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SEO is Simple. It’s About Giving People What They Need.

posted by Search

We often read articles and attend seminars on the topic of SEO and how a marketer can best execute it. The problem is that many firms and people tend the feel that once they have the initial idea of SEO, nothing will change; it will not evolve or adapt. This is ultimately where they begin to lead clients, listeners and readers horribly astray. The latest such article was written for Financial Planning and delves very heavily into “keyword use.”

Sadly, the ideas stated in the above article have been ones that good SEOs have moved on from in the past couple of years. We’ve learned that there is no magic number for keywords, no golden ratio, nothing that says “if you use a keyword this percentage, you will have solid value in rankings.” One needs to look no further than Matt Cutts, head of Web spam at Google, in this video from 2011:



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The future of connected devices and what they mean for marketers

posted by Video

If you're amazed by today's current smartphone technology, just wait. They are going to look like cassette players in the next five years or so.

My watch shows who's calling, my scale can tweet, my bike and heart rate monitor correspond with my smartphone and the light switches in my home are connected to the Internet. This isn't Disney’s Tomorrowland; this all exists right now. And it’s just the beginning. More and more devices we use every day are going to be connected to each other and the Internet in ways we can hardly imagine today.

Right now

The Pebble smartwatch is one of the devices mentioned above. It was part of a highly-successful Kickstarter campaign in early 2012 and they've just started shipping over the past few months—mine came last week after 10 months of patiently waiting. The watch pairs with an iOS or Android phone via Bluetooth and displays text messages, emails, calls and other alerts. It can also control music playing on a smartphone.

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SEO and Keyword-Rich URLs

posted by Search

Allow me to introduce you to Google’s EMD update from last October:

• Search Engine Land - Deconstructing The Google EMD Update
• SEOmoz - The Exact Match Domain Playbook: A Guide and Best Practices for EMDs
• Search Engine Roundtable - Google EMD Update: Exact Match Domains No Longer Rank As Well

Keyword-rich URLs just ain’t what they used to be.

EMD backstory

Google was tired of websites ranking well because their URL had a few keywords in it, but the site itself offered no real value. This used to be a big proponent of SEO. Well, Google eventually got so sick of it they made a MASSIVE update to handle it. Suddenly sites that had “Keyword URLs” dropped if they didn’t back them up with real content.
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SXSW Quick Takes :: Justin

posted by Development

Members of the thunder::tech team attended the South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive conference in Austin, Texas last week! The five-day festival included panel discussions by some of tech’s best minds, incredible networking, big-brand parties, music and general shenanigans. We had to find a way to bring our experiences back with us, so we challenged each team member who got the chance to go to Austin to give us a quick take and grab some pics.

Catch up if you missed our introductory post and Andrea's Quick Take. Now here's Quick Take #2 from our manager of user experience development, Justin Smith.

Justin’s SXSW Quick Takes:

• We preordered a Leap Motion! Can't wait to start working with an entirely new form of interactivity. Look, no hands!

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Can You Use Google to Predict Presidential Elections?

posted by Search

Today, the Optimization team at thunder::tech is going to take a little break from dropping its normal SEO knowledge bombs and relay to you an interesting story on what we can learn from Google. Prompted by the news that there was a spike on Election Day in Americans who were searching the phrase “who is running for president,” we began to investigate why.

Below, you will find a series of charts we have embedded straight from Google Trends (if you're on a desktop computer, make sure you scroll over each data point for details). For those who may not be in the know, Google Trends is a way to look at Internet searches and (as the name suggests) see trends and comparisons. This data has been “normalized.” This means that they have been adjusted to a more “apples-to-apples” comparison. They do this by comparing the real absolute search volume and figures relative to all other searches at that time. We use this tool in SEO to identify trends, as opposed to search volume. It’s our way of comparing two ideas or concepts that may not be related and get actual comparable data from them.

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