Let’s talk about “title tags” and “alt tags” for a minute. I’m writing this post because, despite their being a wealth of information on the matter, I still see ALT and TITLE being misused pretty regularly… So think of this as an SEO PSA. Continue reading
Author Archives: John Vantine
Banned From Google AdSense? Monetize Your Site With These AdSense Alternatives
Picture this: you’ve had AdSense on your site for about 6 months now. Things have been going well. You’ve tweaked your display units a bit, and you’re making about $50 a day – way more than enough to cover hosting and domain costs. Everything is cool, and then you check your email one morning and see this email, totally out of left field: Hello, After reviewing our records, we’ve determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we’ve found it necessary to disable your AdSense account. Your outstanding balance and Google’s share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers. Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the effectiveness of Google’s advertising system, particularly the advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the … Continue reading
Seeing Stars in the SERPs – Rich Snippets and Structured Markup
We’re all used to seeing star ratings in the SERPs for things like movies (IMDB/Rotten Tomatoes), products (Amazon) and restaurants (Yelp). Over the past month or so, I’ve noticed them appearing alongside listings/rich snippets in the organic search results for regular websites and blog posts. This seemed out of place to me, so I did some research. As it turns out, it’s pretty simple to get a star rating in the SERPs for any old run-of-the-mill page. I used the following format to add a “review” to the homepage of johnvantine.com. <div class="hreview"> <span class="reviewer">Name of reviewer</span> <span class="dtreviewed" title="YYYY-MM-DD">Date of review</span> <span class="summary">Review summary</span> <span class="description">Review body</span> <span class="rating">Numerical rating (from 1-5)</span> </div> The review is not fake, mind you! It was written by Ryan Farrell. Anyway, I added the review to the homepage on Wednesday. I checked the SERPs on Thursday morning, and the star rating was showing … Continue reading
Wpromote Participates in Olive Crest Holiday Toy Drive
Wprovide (Wpromote’s philanthropic division) decided to celebrate the holidays by organizing a children’s toy drive. After doing some research, we decided to work with Olive Crest. What makes Olive Crest unique is that they match each participant with an abused child or teen, and participants receive wish slips with the name, age and gender of the child that they’ll be shopping for. The wish slip describes what the child wants – this makes the effort feel a bit more personal, because you’re not just blindly purchasing a toy and assuming it’ll be paired up with someone who will enjoy it. Our efforts were not in vain. Wpromoters were able to make Christmas a little brighter for 30 children this year! Aside from the Olive Crest toy drive, I was involved in a Toys 4 Tots toy drive, and I purchased a Transformers toy (Optimus Prime) that I know I … Continue reading
Google – Behind The Numbers (Infographic)
Did you know that Google’s 2010 revenue (29.3 billion) is more than that of the combined GDP of the 28 poorest countries in the world?
A whopping 97% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising?
$2.5 billion of Google’s revenue comes from mobile ads… And that number is expected to double by the end of year?
Read more fascinating facts from the search giant in the following infographic! Continue reading
Introducing Our Web-Based SEOAudit Tool
There are a tons of great SEO tools freely available on the web. I’m always trying new ones out myself, constantly on the hunt for the next tool that’ll simplify my job as an SEO. However, most of the SEO tools that I use regularly are either programs I’ve installed or browser extensions. The web-based SEO tools that I use are all for very specific purposes. Wpromote set out to create a general purpose SEO tool that was fast and convenient. We were looking to create something that you could quickly turn to when you didn’t know much about a site, and wanted to get a basic idea of its strengths and weaknesses. And with that, I introduce to you our brand new web-based SEOAudit Tool! This bad boy is super helpful, especially if you’re in a rush. Simply enter a URL and click “audit”. Within a few seconds, you’ll … Continue reading