I noticed in a recent Q&A response that along with Bing and Google web master tools there was a reference to Yandex. What is the relevance of this webmaster tool set? Is there a cost associated with it?  If so is it worth it? I would love to hear what the community thinks.

If the site is on Wordpress you might want to check out a mobile plug in.  This is a simple way to set this up without committing to a redesign.

I appreciate your taking the time to answer this.  If it is helpful I found out that the Google carousel is most often populated from pictures on relevant Google + pages.

Thanks again for your input!

Google is now showing menus on select searches.  Any idea how they are getting this information? I would like to make sure my clients get visibility this way.

Sarah,

I have been using this tool: www.spyfu.com , specifically their recon files application to do competitive key word research.  Once I extract key words form this report I use their Keyword smart search tool.

Hope this helps,

Ron

I put key words in as it cannot hurt.  If it gets a few more leads per year why not :).  As far as the previous string goes I think these comments are truly silly as there are many good tools to figure out the key words you are targeting without the meta key words. So if "why not" is a good enough justification then you should do it.

You might consider setting up a dedicated landing page for the white paper and requiring an e-mail and name to download. You could use pay per click to drive leads and collect their contact info when they download.

If you are set up in directories that offer coupons consider setting up a coupon that allows leads to download the white paper.

I personally like the inbound link aspect of blogs as well as google authorship.  You can also use guest bloggers to expand your audience.

Chris,

We ran into this with another firm in the Seattle area.  They were using all the names their competitors in their meta descriptions and they did go so far as to include specific pages dedicated to each competitor.  In the end several of the companies went after them for copyright infringement as they violated their copyrights to create these pages. This is a more aggressive path but it is one you could consider.

Ron

Robert,

I see our interns as our top people down the road.  We use our internship as a way to support people as they save for or go to college. We want top notch people working with us who are engaged in building the business. It is hard to get most people real engaged unless you are compensating them in some way.

I think it is appropriate to pay them at or near minimum wage to start as the company needs to invest in them to get them up to speed. As they start to contribute more and learn more we structure their compensation so that they can make more.  In my opinion one of the best lessons you can teach someone is that,"you eat what you hunt and kill" in the work place.  I think a performance based compensation and a clear path of advancement encourages growth.

Anyway that's my two cents.

Ron

Robert,

I see our interns as our top people down the road.  We use our internship as a way to support people as they save for or go to college. We want top notch people working with us who are engaged in building the business. It is hard to get most people real engaged unless you are compensating them in some way.

I think it is appropriate to pay them at or near minimum wage to start as the company needs to invest in them to get them up to speed. As they start to contribute more and learn more we structure their compensation so that they can make more.  In my opinion one of the best lessons you can teach someone is that,"you eat what you hunt and kill" in the work place.  I think a performance based compensation and a clear path of advancement encourages growth.

Anyway that's my two cents.

Ron

Chris,

We ran into this with another firm in the Seattle area.  They were using all the names their competitors in their meta descriptions and they did go so far as to include specific pages dedicated to each competitor.  In the end several of the companies went after them for copyright infringement as they violated their copyrights to create these pages. This is a more aggressive path but it is one you could consider.

Ron

Nathan,

I would always recommend this.  This techniques gives you a higher quality score on pay per click while indexing on search.  As you build out your content and links your performance will get better and better.  This is also a good format for running software like Optimizely for conversion optimization.

Darren,

I am not sure what industry you are in but I would suggest localizing the content.  This will help you avoid duplicate content  while providing a richer user experience and some local SEO juice. So I would incorporate references to local landmarks as well as anything in the area that affects how the category might be implemented. So for example a page about tomatoes in southern California might focus on fertilization to maximize production while a similar page in Anchorage Alaska might focus on how to grow tomatoes indoors hydroponically.  This is an extreme example but I thought this might give you the idea.  You want at least 65% on the content to be original even though it might talk about the same things.

Ron