Improving Organic CTR with Semantic HTML

January 9, 2012 in Tips and Best Practices

A visually compelling search result can influence click-through rate (CTR) by 10-30%. ISM decided to investigate exactly which types of structured markup Google looks for when generating CTR-friendly “rich snippets”

Not all search results are created equal. By now most of us are familiar with presence of rich snippets on Google search results:

Google relies on the usage of Semantic HTML to generate results like the one above. Generally speaking, semantic HTML is any markup that is written in a way that indicates the meanings of–and relationships between–elements on a web page. There is no absolute standard for semantic HTML, but various online groups have worked together to establish markup standards that define HTML patterns and element properties for common types of content on the web.

Semantic HTML & Search Marketing

Semantic HTML helps search engines identify objects within a web page, a pivotal aspect of deciding when and how to render dynamic, query-driven snippets. In the example above, Google correctly deduced that my search, “five star pizza”, was submitted in the pursuit of ordering a pizza (and not simply looking up information about Five Star Pizza, the pizza chain). Having made this deduction, Google generated… Read More

Advertising on corporate blogs: good or bad Idea?

November 21, 2011 in Tips and Best Practices

A client of ours recently asked, “Should we put ads on our corporate blog?”

If I could sum up my answer in one sentence, it would be something along these lines: If the revenue from ads on your blog or site are essential to your success as a company, keep them—but if you’re a major brand (vs. an individual) and your blog doesn’t get that much traction, it’s probably not worth doing.

Now, I realize this might seem like a simplistic answer to a question that merits a more thought out, scenario-specific response. But (full disclosure here if it’s not already obvious) coming from an agency perspective rather than a business perspective means user experience and brand credibility will almost always win this battle.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’m going to try to be as objective as possible. Technically,  there aren’t any “wrong” or “right” answers to this question, but there are a lot of grey areas and this is definitely not a decision that should be made based on a whim. Thinking about how ads might affect some of the  components outlined below is a good place to start:

1.

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The 15 best WordPress plugins for SEO, social media & site speed (2011)

October 16, 2011 in Tips and Best Practices

We install and manage a LOT of WordPress sites around here, and knowing about the best plugins is a necessary part of what we do. Our recommendations should help make your blog or WordPress site faster, more SEO/social-media friendly, and help enhance the overall user experience. So without further adieu, here is our up-to-date list of must-have plugins for 2011.

In no particular order:

1. W3 Total Cache

This plugin is the unrivaled solution for improving the performance and security of your WordPress blog. When installed, the plugin automatically adds a variety of performance features caching, content delivery network integration and “minifying”—consolidating scripts and stylesheets to eliminate redundancy and reduce the total # of HTTP requests sent by each page. Unbiased tests online have shown the W3 lives up to claims of 10X gains in load time when fully configured. At minimum, we advise installing it and enabling (server) caching.

2. WordPress SEO by Yoast

We recommend this in favor of the more “popular” All-in-one-SEO plugin because it’s loaded with features and maintained by one of the most respected/supported web experts, Joost de Valk. Too many features to list, but serious SEOs will prefer this plugin over… Read More

iSM welcomes the new (mini) sales army

October 12, 2011 in Company News

A big (and yes, very long overdue)  ISM welcome to our new superstar fro-yo loving sales team members, Annie Meurs and Ryan Larkin. Annie joined on September 19th and Ryan joined on August 1st. Some fun facts about them both:

Annie Meurs

Annie Meurs is our new Director of Business Development. Her responsibilities include identifying potential new clients and conducting initial outreach. She also works with strategists internally to move the sales process forward. Before her role at ISM, she was doing SEM sales at Meltwater Reach.

Favorite food:
Mangoes, or frozen yogurt. So maybe it could be mango flavored frozen yogurt :)

Favorite place to eat in the city:
SPQR (fancy) or Curry Up Now (food truck).

Where I’m from:
Fallbrook, CA (San Diego).

Where I went to school:
USC, majored in Business.

If I could live anywhere in the world I would live in:
San Francisco! I’m living my dream.

Really random fact:
I have a tomato plant in my apartment named Sammy. It’s never produced a tomato.

Translation: We said she was a superstar (she was too humble to mention she was the top salesRead More

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