Gab Monkey

From Good to Great Content

Brent Chaters — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:15:56 +0000

If you’ve been around the search space for any period of time you’ll have heard one of these sayings at some point or another: “Content is King”, “Write for people not search engines”, “Create good content”. AJ Kohn points to a recent Matt Cutts video where Matt talks about content and whether Google will penalize [...]

Google vs. Data

Brent Chaters — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 01:40:39 +0000

Google announced today that they are going to make some modifications to the way they pass data along to other websites based on if a users is logged into google or not. The full details on this are at: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/making-search-more-secure.html. This has gotten a number of folks in the SEO industry in an uproar. While I [...]

Writting for SEO

Brent Chaters — Thu, 12 May 2011 01:05:48 +0000

I read two interesting articles today, one on using jargon and the other on some new features in the WordPress SEO plugin. What jumped out at me on both of these is a focus on language and complexity. One of the new features of the WordPress SEO plugin is to rate your text on the [...]

The Future of Digital Marketing

Brent Chaters — Wed, 04 May 2011 21:17:12 +0000

In April several big brands shared how they have split their marketing spend from traditional (Print, Broadcast and Radio) and Digital (online) . The ranges are anywhere from 50% to 90% of that spend going to digital. I don’t think that this is very surprising. More people are spending time online, be it on a PC or mobile Device. Interestingly TV declines as Internet increases and Mobile Reading Increases while print reading decreases. Meaning the money is moving to where the eyeballs are going [...]

Social Media and SEO

Brent Chaters — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 12:51:14 +0000

Go to any search conference today and there will be at least one discussion on Social Media. It is starting to become much clearer how the two connect with announcements from booth Bing and Google that they use social signals for rankings, as well as announcements they will start to use social results much more [...]

Something Kind of Neat

Brent Chaters — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:48:52 +0000

Not really being one to pay attention to Google’s doodles, I happened to look today, and saw a little cake doodle and to my surprise when I moved my mouse over it, it said “happy birthday Brent” Kind of a neat little thing for Google to do. I’m not usually all that impressed by personalization [...]

Myth Busting the ROI on SEM

Brent Chaters — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 00:57:10 +0000

I’ve seen several different citations on why SEM has a better ROI then SEO. Here are a few of them: SEM is faster, brings traffic to your website quickly, and increases visibility immediate SEM: there is more control over SEM then SEO. With SEM you can optimize the landing page tailored to the SEM experience [...]

Google Instant Some Random Thoughts

Brent Chaters — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 22:11:16 +0000

With the launch of Google Instant I’ve got a few non-connected thoughts on what this means to SEO/SEM as well as to Google, and some questions with how they will adapt to this. First let’s look at the comments I have specifically to Google. A Great Engineering Feat In one way I think this is [...]

Why Being Number 1 Isn’t Easy

Brent Chaters — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:36:17 +0000

Pride I often find limits good websites from becoming great websites. I’ve been involved in the web space now for over 10 years, and in that time I’ve come across two types of people when it comes to putting together websites, “do’ers” and “can’ts” others may classify these people as either “put up, or shut-up” what amazes me however is that I’ve often run across more people who are from the “cannot” camp than the “do it” camp.

Why Organic Search Has a Better ROI

Brent Chaters — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:01:51 +0000

I’ve recently been hearing that organic search (SEO) has a lower ROI than paid search (SEM). I have a very hard time believing this. I can see SEM having a better conversion rate than SEO, but not a better ROI. Free organic search will ALWAYS have a better ROI than anything you pay for. The [...]

How Much Does it Cost to be a Freelance Web Designer?

Brent Chaters — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:30:06 +0000

I wanted to touch very quickly on something maybe a lot of people don’t know how to calculate when they say they want to be free lance web designers with the idea to make it a full time job. It’s a difficult thing to do, and it can get surprisingly costly very quickly. this is [...]

Why In House Design Makes Sense For Large Companies.

Brent Chaters — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:39:50 +0000

Having talked to people of large corporate companies and knowing people who work at large corporate companies, what has amazed me constantly is how many companies outsource a good portion of their work to smaller web design shops. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to outsource some of your site, but when you outsource the [...]

Face of the Company

Brent Chaters — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:19:04 +0000

As companies move into the social realm, into blogs, into giving voices of the individual of the company there runs an interesting issue that will have to be dealt with by companies at some point who are giving voices to the many. The issue is investing in individuals to speak on behalf of the company [...]

Why SCRM is More Powerful With CRM

Brent Chaters — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:21:39 +0000

SCRM stands for Social Customer Relationship Management it’s the burgeoning name for how corporations plan to track and manage customer relationships through social tools (think FaceBook, Twitter and LinkedIn). I recently wrote about my own reasoning on why SCRM shouldn’t be called SCRM and that corporations can’t “manage” customers or expect to manage customers in [...]

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-03

Brent Chaters — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:20:00 +0000

was there ballot stuffing on time.com 100 most influential person? I would think so. link is http://bitly.com/jSyEm # Most of these sites are pretty common these days, but interesting reading anyways: 35 Non-Google SEO How to http://bitly.com/9ZTjF # I know #SES is coming up so to the SEO experts I would love to hear greatest [...]

It’s Time to Drop the “M” in CRM

Brent Chaters — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:11:11 +0000

Social customer relationship management is the evolution of CRM and Todd Clayton over at chatterboxhq had an interesting article which I had to respond to on Why Social CRM Is not the Answer for Social Media it’s a great read (go on read it, I’ll still be here when you get back). OK great, so [...]

Web Design It’s Not Just For PCs Anymore

Brent Chaters — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:19:05 +0000

I have been working in the web design/development community since 1998 and it seems like every time the web takes a step forward it means two steps back for developers. A lot of the same issues that plagued developers when dial-up was still predominant are issues still today. Not because people are on dial-up, but [...]

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-26

Brent Chaters — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:20:00 +0000

Feels like nothing got done this weekend # way more than 84 Amazingly Useful CSS Tips & Resources | http://bitly.com/8sGDS # RT @demodadesign Twitter is dumb and it’s making me feel stupid(er). – best line ever # Is it just me or is time actually going backwards today? # @demodadesign creep on creeping on in [...]

Editors Going Extinct or a New Breed?

Brent Chaters — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:47:02 +0000

Having recently taken up blogging I have discovered one major issue. There’s no editor. Nobody to really ask you is this what you really mean to say? It’s a simple click publish and there it is your article up and out there live for everyone to see. I know at some point I’m going to [...]

Why the Kindle Should be Free (or Some Other e-Reader)

Brent Chaters — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:16:17 +0000

When Amazon launched the Kindle they missed a great opportunity. It’s not like they need it, but they should have made the Kindle FREE. The e-book reader market is still a developing market, but we’ve seen that whoever is king early on is often hard to knock down once they are on top. Amazon could [...]

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-19

Brent Chaters — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:20:00 +0000

Knees out from running gonna only try for 4 miles tommorow # Is it One more nail in traditional prints coffin with the FLEPia # I’ve witnessed the right tweet at the right time is like a butterflies wings flapping # it’s a good day to do some yard work! # @dleroux why is it [...]

What Number is the Most Important? – Web Metrics (Part 2)

Brent Chaters — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:28:34 +0000

Last article we started to look at metrics and what metrics to report to your business or to help decide if your business is succeeding online. This go around I’ll be looking at metrics for your web team. There are some things you will want to measure to help you maintain your site health. These [...]

What Number is the Most Important? – Web Metrics (Part 1)

Brent Chaters — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:45:24 +0000

One reason the internet has become one of the most vital tools for marketers is that it allows them track to a level they were never capable of before. One of the problems I’ve had with this is that now we are almost inundated with data. More data at times than we could ever process, [...]

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-12

Brent Chaters — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:20:00 +0000

Sick with a cold does not help traing for a ten km run. # Why can’t I get the kindle in Canada? Come on amazon!! # @dleroux exactly how I’m feeling and thinking today in reply to dleroux # Somehow I am not feeling any better drop the lady friend at the airport then watch [...]

Content as Navigation Steering the Course

Brent Chaters — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:32:39 +0000

Picking up on the last posting, what exactly is content as navigation? To me it’s something we’re already seeing on sites like Amazon, but as more services open up that offer content streams and feeds, we need to start to think of ways to use this content. It’s not enough to simply get an RSS [...]