Graphic Design and Website Design

Using Google and SEO here are some interesting comparisons between Barack Obama and John McCain.

In Google type in obama and search results are #155,000,000
If you put “obama” in quotes you get #156,000,000

In Google type in mccain and search results are #76,900,000
If you put “mccain” in quotes you get #77,300,000

Barack Obama has a splash page with his family.
John McCain does not have a splash page.

Barack Obama has optimized his title tag on his splash page as “Welcome to Obama for America”.
Barack’s home page title tag is “Barack Obama | Change We Can Believe In | Home”

McCain has optimized his title tag as “John McCain - John McCain for president”

Prime real estate on Barack’s home page has a “Donate Now” button, followed with “Make A Difference”.
Prime real estate on John McCain’s home page has “Get Involved” followed with a “Contribute” button.

On Barack Obama’s splash page the meta keywords and description read:

meta name=”keywords” content “Senator Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign”
meta name “description” content=”Official Website of Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign”

On Barack’s home page the meta keywords and description read:
meta name “description” content “Official Website of Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign”
meta name “keywords” content “president, senator, illinois, chicago, barack, barck, barek, obama, 2008, 08, presidential, president, campaign, election”

On John McCain’s home page the meta keywords and description read:
meta name “description” content “John McCain 2008 - The Official Website of John McCain’s 2008 Campaign for President”
meta name “keywords” content “John McCain, McCain, mccain for president, John S. McCain, McCain 2008, president, presidential, 2008, campaign, election, straight talk, straight talk express, politics, political, john mccain, john mccain for president, senator john mccain, sen. john mccain, cindy mccain, john mcain, john mckaine, john maccane, jon mccain, john maccaine, john mccaine, mccain 2008, johnmccain.com, senator mccain, mccain 2000, mccain campaign, mccain hq, exploremccain.com, explore mccain, mccain exploratory committee, mccain exploratory”

And finally my last Obama vs McCain comparison between candidates is their use of the h1 tag:
On Obama’s home page the  <h1><a href=“http://www.barackobama.com/index.php”><img src=“http://www.barackobama.com/images/temp_flashheader.jpg” alt=“Obama for America”/></a></h1>

On McCain’s home page there is NO <h1> tag.

And the next president of the United States is …???

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As 2009 approaches search engine optimization strategies have increasingly incorporated social networks and media. The new (and improved) tread in SEO is about, “creating personal relationships with others”. The old fashion word of mouth, grass-roots doing business with friends mentality is back, and better than ever.

In the past, SEO stressed code, site structure and links. However today, SEO is changing. Optimizing is not only about good HTML, site structure, and links, but SEO now includes online social networks and the opportunities they provide. It is not about asking for business or clicking on Adsense links, it is about community and helping others first.

Networking is nothing new, only the medium has changed. For years businesses have joined clubs and organizations where they network and meet others in the community with similar interest. Today, the internet has it’s own set of clubs and organization that provide similar relationships, only online. There are a number of sites [Read more →]

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So what is Page Rank? This is a scale Google uses to measure the relative importance of your site. Google’s scale is a 1-10, with 10 being the best; but a rank of 3-5 is considered good. Page Rank will not get you traffic, but it is a tool to help evaluate a site’s potential to be ranked for your keywords phrases. Generally, page rank is established by:

1. Backlink campaign or Reciprocal link campaign .
2. Internal link structure.
3. Site structure.

So if a website is getting a decent page rank than the search engine optimization and search engine marketing campaign are working in unison. As a result website traffic will benefit from a continued effort. However, if a backlink campaign has been in place for 12 months and there is no PR it might be a signal that something is wrong. This might translate into lower website traffic.

Importantly, a site can be doing everything correctly (backlink, internal structure and site structure) and still not have a good PR. In this case, finding out why the PR is low might uncover valuable information that could lead to an improvement in some other area of the website. In the end this has the potential to improve the website’s traffic.

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There are a number of ways to promote your website online. From writing articles to having a website add a link back to your site. Outside of paid links and link farms, the more links back to your site the better. But, MAKE SURE TO VERY YOUR ANCHORED TEXT!

If you don’t vary your text links in the long run you could be doing more harm than good. When submitting multiple links over time make sure to vary your anchored text links. This will not only improve your ranking across multiple keywords, but it will also keep your site from looking “spammy” to Google. Or what I call “blitzing” a keyword.

Matt Cutts (Head of Google’s Spam Division) said about anchored text,

“…a sudden surge of external backlinks (often with the same anchor text) has the signature of unnatural linking … “

The does not mean you can not reuse a keyword phrase. Personally, I enforce certain keyword phrase, but I make sure they are not forced and relevant to the topic. If you keep them natural I don’t think you would have any problem. So if you have hundreds of links just don’t [Read more →]

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Search engine marketing (sem) is to promote your website or blog through different search engines and online promotions. Search engine optimization (seo) is a process to search engine marketing.

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