focused toward online conversions of search traffic.&lt;/p&gt; 

&lt;h2&gt;So Why Are Conversions Important &#xbb; Now?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Last year Google ramped up their personalized search initiative which effectively tailors search results from behavior based user data ... According to Google&apos;s Matt Cutts, there needs to be a shift in the way SEO&apos;s currently operate. WebProNews&apos;s Mike McDonald recently asked Matt &quot;Is Ranking Dead?&quot; In response to Mike Matt stated,

&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;I&apos;m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it&apos;s not as important as it used to be. The fact is the smart SEOs are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion, they are looking at their server log. It&apos;s great if you&apos;re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn&apos;t help you very much.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;

&quot;The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don&apos;t worry about &apos;can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase &apos; ... &quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The video below is from the interview with Matt Cutts and Mike McDonald at PubCon LasVegas ...&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div align=&quot;center&quot; style=&quot;margin: 0px; padding: 4px 0px 0px 0px; width: 336px; height: 208px; text-align: center; border: solid 1px #000000; background: #D9D9D9 url(http://images.ientrymail.com/webpronews/video/embed-bg.gif) repeat-x left top; font: 14px &apos;Lucida Grande&apos;, Tahoma, Verdana, Times, serif;&quot;&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;iframe height=&quot;251&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; width=&quot;336&quot; scrolling=&quot;no&quot; src=&quot;http://videos.webpronews.com/video/frame2.php?movie_name=pubconmattcutts&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Google&apos;s working diligently on their Universal Search model and SEO&apos;s need to be able to adapt to Google&apos;s ever changing environment by learning to develop and initiate a broader range of tools to complete the conversion equation by bringing in targeted search traffic. For the SEO industry this means you need to focus more than ever before on building campaigns that are targeted towards conversions and not so much on rankings. However, it is important to note that rankings are only a metric, and have always been only part of the equation that is required to increase conversions. Obtaining search engine rankings without actually benefiting from that positioning is not very useful. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;SEO is Changing &#xbb; Is Your SEO Strategy Changing Too?&lt;/h2&gt;
 
&lt;p&gt;Recently there was a guest post by Eduard Blacquiare on Joost de Valk&apos;s site entitled, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://yoast.com/measuring-seo-rankings/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Measuring SEO &#xbb; Why Rankings Are Worthless&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. In his post he mentions several key points supporting the transition of rankings-based success to a conversion focused model. Some of the key factors Eduard mentioned are:&lt;br /&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Ranking Checkers &#xbb; Google has recently been blocking some automated ranking testing equipment.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Personal Search &#xbb; Google is putting a great emphasis on their efforts to tailor their search results.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Eduard continues in his post with his view on things we can do to measure our success.&lt;br /&gt; 

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Measure the Growth Rate of Search Engine Traffic ...&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Measure the Growth Rate of Search Engine Traffic per Keyword ...&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Measure the Growth of Conversions from Search Engine Traffic ...&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Measure the Growth of Conversions from Search Engine Traffic per Keyword ...&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Personalized Search &#xbb; What About Traffic from Nationally Focused Search Terms? &lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is a topic I would like to discuss with Matt myself... In Matt&apos;s discussion with Mike McDonald, he mentions searching for the word &quot;bank&quot; will illicit a different result in the United States than it would in Great Britain. This is due in part because part of the metrics to determine personalized search results are based on the user&apos;s I.P., their search trends and their search behavior. From what we can infer from what Matt stated, personalized search result are relevant to the term as well as user data. Though personal search is playing a big roll in the dynamic, ever-changing environment at Google, I don&apos;t believe that competition for keyword ranking is going to be dismissed for nationally focused keywords.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;Analytics are Paramount in the Quest to Obtain Conversions&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Again, I received a fairly intense introduction to the SEO industry, so I have a solid understanding of the importance of conversion statistics. One of the first tools that I used was ClickTracks, which I still to this day consider a powerful tool in any SEO&apos;s arsenal. However, I recently also picked up a copy of the absolutely fantastic book, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Web-Metrics-Google-Analytics/dp/0470253126&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Brian Clifton which I highly recommend for anyone interested in measuring the success of their SEO marketing campaigns.&lt;/p&gt; 

&lt;h2&gt;A Little Gem at the End&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, now that you&apos;ve gotten this far, I can only assert that you are interested in the success of your SEO campaigns. Again there was another excellent post on Joost de Valk&apos;s blog, this one by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andrescholten.nl/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Andre Scholten&lt;/a&gt;, on how you can track your organic Google rankings with Google Analytics ... Here&apos;s the video on Vimeo ...&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;object width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowfullscreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot; /&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowscriptaccess&quot; value=&quot;always&quot; /&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2863628&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=1&amp;color=00ADEF&amp;fullscreen=1&quot; /&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2863628&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=1&amp;color=00ADEF&amp;fullscreen=1&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; allowscriptaccess=&quot;always&quot; width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/2863628&quot; onclick=&quot;javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(&apos;/outbound/article/vimeo.com&apos;);&quot;&gt;Adding a ranking filter in Google Analytics&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/yoast&quot; onclick=&quot;javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(&apos;/outbound/article/vimeo.com&apos;);&quot;&gt;Joost de Valk&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com&quot; onclick=&quot;javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(&apos;/outbound/article/vimeo.com&apos;);&quot;&gt;Vimeo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;br /&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve implemented this on several of the campaigns that I am currently running and I can verify that it definitely works. You can now have your organic keyword rankings appear in your Analytics reports by setting up some custom filters in your Google Analytics account. This means you can determine the quality of the conversions you are getting from both paid, and non-paid keywords and their respective positioning in the search engine results pages ... How&apos;s &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; for conversion statistics? &lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt; 

That&apos;s It.
&lt;/p&gt; 
				</description>
				
				<category>ColdFusion</category>				
				
				<category>Keyword Research</category>				
				
				<category>SEM</category>				
				
				<category>Analytics</category>				
				
				<category>Web Metrics</category>				
				
				<category>Business</category>				
				
				<category>Search Engine Optimization</category>				
				
				<category>SEO Tools</category>				
				
				<category>Google</category>				
				
				<category>SEO</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:10:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/2/2/Florida-SEO-187-Online-Conversions-187-Analytics-187-Search-Engine-Rankings</guid>
				
			</item>
			
			<item>
				<title>Florida SEO &#xbb; The ColdFusion Maniac Returns</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/1/5/Florida-SEO--The-ColdFusion-Maniac-Returns</link>
				<description>
				
				So I recently installed Adobe CS4 Master Collection on my laptop ... I want to test it on there before I convert from CS3 on my main development box. So far it&apos;s pretty cool. However, it&apos;s going to take me a bit to get used to the new interface ... all of the apps seem a bit too &quot;low profile&quot; ... kind of two dimensional. I guess I&apos;ll get used to it.

Looking back on 08&apos; I realize the one thing I would like to do most is improve my quality of life. That entails taking on several personal commitments and one of those commitments is to programming. I think I am going to dedicate part of my time this year to getting my CF certification ... yeah I know most of the uber coders out there are going to say it&apos;s not &quot;really&quot; necessary, but I have a strong belief in setting goals. So, this is one goal I think I&apos;m going to take a concerted effort at. If anyone&apos;s got some advice about cert training, I&apos;d really appreciate it.

A friend of mine and manager of the South Florida CFUG, was nice enough to honor me to the board of directors for the group ... I guess it&apos;s time to start getting serious about my love affair with CF and show my worth. CF cert training  ... here I come ...

That&apos;s it. 
				</description>
				
				<category>Business</category>				
				
				<category>ColdFusion</category>				
				
				<category>Programming</category>				
				
				<category>Life</category>				
				
				<category>Culture</category>				
				
				<category>Code</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:50:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2009/1/5/Florida-SEO--The-ColdFusion-Maniac-Returns</guid>
				
			</item>
			
			<item>
				<title>Florida Search Engine Optimization &amp;#187; Goodbye MoxyMedia SEO</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/10/7/Florida-Search-Engine-Optimization-187-Goodbye-Moxy-Media-SEO</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;p&gt;The MoxyMedia SEO division is officially gone. I have to be honest and tell you that before I decided to start my own company, I really enjoyed working with most of the people over there, and I learned quite a lot too. On Tuesday Oct 7th, I found out  the official news when a friend of mine that I trained over there sent me a text message letting me know that all of the employees in the SEO division were let go. 
I have since learned that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&amp;amp;art_aid=90759&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tsavo media picked up some of MoxyMedia&apos;s assets&lt;/a&gt; as well as a search engine optimization firm, Better, Inc. That probably explains why they decided to let the staff over at Moxy go - Tsavo apparently has other plans. However, in reality the writing has been on the well for a long time.  
As for the team of folks I enjoyed working with over at Moxy (you know who you are) Good luck and I hope the future brings you much happiness and prosperity. It was an honor working along side you.&lt;/p&gt; 
				</description>
				
				<category>ColdFusion</category>				
				
				<category>SEO Services</category>				
				
				<category>Business</category>				
				
				<category>Google</category>				
				
				<category>Search Engine Optimization</category>				
				
				<category>Society</category>				
				
				<category>SEM</category>				
				
				<category>SEO</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:43:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/10/7/Florida-Search-Engine-Optimization-187-Goodbye-Moxy-Media-SEO</guid>
				
			</item>
			
			<item>
				<title>Social Media &amp;#187  Internet Marketing Strategies &amp;#187 Florida SEO</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/9/24/Social-Media--Internet-Marketing-Strategies--Florida-SEO</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m really impressed by some of the new and effective &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/sitemap.cfm&quot;&gt;internet marketing strategies&lt;/a&gt; that have been coming out lately. On LinkedIn, I saw a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2008/06/share-news-with.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;post for a sharing widget&lt;/a&gt; and decided that it would be cool to add this functionality to the collection of social media buttons on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/blog/&quot;&gt;Florida SEO&lt;/a&gt; Blog. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=developers_widget_shareonlinkedin&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;directions to install the code&lt;/a&gt;].
 &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; As long as LinkedIn doesn&apos;t decide to change the API too much, I can have my readers spread the word about the content on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/sitemap.cfm&quot;&gt;Florida Search Engine 
Optimization&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/blog/googlesitemap.cfm&quot;&gt;Florida SEO&lt;/a&gt; Blog to all of their contacts in LinkedIn and possibly expand Florida Search Engine Optimization&apos;s reach to a targeted market that otherwise I would not be accessible to.&lt;/p&gt; 
  
&lt;p&gt; For the CF coders that want to install the LinkedIn code on to BlogCFC, it&apos;s not too hard. There are five URL variables to be updated to share the article submission with your LinkedIn network. 

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;1. The LinkedIn URL&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;2. The Article URL &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;3. The Article Title&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;4. The Article Source&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;5. The Article Summary&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
&lt;code&gt;

    http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&amp;url=
    {articleUrl}&amp;title={articleTitle}&amp;summary={articleSummary}
    &amp;source={articleSource}


&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/pre&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;
I added the following code to the row of BlogCFC&apos;s social media buttons around line 100 of index.cfm. The content for this area is within div class=&quot;byline&quot;. If you want to add a LinkedIn Icon ... there&apos;s a good &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.kemryu.com/icons/LinkedIn_Kemryu.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt; set of LinkedIn Icons&lt;/a&gt; here ... I used the 16px version. 

&lt;pre&gt;
&lt;code&gt;

	&lt;img src=&quot;#application.rooturl#/images/LinkedIn_16.png&quot; align=&quot;middle&quot; title=&quot;Share on LinkedIn!&quot; 
	height=&quot;16&quot; width=&quot;16&quot;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&amp;url=
	#application.blog.makeLink(id)#&amp;title=#URLEncodedFormat(&quot;#title#&quot;)#&amp;summary=
	#URLEncodedFormat(&quot;#Left(application.blog.renderEntry(body,false,enclosure),200)#&quot;)#&amp;source=
	#URLEncodedFormat(&quot;#application.blog.getProperty(&apos;blogTitle&apos;)#&quot;)#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;LinkedIn Share!&lt;/a&gt;


&lt;/code&gt;
&lt;/pre&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Oh Yeah ... If you liked this article ... Don&apos;t forget to share it with your LinkedIn network ... :) &lt;/p&gt; 
				</description>
				
				<category>BlogCFC</category>				
				
				<category>ColdFusion</category>				
				
				<category>Social Media</category>				
				
				<category>SEM</category>				
				
				<category>Link Building</category>				
				
				<category>Code</category>				
				
				<category>Business</category>				
				
				<category>Search Engine Optimization</category>				
				
				<category>SMO</category>				
				
				<category>Networking</category>				
				
				<category>SEO</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:40:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/9/24/Social-Media--Internet-Marketing-Strategies--Florida-SEO</guid>
				
			</item>
			
			<item>
				<title>Florida Search Engine Optimization &amp;#187; SEO for Lawyers</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/9/14/Florida-Search-Engine-Optimization-187-SEO-for-Lawyers</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;p&gt;SEO for lawyers has turned out to be a very good return on investment for most legal services. Though I have done some SEO campaigns for several other verticals such as mortgage, real estate, insurance, educational loans and local retail business, the legal industry as a whole seems to benefit much better from SEO than some of the other service sectors. Quite simply &amp;#187; SEO for lawyers, rocks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I actually got my beginning in search engine optimization as an SEO for lawyers when I worked for a large holder of legal domains. After I left the company and started &lt;br/&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/&quot;&gt;Florida Search Engine Optimization&lt;/a&gt;, I soon realized that doing SEO for lawyers was a win-win situation for my clients and my company.&lt;/p&gt;
 

&lt;p&gt;From my experience, there are many practice areas that benefit greatly from SEO. Of those, the ones that I have found SEO for lawyers to produce the biggest earnings for include: &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Tax lawyers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Litigation Lawyers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Bankruptcy Lawyers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Immigration Lawyers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Personal Injury Lawyers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Criminal Defense Lawyers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Class Action &#xbb; Tort Lawyers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Medical Malpractice Lawyers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;International Business Lawyers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;First off, the value of a lawyer reaching the first page in Google will vary. Not all conversions for legal cases are worth the same amount. For instance, the value of a medical malpractice lead may be worth anywhere from $10,000 to $1,000,000. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A personal injury lawyer that practices in one of the 6 major markets, where the search  volume for personal injury cases are relatively high, would benefit greatly by having high search engine rankings and even a highly competitive SEO campaign that costs between $25,000 to $50,000 a year would pay for itself in a matter of no time.&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;p&gt;However, comparing that same case scenario with that of a traffic lawyer and the return goes down quite a bit. Realistically the aggregate value of a traffic case is loosely around $100 to $1,000. Following the same level of competition with the SEO campaign for a personal injury lawyer, this would require at least 50 cases a year just to cover the cost of the campaign &amp;#187; not a real profitable investment. &lt;/p&gt;


&lt;p&gt;From my experience, it takes anywhere from 15 to 20 cases for the average general practice lawyer to make a profitable return on their investment within the first year. However, after the first year, the value of the initial investment of an SEO campaign will normally sustain it&apos;s value since the value of the site increases as the internal quality of the site improves, the amount of content increases, inbound link partnerships are built, and PageRank is established. Furthermore, the rankings that have been obtained from the first year&apos;s  optimization efforts may be maintained relatively easily through an SEO maintenance plan which, is nominal in comparison to the cost of a full SEO campaign.&lt;/p&gt;
 

&lt;/p&gt;
I&apos;m quite amazed at the amount of lawyers that choose Pay Per Click (P.P.C.) advertising over organic search engine optimization. The only viable reason that I would justify spending money on a P.P.C. campaign is to provide support for an organic campaign that is still attempting to obtain an acceptable position in the Search Engine&apos;s Results Pages, (S.E.R.P.&apos;s). I tend to think the difference between a P.P.C. campaign and organic SEO is like paying rent in an apartment versus owning your own home. If you can afford your own home, why rent an apartment? &lt;/p&gt;


&lt;p&gt;With a P.P.C. campaign, once the keyword budget is depleted, all value from the investment is gone. If you compare an organic SEO campaign to a P.P.C. advertising campaign, it&apos;s easy to see how organic SEO for lawyers is the only way to go. If you want SEO for Lawyers, Contact &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardbeckett.com/?go=form#search_engine_services&quot;&gt;Florida Search Engine Optimization&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;br /&gt; 
				</description>
				
				<category>Link Building</category>				
				
				<category>Google</category>				
				
				<category>SEO Services</category>				
				
				<category>Business</category>				
				
				<category>Search Engine Optimization</category>				
				
				<category>Society</category>				
				
				<category>SEM</category>				
				
				<category>SEO</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:43:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/9/14/Florida-Search-Engine-Optimization-187-SEO-for-Lawyers</guid>
				
			</item>
			
			<item>
				<title>Google Hits Record High &amp;#187; Yahoo! &amp;amp; Live &amp;#187; Fall</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/4/16/Google-Hits-Record-High-amp187-Yahoo-amp-Live--Fall</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;p&gt;In recent news, there were reports that the incumbent search engine Google, reached record highs (again) for the Month of March 08&apos;, with an incredible 59.8% of the market share. The data was collected from Hitwise and Compete for the US search stats, and clearly shows that Google is stronger than ever. Not like anyone doubted that, but it&apos;s official.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;img src=&quot;http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3271/2417519096_82dfb4935a.jpg?v=0&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The tale of the tape as far as comscore has it, is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Google &amp;raquo; 59.8% &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Yahoo &amp;raquo; 21.3% &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Microsoft&amp;nbsp; &amp;raquo; 9.4% &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;AOL &amp;raquo; 4.8% &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Ask &amp;raquo; 4.7%&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/2416699783_cb1feb4c3d.jpg?v=0&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Regarding market share versus amount of searches per month ...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Google &amp;raquo; 6.4 billion &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Yahoo &amp;raquo; 2.3 billion &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Microsoft &amp;raquo; 1 billion &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;AOL &amp;raquo; 521 million &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Ask &amp;raquo; 503 million &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Based on these stats, it&apos;s pretty clear to see that Google, is still the search engine that drives the most traffic.&lt;/p&gt; 
				</description>
				
				<category>Google</category>				
				
				<category>SEO Services</category>				
				
				<category>Business</category>				
				
				<category>Web Metrics</category>				
				
				<category>Search Engine Optimization</category>				
				
				<category>SEO</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:46:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/4/16/Google-Hits-Record-High-amp187-Yahoo-amp-Live--Fall</guid>
				
			</item>
			
			<item>
				<title>Florida SEO - CakePHP - Ruby on Rails - BarCamp Miami</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/2/29/Florida-SEO--CakePHP--Ruby-on-Rails--BarCamp-Miami</link>
				<description>
				
				&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;I went down to Miami with my good friend Mark from &lt;a rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; href=&quot;http://www.alistseo.com&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;A List SEO&lt;/a&gt; to BarCamp Miami ... I didn&apos;t have tickets to the show I &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; wanted to be at, the &lt;a rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; href=&quot;http://www.futureofwebapps.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Future of Web Apps&lt;/a&gt;, So I figured that at least I could hang out and get to meet some people at BarCamp.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt; Well, meet people I did ... and a lot of them. I was lucky enough to hang out and eat dinner with &lt;a rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; href=&quot;http://cakedc.com/team&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Larry Masters&lt;/a&gt;, the master mind behind the CakePHP framework. From our talks, I am definitely going to be checking out how I can start reaping the rewards of &lt;a rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; href=&quot;http://www.cakephp.org/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;CakePHP&lt;/a&gt; as a rapid application development Framework. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Some of the other great guys that I spoke with were Kevin Marks, a developer advocate from Google ... Edgar Caballero, the senior technology consultant from Altra-App ... Jason Baptiste, CEO of Publictivity ... David Di Cillo, web and print designer with ThirtyNine ... Gary Schulthesis, &amp;amp; Craig Agranoff from Vois ... Sunir Shah from FreshBooks ... Eamon O&apos;Connor from Refraction Films ... Onajide Shabakaka from the Miami Art Exchange ...  and many more ...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: medium;&quot;&gt; So, from what I thought was going to be a nice get away turned out to be a networking home run ... some of these guys are making really big moves in the development community ... most notably, is Larry ... if that guys team works on a web application ... you are almost guaranteed that it&apos;s going to be rock solid.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; 
				</description>
				
				<category>Frameworks</category>				
				
				<category>Search Engine Optimization</category>				
				
				<category>Web Development</category>				
				
				<category>Business</category>				
				
				<category>SMO</category>				
				
				<category>CakePHP</category>				
				
				<category>Networking</category>				
				
				<category>Programming</category>				
				
				<category>Me</category>				
				
				<category>SEO</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Fri, 29 Feb 2008 06:36:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/2/29/Florida-SEO--CakePHP--Ruby-on-Rails--BarCamp-Miami</guid>
				
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			<item>
				<title>The SEO w Momentum Florida Search Engine Optimization LLC</title>
				<link>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/2/7/The-SEO-w-Momentum-Florida-Search-Engine-Optimization-LLC</link>
				<description>
				
				I recently filed for the articles of incorporation for Florida Search Engine Optimization. Now I have to work double time to make sure that everyone that told me that I should have started the company while working for some one else, will have to take a look at how much there is to benefit from working as an independent. 

&lt;h2&gt;First: What are the benefits of working on your own?&lt;/h2&gt; 
That&apos;s a tough one .... I have actually been working harder since I left my last full-time job. Why? Because I am much happier. The fact is that people produce much better when they are working in an environment that offers rewards. Call me simple, but I like rewards. Who wants to dedicate their heart and soul, blood sweat and tears, day in and day out, for a job, business, or company that has no intention of offering rewards for those sacrifices?

&lt;h2&gt;Second: What if you Fail?&lt;/h2&gt;
In my book there is only &lt;i&gt;one true failure in life.&lt;/i&gt; Giving Up. 

Let&apos;s see what this guy accomplished by not giving up ... 

&lt;blockquote&gt; 
   In 1816 this guys family was kicked out of their home and he had to go to work to make sure that they survived ... 

   A couple of years later, His mother passed away ... 

   in 1831, &lt;i&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He Failed In Business&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/i&gt; (Did he Boo Hoo ... ?)

   The very next year, he tried to run for legislature ... and lost.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Denied ... &lt;/strong&gt;

   Later on that year, He lost his job, tried to get in to a law school &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;Denied ... &lt;/strong&gt;

   After that wonderful episode he got a loan from one of his buddies to launch a new business ... he went bankrupt by the end of that same year. For the better part of the next two decades, he worked at paying off that debt. (What did he do?)

    In 1834 he decided he would have another go at the state legislature ... &lt;br /&gt; 
&lt;h3&gt;ACCEPTED ... &lt;/h3&gt;  

Right after that he got engaged but his girl died ... he was destroyed. 
   
    Shortly thereafter he went nuts and stayed in bed for half a year. 

A few years later he tried to become a legislative speaker ... he was defeated by someone else ... &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Denied ... &lt;/strong&gt;

A couple more years later he wanted to become an elector ... but, he was defeated again  ... &lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Denied ... &lt;/strong&gt; (Did he Boo Hoo?) 
   
So, he decided that maybe it would be a good idea to run for Congress again ...&lt;br /&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Denied ... &lt;/strong&gt;

Then he figured that he should &lt;i&gt;Give It Another Shot&lt;/i&gt; ... He was elected in to Congress, went to Washington and did great. &lt;br /&gt; 
&lt;h3&gt;ACCEPTED ... &lt;/h3&gt;   

He tried to get re-elected in to Congress in 1848 ... &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Denied ... &lt;/strong&gt;
He tried to take a position as a land officer in his home state in 1849 &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Denied ... &lt;/strong&gt;

He tried to get in the US Senate in 1854 &lt;br /&gt;
   &lt;strong&gt;Denied ... &lt;/strong&gt; 

He tried to get the nomination for Vice-President at the national convention with his party in 1856. &lt;br /&gt;
   &lt;strong&gt;Denied ... &lt;/strong&gt; (He only got 100 votes ... )

He tried to run for the US Senate again in 1858 ... &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Denied ...&lt;/strong&gt;

He tried to become the president of the United States in 1860 ... &lt;br /&gt;(After all of those &lt;i&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Failures?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/i&gt;)

HE WON ... and was one of the greatest presidents the United States has ever known. That guy ... was Abraham Lincoln.&lt;br /&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;ACCEPTED ... &lt;/h3&gt;  
I think my point is made ... 

&lt;/blockquote&gt;


&lt;h3&gt;Third: Are you &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; going to be able to make it?&lt;/h3&gt; 

Keep checking back ... If I don&apos;t ... I could always try running for Congress ...
&lt;br /&gt; 
				</description>
				
				<category>Business</category>				
				
				<category>Life</category>				
				
				<pubDate>Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:19:00 -0400</pubDate>
				<guid>http://www.edwardbeckett.com/Blog/index.cfm/2008/2/7/The-SEO-w-Momentum-Florida-Search-Engine-Optimization-LLC</guid>
				
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