Digital Marketing, SEO & LIFE in general!

Riaad Moosa - SA Comedian taking advantage of Steers ad

2012-01-25T15:51:00.000+02:00

Check this - Riaad Moosa is an undercover entrepreneur - talk about chutzpah !
He took full advantage on this latest Steers TV shoot campaign and check what he has done !

The whole idea was to drive viewers to watch their new movie that's launching :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnr_3NKt7Yg

How to unlink Google ADWORDS from Google Analytics

2012-01-06T14:58:00.007+02:00

A question I get asked by clients on a daily basis is "How do I unlink my Google Adwords and Google Analytics Accounts". Well what's great about writing this article is that it means the client can feel safe and secure about not having to give access to his Google Adwords account and can do it himself.

So please feel free to share this link with everyone and anyone who asks you the same question. I would like to state that I have copied this directly from Google's website and not changed any of the content see http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=1308612&answer=1033961 for more information.

Linking/Unlinking Analytics Accounts and AdWords Accounts

Before you start, make sure that you're using a Google Account email address that has access to both your Analytics and AdWords accounts, and is an Administrator for both accounts.

If you want to link multiple AdWords accounts to a single Analytics account, log in to Analytics and set the new version of Analytics as your default version:

Log in to Analytics.
Click New Version at the top right of the page.
Click Make this version default.

To link your accounts:

Click the Tools and Analysis tab, then click Google Analytics.

Click the gear icon at the top right of any Analytics page.

Click the account to which you want to link the AdWords account.

Click the Data Sources tab.

Click the AdWords tab.

Click Link Accounts.

Select the Analytics profiles in which you want the AdWords data to be available.

If you want to link another AdWords account to your Analytics account, repeat the procedure above using that other AdWords account.
Your accounts should now be linked. If you opted to keep auto-tagging turned on, Analytics starts automatically tagging your AdWords links, and you can track the behavior of visitors coming from your AdWords ads.
* You may see a website domain name in the menu in step 5. This is because you chose to name your account after the website URL.

Start linking out from your site - Become a trusted source

2012-01-05T08:29:00.002+02:00

Websites need to become more trustworthy and less reliant of backlinks.

Something that's always been a contentious issue. In fact I've had clients come back to me wanting to sue the living pants off me for adding outbound links to their sites.

Generally the conversation goes a little something like this:

"Why the hell are you adding a link from my restaurant to other restaurants, I'm loosing business and clients".

Think about that statement. I'm pretty sure one of the first rules in business is "Always know your competition and acknowledge that they exist". Why is this so? Well the fact of the matter is that if you acknowledge your competition, know they exist, you can make it work for both you and your competitor.

I add link to my restaurant site, referring people to you for the best Italian restaurant in New York City. You link to me from your website stating that the best Greek restaurant in Manhattan is Pappas Greek style.

Ok I know for you tecchies and SEO guys out there that constitutes a reciprocal link, but I'm just trying to get a point across as to how a outbound link from your site to a competitor can be turned into something postitive.

Along with that, it's known fact that if you have no links our from your site to other sites, you're not seen as an authority on a topic. Let me explain it this way. There's now way in hell that every little piece of information on your site is purely and 100% yours! You must have learnt about it at Varsity, or read up about it in a book and heard about it on the radio. That means that the information you're putting up was originally from another source, even if it's not entirely 100%.

So by linking out, you're telling people that you know what you're talking about you know your product what you do what service you offer etc... but at the same time you're saying, listen, you need more information on this, I haven't had the time to rewrite it, Take a look at the information here...AND ADD A LINK.

Google and search engines see this as a good thing. It means you're not only providing information on your site, but you're also giving people other resources (provided they are relevant and on topic) to read up on. This makes your site a worthwhile site to visit.

A New Fundi Is Born!

2011-08-26T13:18:00.002+02:00

CONGRATULATIONS TO BONGANI (SEO FUNDI AND MARKETING GURU AT TRAFFICFUNDI)

Today Bongani brought a new FUNDI to good old fashioned earth. NEO!!!!

Welcome NEO! Good looking just like DAD.

In the words of Wian:
Congrats on the new page on your site dude!! I hope it brings loads of visitors and reaches a higher PR than Google!

Where Does Google Make Their Money

2011-07-28T12:49:00.002+02:00

This was sent to me by one of my business partners and friends. I'd seen this before on a couple of BLOGS but the way this image way laid out thought I needed to share this with you all. For those of you that are clients and wondering why we're spending SOOOO much money on Adwords for you :) take a look at some of these stats.

Google ADWORDS makes Google BILLIONS!

If you don't know what Google ADWORDS is, let one of our consultants chat to you!

Trafficfundi, New Approved Google Engage Partner

2011-07-22T16:50:00.001+02:00

Trafficfundi has officially been approved as a Google Engage Partner. This means that we are an approved Google partner to resell ADWORDS and allows us insights and management of Google ADWORDS accounts with the ability to provide support to our clients.

This is a great step forward for Trafficfundi as we are now able to pass on the knowledge of ADWORDS teams and support that Google can provide us with onto our clients.

AND SO...

Our company Trafficfundi (www.trafficfundi.com) has been made a Google Engage partner and we want to be able to get your business to the top of Google and in so doing increase leads and sales.

Let us take you to the top of Google today and get your leads and sales moving!
Be part of Google online advertising which is currently the number 1 search engine in the world. So why not be number 1 yourself.
This is pay per click so we manage your budget carefully.
Focus on areas and clients who are interested in your business – so we ensure permission marketing on your behalf.
We want to increase your effective ROI (Return on Investment)
The facts, 85% of consumers research products online, while 65% purchase offline.
Let us assist you in reaching more than 80% of all internet users.

So just click below now

Google ADWORDS Partner, Pretoria, South Africa

Our special Spring Engage Partner offer to you: R 6,000.00 worth of Search Engine Optimisation and Google Adwords for a mere

R 4000.00 per month for 3 months – let us make you fly as you get

R 500.00 free Google adwords monthly and R 500.00 free SEO work monthly.

And let us take you to the top of Google today and get your leads and sales moving!

Being based in Pretoria, we're one of the only OFFICIAL Google Partners in Pretoria. So don't miss out on this opportunity.

Tools to Help You Reverse Append Email Addresses

2011-07-18T16:42:00.002+02:00

Fantastic online tools to Help You Reverse Append Email Addresses.
To Find Out More About the Contacts in Your Database!

Flowtown: If you have an email database, you should be using Flowtown. It allows http://www.flowtown.com/
You to take the email addresses you have in your database and look up what social networks they are active on. This way you can reach out to them on more channels as well as segment what emails you send them based on what networks they are in.

Gist: This tool ups the ante by allowing you to aggregate contacts across social http://www.gist.com/ networks, email and mobile phone. Gist then alerts you when any of your contacts make updates to their social networking accounts or appear in any of the 60,000 news sources or 20 million blogs that Gist monitors.

Rapportive - http://www.rapportive.com/ : Similar to Gist, this free tool lets you find out more about your email contacts by providing information about their social media presence. You can see where they live, what they do, view their LinkedIn profile, check out their recent Facebook activity, or add them as a friend—all from your inbox.

Klout - http://www.klout.com/ : This tool helps you figure out who is talking about your brand, who is important in your industry and how much reach your customers really have.

SEO and Google +1

2011-07-04T09:48:00.000+02:00

This has been in development for some time but last week Google launched the new +1 update. This is an attempt at taking on Facebook and the world of social.

This excerpt was take from http://www.google.com/+1/button/

Recommendations when you want them.
Learn more about the +1 button The +1 button is shorthand for "this is pretty cool" or "you should check this out." Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1's can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.

Want to put the +1 button on your own website?
Google has a great page that tells you exactly how to do this http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/+1/button/index.html

See +1's
Sometimes it’s easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when someone you know already found it. Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results.

The next time you’re trying to remember that bed and breakfast your buddy was raving about, or find a great charity to support, a +1 could help you out. Just make sure you're signed in to your Google Account.

Show +1's
In order to +1 things, you first need a public Google profile. This helps people see who recommended that tasty recipe or great campsite. When you create a profile, it's visible to anyone and connections with your email address can easily find it.

Your +1’s are stored in a new tab on your Google profile. You can show your +1’s tab to the world, or keep it private and just use it to personally manage the ever-expanding record of things you love around the web.

Google social search goes global

2011-05-20T16:21:00.002+02:00

What is this social search on google?

It’s basically an update on what Google has been up to with regards to social media search results when someone searches for a certain keyword (e.g. if you search for a cooking recipe, a blogpost from Bruna on her recipe might come up in your search results)
Google will search all your contacts/ friends to find relevant info and include them in the results throughout the SERP
This is in response to Bing who have direct FB integration for their searches. Google does not use direct integration with FB, only indirectly.
Google tends to use only its own network (e.g Google Chat, Youtube, Gmail, Buzz, Chrome etc.) for social searches
The nice thing about the Google social searches is that you can click on a friends/ contacts name and choose “show path” to find out how and where you are connected with them.
Google also allows you to choose your “social circle” to specify who you want receive social search results from. This is done on the Google dashboard.

What do you think? Should Google be worrying about SOCIAL search or stick to the basics...?

How Webmaster tools kicks your rankings up to the next level!

2011-04-19T12:11:00.000+02:00

We all know this is a hard industry to be working in. With continues Google updates and algorithms we need to stay on our tows and keep on changing the websites accordingly, but what about the small things we don't see?

This is where webmaster tools come in handy! There is so many tools that can help you clean up and improve your site like: Submit a Sitemap - This tool allows you to submit a sitemap in webmaster tools database to tell Google about pages on your site that they might miss. Crawl Errors - This tools shows you all the crawl errors on your site that can cause your site to drop of badly. (Crawl Errors are pages on your site that has links to them, but they don't exist anymore.)

The Keywords Tool - This is an amazing tool. It helps you see your website through Google's eyes. It shows you the keywords that is mostly used in your sites content and should give you a clear indication of what the site is about. If it gives you weird keywords you know you need to step up your keyword density so Google knows what your site is all about.

The Last tool I want to bring out is The HTML Suggestions Tool - This tool lets you know if there is any content issues with your site, whether it is duplicate content, missing content or problematic title tags, so you can fix it right away.

This is only a few of the great tools on Webmaster tools that helps you kick your website rankings up to the next level.

Signup to Google Webmaster tools today!

Finally Google phone support is on it's way

2011-04-05T19:52:00.000+02:00

According to a post of the Google BLOG, Google released a new phone support for ADWORDS customers. This is great news, means we won't have to communicate with nothing :).

Towards the end of last year Google stopped providing accoutn managers to ADWORDS customers which really put a backlog onto resolving ADWORDS issues. However this latest post tells us otherwise.

Post from Google:

Free phone support for AdWords advertisers

We’ve worked hard to keep in touch with our AdWords customers and we’re always looking for new ways to support you. Currently we offer email and online support, and today we’re introducing free phone support for all of our U.S.- and Canada-based AdWords customers. When you have a question about your account or advertising campaigns, you can now call an AdWords specialist if you prefer.

Read the rest of the article here

SEO and Proteas Cricket...

2011-03-31T09:46:00.000+02:00

What does SEO have to do with the Proteas or South African cricket? Nothing but this is so darn funny I couldn't not post it.

Windhoek & The Proteas!

Google's Latest Update - Time to take out the trash!

2011-02-25T11:06:00.000+02:00

Matt Cutts released an update yesterday on the Official Google BLOG stating that Google have taken a new step forward in removing rubbish from the World Wide Web in an attempt to remove SPAMMY sites and bring updated, clean, useful informtion to people.

After JC Penny being banned from the Google search results and Forbes.com being slapped with a warning about selling paid links on their site, has Google taken a new LEAP forward in search and does it mean a new movement in whitehat SEO tactics for SEO companies.

For more information READ the Official Google BLOG post.

Search Engine Strategies UK - SES London post 1

2011-02-23T14:55:00.000+02:00

Ses Conference London - Trafficfundi on the ROAD!

Well I apologise for the late BLOG as a spurt of late night sessions and late night "eating" has led me to deliver a very prolonged and slow first BLOG. Firstly, let me say that I'm a little disappointed that there aren't more South African companies at these sessions. I honestly think that South African SEO companies and online marketers need to pay more attention to these conferences cause this is where it's all AT!

Filled with whitehat and blackhat SEO companies, link builders, online marketers, AdWords specialists, social media agencies and more WHY WOULD YOU NOT come to one of these. Along with the fact that SEO in South Africa is on the up and growing at a rate of knots, we should be making our presence felt and putting our brains together to show the world we know what we're doing.

Anyway, enough about my ranting and raving, this is a short and brief post to show you all and introduce you all to the world of SES if you haven't heard about it already.

FOLLOW ME on @TrafficFundi on TWITTER to find out about latest news and up to the minute updates at the conference as well.

For more information check out the website SES London.

Check out the AGENDA at the SES conference, http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/agenda.php and if there is anything we can help you with in terms of feedback, updates or anything please feel free to comment on this post or send us a TWEET.

Google increases their security frontline!

2011-01-12T11:49:00.000+02:00

Google has done it again, surprise us with a brand new update! But this time, their security detail got some new toys...

As you know, Google warns you if a website has malware or may pose a threat to you opening it. Now, Google have gone one step further. In a Google search, you will now get added messages telling you if a website has been compromised by a third party user, thus telling you that this site has been hacked.

Yes, you might think that this is pretty useless information, but you can always find out for yourself and see what happens when browsing a hacked site.

Should you come across a search result of a hacked site on Google, you will get a message telling you that this site is compromised, and if you follow the link, it will take you to Google's help Center, explaining in detail what this message means and how it can affect you as user.

So, all in all, good job and well done Google! We as users are ever thankful...

What's going on with Google.co.za South Africa's search results?

2010-11-01T09:11:00.001+02:00

This month and last month have been a constant battle to understand what it is that Google are trying to achieve. With fluctuations in rankings, fluctuations in visual elements and just permanent updates on Google, I'm talking Google.co.za, I'm not quote sure what the SEARCH BEAST is up to...

This morning, I logged onto Google.co.za and I noticed that the search results are now highlighted in a BLUE box, giving us a SNAPSHOT of the website as you hover over a Magnifying lens to the right of the search result:

Google.co.za South Africa, starts displaying organic search listings with a difference.

So, what is this search giant up to?
Why all the sudden changes and dramatic results updates. I thought that Google Caffeine was going to be this big ban roll out but it looks like it's taking a couple of months to start rolling everything out.

Something that's a little more disturbing is the varying organic search engine optimization results we're getting on "The Web" vs. "Pages from South Africa". A very generic search result for "insurance" will give you a good indication of what I mean:

Results for "insurance" search on Google.co.za (The Web)

And then look at the results we got from "Pages from South Africa", is this reasonable? I mean surely a search in South Africa, is a Search in South Africa, why the heck is Google giving us conflicting search results?

Google.co.za search results for "insurance" (pages from South Africa)

It seems as though Google don't know what they want. Google, we want the old Google back. Isn't there a saying that goes, "If it ain't broke, then don't fix it?".

The proof of Google is in the Traffic!

2010-10-22T16:12:00.000+02:00

Well isn't it?

I've had a couple of emails from some online forums giving me stick about referring to the web / search and SEO as Google. In other words, do you want your website optimized for Google? Is what I asked a client...I was referring to South Africa in general BUT I was slammed and quickly...

WAS I THAT WRONG?

I'll give you some interesting facts about GOOGLE and website traffic in South Africa.

90% of the traffic coming to localised South African websites (GOOGLE)
Bing was starting to generate some traffic, but they removed the localised search portion of their search, so South African sites are now mixed up with GLOBAL sites (ALTERNATIVE, GOOGLE)
If we combine ALL of South Africa's search engines, directories and social media sites the combined traffic coming into your site is possibly 4%, if that... Meaning (THERE'S ONLY GOOGLE)
95% of the analytics software used in South Africa is Google Analytics
I'd say and this is a guess, 60 - 70% of all online spend on PAID ADS is with (GOOGLE)

Which leads me back to my original saying: The proof of GOOGLE is in the TRAFFIC.
So if you're wanting your website optimized for GOOGLE - YOU know who to call!

Permission Marketing

2010-09-07T10:17:00.000+02:00

A couple of years back when I started BLOGGING and working on small sites doing SEO for R300 / month :) I read a book called "Permission Marketing" by Seth Godin. Firstly, for those of you that don't know who Seth Godin is, have a quick read through his BLOG ( http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ ) and through his Website ( http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/ ).

I have to be honest, when I first read this book I never really understood half of what he was talking about. Billboards and banners and website marketing but he kept referring to Permission Marketing...

What Seth Godin was talking about

Well, when the business grew and Trafficfundi starting taking on bigger clients, the pitches and sales started becoming a little more intense. Our strategies had to change and soon I started realising without even trying how the effectiveness of online marketing was taking the world (South Africa especially) by storm. Then, I clicked!!!!!!

The world is so full of clutter, and SPAM that we no longer want out lives to be filled with ADS and advertising. When was the last time you drove on the highway and actually remembered the billboard that you saw or the 1500 posters hanging on Corelett drive advertising over 300 companies?
When was the last time that actually made you stop and think!!!!!

What is permission marketing

Permission marketing is what the WWW (Internet, Web) is all about. It's about "I give you permission to marketing to me". Think about it, when you logon to your pc, and you go to Google.com and type in something you're expecting to find the results that you've searched for i.e. you're giving Google permission to give you the results you want!

If I type in "Search engine marketing company in Pretoria". I'm expecting to find a "search engine marketing company in Pretoria". I asked for it, I expect to find it & I will most likely contact that company!! There are obviously other factors at play here such as: Is the AD effective enough on Google to catch my attention, does the website capture my attention etc etc...

BUT this is the essence of Permission based marketing. It's you giving me permission to marketing my business to you because you're actively looking for it, HENCE my conversions will be higher. Of course the other massive advantage online marketing has is that if setup correctly EVERY last link, every last ad you place online is track able right down to a SALE. Show me any other form of marketing that allows you to do this?

For those of you interested in buying Seth Godin's book on permission marketing check out the Wantitall.co.za site.

Google - Directory or Search Engine?

2010-08-19T14:03:00.000+02:00

After reading an article on Converseon.com http://blog.converseon.com/2010/08/13/google-removes-organic-results-in-local-tests/ I found myself deep in thought and quite frankly unable to do more work... "not always a bad thing".

According to latest reports Google have been doing some testing on displaying local search results. This left me with some questions that maybe you our readers can help me answer...

1. A bold move?
2. Do people want to use Google as a directory?
3. Are people already using people as a directory?
4. Does this mean the end of SEO?
5. Are Google possibly looking to incorporate a directory type listing into their NEW Google Caffeine look and feel?

We'd really love to hear your thoughts on this and whether you think this is the way forward for Google?

Google Mayday, Caffeine Boost or Total FLOP!

2010-06-26T18:06:00.000+02:00

It's been a little over a month now that Google released it's Caffeine update otherwise known as Google "Mayday". Having been a little surprised by some of the search results and updates that were done with this major update to Google's look and feel and it's algorithms, I decided to give it a while before commenting.
Now that the algorithms have settled according to Matt Cutts, I can start telling you why I think this Google update is a total FLOP!

Being an SEO company whose clientel base are mostly South African companies, we've seen a massive drop in search volume across board. The reason being, well Google has decided to take away the "pages from south africa" search option from the Google.co.za home page. WHY??????

Problems with this:
1. Online users in South Africa, still don't follow global search trends. Generic search terms are more widely used, long tail is not wide spread hence this becomes a problem. Why?

a. People when shopping search for "batman dvd box set".
b. People when looking for a service search for "insurance brokers".

DO YOU SEE THE TREND?

This means, without a local search option from the home page, the first search results you will get from Google is a mixture of LOCAL and GLOBALLY (well seo'd) sites.

This is poor show for Google, people will start getting irritated, those that don't mind will either see the "pages from south africa" search on the left side, or advanced users will try something along the lines of a localised search query i.e. "batman dvd box set shopping site south africa".

This once again poses a problem for South African companies and majority of SEO companies in South Africa, actually haven't a clue as to how to SEO, which means corporate companies are going to be paying through their ASSES for SEO and not be found...

And this means South Africans are goign to get CRAP results.
See
2. People in South Africa when searching for products, services, shopping etc don't want pages that are out of South Africa, why would they?

My first example "batman dvd box set" gives 10 sites - NOT ONE OF WHICH is a South African shopping site?????? This means, that majority of South Africans will follow the process of buying the DVD boxset from an overseas site, wasting their time when they find out they have to pay more for shipping from Amazon than the actual product price itself. (BING, here's your chance to takeover localised search)

So, If you ask me!!! For localised search (which was meant to be the way forward) Google's taken a step backwards. REMEMBER, the rest of the world has not had the search volume or the infrastructure in place to become advanced internet users. I hope Google reads this!!!!!

Google New Search Index : Caffeine

2010-06-09T20:36:00.000+02:00

CKKMAG72STSQ
Today, Google announced the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than their last index, and it's the largest collection of web content they offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Some background for those of you who don't build search engines for a living like Google: when you search Google, you're not searching the live web. Instead you're searching Google's index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here's a good explanation of how it all works.) Google indexed the World Wide Web for you to make it easier for you to find things!

So why did they build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It's growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average web page is richer and more complex. In addition, people's expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

To keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations, they built Caffeine. The image below illustrates how the old indexing system worked compared to Google Caffeine:

The old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, they would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when Google found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, Google analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As Google find new pages, or new information on existing pages, Google can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before — no matter when or where it was published it now becomes available quicker than ever!.

Caffeine lets Google index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

Google built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it's a robust foundation that makes it possible for Google to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come!

Original Article By Google

The Why Factor?

2010-05-28T12:03:00.001+02:00

An inspiring video was sent to me about the WHY? factor and what makes successful businesses stand out from the rest. The author's name is Simon Sinek, a fantastic speaker. You need to watch this.

Google uses page speed as ranking factor

2010-04-14T12:05:00.000+02:00

Excerpt from Axandra.com;

Last Friday, Google announced that they started to use site speed as one of the 200 signals that influence the position of a website in the search results:

"As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. [...]

We've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites."

Will your website rankings drop?

Google's Matt Cutts says that the change will affect only some websites:

"Fewer than 1% of search queries will change as a result of incorporating site speed into our ranking. That means that even fewer search results are affected, since the average search query is returning 10 or so search results on each page.

So please don?t worry that the effect of this change will be huge. In fact, I believe the official blog post mentioned that 'We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing.' The fact that not too many people noticed the change is another reason not to stress out disproportionately over this change."

While 1% does not sound much, it can be a problem if your website belongs to the pages whose rankings will drop. At this time, Google's new site speed signal only applies to visitors searching in English on Google.com.

How to keep your web pages listed in Google search results

There are several things that you can do to improve the speed of your web pages:

1. Choose a fast and reliable web host with a good connection to the Internet. A "cheap" web host could cause problems.
2. Combine external JavaScript code files into one file. The fewer files the server has to request, the faster your web pages will load.
3. Compress your JavaScript code to make the JavaScript file smaller.
4. Combine external CSS files into one file and compress your CSS files.
5. If your web server supports it, enable gZip compression (your web host can do that for you).
6. Use as few images as possible on your website and compress your images. Most graphic tools enable you to choose the compression rate when saving an image for the web.
7. Put tracking codes and other JavaScript snippets at the end of your web pages.

The faster your web pages load, the more visitors of your website will be able to see the contents of your pages. Web surfers are impatient people. The average web surfer wants immediate results.

Page speed is not Google's most important ranking signal. The end of Google's page speed announcement contains a very important sentence: "While site speed is a new signal, it doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page."
It is important to optimize the speed of your web pages but it's also important to optimize all other elements of your web pages if you want to be listed on Google's first result page. IBP's Top 10 Optimizer analyzes all important ranking elements/signals that lead to high rankings on Google, including page speed and many other factors.

Don't forget the basics of web design when doing SEO

2010-03-12T09:14:00.000+02:00

W3C web standards...
My team of SEO guru's at Traffic Fundi are really good at what they do. I'll go so far as to say that they're some of the best SEO boys in South Africa, but it's amazing how you get so caught up in "SEO'ing" we website that you often forget the basics.

I've been trying to get a website ranking for over a month now. This site has been SEO'd to perfection "so we thought".

What we'd forgotten to check, and it's the basics of basics in web programming and website design is we forgot to check the code. Now this is a first for us, and I didn't realise how much Google could penalise you for having bad or broken code on your website. In fact the penalties were so bad that it's take Google 2 months to come back and re index my website.

How I managed to pick this up was by using the W3C Validator. This great piece of software and Tool that is advertised on almost every online marketing and SEO related website in the world :), picked up that we had META DATA in the header section of the site that was not closed off. Picked up that we had code that was broken and various other small snippets that needed to be fixed.

So, in an attempt to remind everyone about the basics of web design and SEO.
Today's SEO lesson is: Although SEO's may think it's all about back links and content, DON'T FORGET TO CHECK YOUR CODE!

Google And Twitter

2010-02-17T18:44:00.001+02:00

Hi Guys

So, have you guys seen the Social Media Revolution video. It’s a must see.
http://captivate-seo.blogspot.com/2010/02/social-media-marketing.html
This is the facts.
1. Social Media took over porn as the number 1 activity on the web
2. More people (Businesses) are concern about their social media stats than their ranking on Google .
3. 1 out of 9 couples married in the us last year met via social media!
4. Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months
5. 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
6. Google is now taking Live feeds from Twitter as rankings

You will see in this image:

How Google is pulling live feeds from Twitter. The top post is a post that I made in twitter. Searching in my twitter for SEO Specialist I came across the SEO Specialist list
Made a comment and at the same time I was checking Google to see if I rank for this keyword. This is what I found.

Steven tried this with the budget speech. At it seems like an update that Google made today!

This is just another BIG FOOT down on the internet that social media is no fad and no joke. Even Google trust LIVE social media updates to help people with their searches.

So for most of the very competitive searches there is this live feed now. What you post shows in Google !

You can try it out for yourself.
Search Google for a keyword and see if the life feed is showing. Then go to your twitter account and do the same search, where you will find the conversation. Do you update and go to Google and see your Tweets displaying there.!

NOW the big question comes again!
“ DO YOU LIKE WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY ABOUT YOUR BRAND ?? “

YOU BETT ER !

As from now and very soon in the near future ! You are going to have to like what they say!

This is word of mouth ! this is marketing ! this is Social Media Marketing !

This is wh ere you and me want to be! And every other Company in the world.!!!

This is live marketing !!!

People welcome to the

WORLD OF MOUTH !!!

This is Social Media !

FACEBOOK launches in South Africa

2010-02-05T16:59:00.000+02:00

Well, for those of you who made it to the Facebook/Habari Media Ad launch this week at the Venue in Melrose Arch, you'll know what I'm talking about.

It was amazing and inspiring. The fact that we're a part of this ever growing ever evolving online social media revolution is what excites me more than anything else in this world.

Let me just say this! It's the future of online marketing along with SEO, and incase you don't believe me, check out this video.

Google Favourite Places - Will this damage SEO business forever?

2010-01-21T14:59:00.000+02:00

A little over a month ago, Google announced that it was sending brick and mortar businesses decals to put on their windows, with bar codes that people can scan with their phones to bring up business listings.

These were made available to the businesses Google deemed "favorite places". Over 10,000 businesses in the US got them right off the bat, and Google will most likely expand that number in the future.

Now what's worrying is how they picked the TOP businesses:

The first hint that this is the case is the manner with which Google decided which companies would receive the decals. Their formula for the top 100,000+ Favorite Places was based largely on user interaction with local listings, including how many people searched for driving directions to a given location.

Some have argued that this may have unintended consequences: certain types of businesses are likely to receive a phone call from potential visitors rather than more-easily tracked user engagement with Google. Or, certain businesses’ clientele may be less keen on using Google Maps for directions. As a result, these businesses are unintentionally penalized by the company’s formula for PlaceRank. Like web search, the structure of the system may be limited in determining the actual popularity, community standing, or other relevant factors in determining the popularity of a given business.

Does this mean that a business with a code that is scanned more frequently will get page result preference for their search terms? Is this not a dangerous move for a "organic" / "non paid" non judgemental company like Google?

We'll have to see. What do you think?

2010 - Google Updates PR

2010-01-11T11:32:00.000+02:00

WELL!

Firstly let me start by wishing you all a happy 2010 and a very successful year to ALL.

To start the year off i thought it would e a good time to let you know about the latest Google PR update.

Just like they did at the start of 2009, Google has gifted website owners with a PageRank update to start the new year – welcome 2010.

For those of you who follow the PR indicator – chances are you’ll have noticed that your PageRank on Google’s toolbar has shifted – hopefully upwards. There was alot of HOOHAA about the the PR update around the middle of December but as of the 31st Dec 2009 – the reports started rolling in.

Whilst the results vary depending on the website and SEO activity over the past few months – “most” forum members seem to have seen some increases! The question we have is, why has their been an increase? Was this a little Christmas present from GOOGLE? And once again, the debate sparks up, DOES PR MEAN ANYTHING?
!
Funny thing I noticed. I got my send PR 5 site, but my rankings never shifted up. Anyone else see any good signs and changes?

Let us know.

Big TRAFFIC dips

2009-11-30T16:34:00.000+02:00

Anybody else notice a large dip in traffic over the last 2 weeks. I've seen a drop in overall traffic across all the sites we manage of 5 - 15%?

If anyone else has some insight, is it just November traffic that drops?

Let me know guys would be interesting to compare stats.

Traffic Fundi Search Team

Removing Spammy Links - Google's official statement

2009-10-28T20:42:00.000+02:00

This month, Google published an official statement about low quality links in their webmaster blog. For those of you who are new to SEO, there are various types of links that search engines consider when valuating the importance of your website but for the purpose of this article, we'll stick to 2 types;

1. High quality links (one way links from authoritative sites within the same industry, business you're in)

2. Poor quality, low quality links (one way links from either SPAMMY sites, or sites that just are nothings in the internet world)

According to Google, in order to reduce the "so called" negative effect that one way poor quality links have on your site, this is what you need to do:

1. Linking is a significant factor in Google's ranking algorithm but it is just one of many factors. Other factors are the content of your web pages, the site structure and the appearance of a keyword in the different web page elements.

2. If you have a high quality website and get links from spammy websites, try to contact the website owners and ask them to remove their links. Google will not help you with that.

3. It the webmasters of the spammy website are not cooperative, don't worry and focus on the links that are under your control.

4. Google recommends to optimize the many factors than influence indexing and ranking. The top 10 optimizer in our website optimization tool has been designed for exactly that task.It analyzes dozens of factors that influence the position of your website in the search results and it shows you what exactly you have to change so that Google will list your website on the first result page.

5. Google says that low-quality links rarely stand the test of time and that they may not be considered by Google's ranking algorithm.

6. If you want to make sure Google knows about the spammy links and is valuing them appropriately, you can report them to Google with their spam report or paid links report forms.

What are your thoughts on this?

Essential Steps to successful SEO - 301 Permanent Redirects!

2009-09-10T08:56:00.000+02:00

If there's one thing that makes me sad :(, it's seeing people loose their site rankings! I've seen it numerous times over the last couple of weeks and disaster recovery is not always a simple process so... I decided to start writing the "Essential steps to successful SEO" guide for those of you interested. If you're not, then try reading something on SA Property News ;-).

Something I do know, having been in the SEO game for a couple of years, is that getting your site to the TOP of the rankings comes with alot sweat, hard work & effort! The rewards are amazing & gratifying and seeing client climb from NOWHERE to SOMEWHERE is a feeling that's untouchable (I know what you're thinking, it comes close).

So, why 301 redirects? And more importantly why Permanent 301 redirects?

Here's a scenario! You have a website trafficfundi.com and it's been running for 5 years. It's also been generating 4000 hits a day, but your business decides to re brand and change company names to trafficwizard.com (think this sites available). One of things you need to do is a website redesign and restructuring, which also means moving the site to a new domain.

You spend R300 000 on a website(ripped off once again) and switch everything over to the new domain (At this point you've totally forgotten about marketing or haven't even thought about it yet). 3 weeks later, you're getting 4 hits a day and you can't understand why, so you phone the SEO guru's and bitch about spending R10 000 to fix it!

So here's where 301 redirects (The essential SEO tip) come into play.

If you do a "site:www.trafficfundi.com" in Google, it will tell you how many pages you have indexed in the Google index. When you move your website to the new domain, all those pages listed in the Google index HAVE TO MOVE ACROSS. If you don't move them across, or you don't redirect those pages to the new domain name, you're going to get a error page, saying sorry this page no longer exists! This means:

1. You're going to loose all the PR that those pages had
2. All the links (whether you built the links or not) no longer have any validation. This alone means that people linking to your old site are going to get penalised for linking to a broken link.
So think about all the other sites you're damaging in the process!!!
3. You're going to P!$$ Google off!

So ensure, that if you delete a page (you think about who is linking to that page - and whether or not THEY need it! A sure way to Successful SEO: Always always always use 301 PERMANENT redirects when moving sites or pages!

Thanks to Bruce Clay for an awesome page on how to 301 permanent redirect anything!!!!http://www.bruceclay.co.za/newsletter/0405/redirects.html

Internetix Conference - Jhb 2009

2009-08-04T13:46:00.000+02:00

Jhb Internetix 2009 was by far the best launch TrafficFundi could have hoped for.

With a turnout of over 2000 people at this years Internetix conference hosted by Internet Solutions, it was a major success and one too keep an eye out for in the near future.

Some of the guest speakers included:

Tyer Reed - Founder of TinyImpact
Justin Spratt
Roy Blumenthall
Mark Gevisser

The hot topic of the year this year seemed to have focused around Social Media Marketing, using the likes of Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools to your advantage in the online space and VOIP.

It appears as though the aim of most technological companies is to move all communication, whether it be landlines or cellphones to VOIP. Cheaper, more cost effective communication networks.

The sponsors this year included:

Attix 5
Microsoft
NeoTel
Blackberry
Cisco
Dimension Data
Seacom

Apologies if I've left anyone out but I seemed to have misplaced my pamphlet!!

After a 12 hour session of selling Search engine optimisation and digital marketing to the masses, TrafficFundi retired to the all night pub & dinner with a great rounding off by the South African rock band "Watershed".

All in all a very successful day!

Hopefully the TrafficFundi TEAM did their part in getting our name out there.

Thanks to all of you - Randy Ronnie, Sexy Steve, Jumpin Justin, Aaard workin Adi, Crazy Chris, Toy toy Thuli and the SPANKERS - who've assisted in making TrafficFundi a reality.

WATCH THIS SPACE!

Below I've added some photo's of the TrafficFundi team @ Internetix.

How to go about "Tweeting"

2009-07-26T16:24:00.001+02:00

In the social networking world, Twitter is the latest tool to voice your current activities and opinions. However, the benefits of using Twitter extend far beyond personal chit-chat or “tweeting” and can be a useful way to market your business, and to guarantee that your company has a say in the realm of micro-blogging.

Micro-blogging, to clarify, is yet way to communicate online on an immediate basis. For users of Facebook, status updates, or any answer to the question “what are you doing right now?” qualifies as micro-blogging. This social networking development means that valuable snippets of information, such as websites, events and news can be shared constantly to a global Twitter network.

If you have already taken the time out to set up a Twitter profile, chances are you already know the benefits of Twitter-networking. However, if you are struggling to find friends on Twitter, or interesting profiles to follow, here are some helpful hints from Mack Collier, who wrote an article entitled “So How do you Find People on Twitter?” for http://www.searchengineguide.com/.

According to Collier, finding friends on Twitter is as simple as searching for people by name, location or topic, for example “search marketing”, or any other topic that interests you. Collier also suggests using the Twitter Pack's wiki, which allows you to find companies with a presence on Twitter, or Tweetscan. Tweetscan also allows for users to search for any profiles of interest, and a means for others to reply to your Twitter profile.

Collier also suggests that finding people can also be a case of just following your friend’s friends, by keeping track of any conversations between them. Therefore, by being receptive to ongoing conversations in the Twitter-sphere you can enhance your social networking experience, and benefit from your profile's exposure in the micro-blogging sphere.

References:

Collier, M. (2008) “So How Do You Find People on Twitter?” Available at: searchengineguide.com [Accessed 25 March 2009]

PageRank Sculpting

2009-07-22T07:37:00.001+02:00

Google has changed the way it uses the nofollow attribute. According to Matt Cutts, the new changes will affect the way people have previously used the nofollow attribute. So the question is, does nofollow have any benefit at all?

What is PageRank sculpting?

PageRank sculpting is the attempt to control the link power of one website page to another page of the same website. Pagerank flows from one page to another, with inbound links to the page adding to PR and outbound links 'leaking' it. By structuring the links on your pages, you can have influence on how the PR is spread on your site. This is called PageRank Sculpting.

Many people believed that by using nofollow attributes within internal links on your site, you could push more page rank to a single page and not pass page rank to the other page.

Well, for those of you who were using it, I suggest it's time to change your SEO strategies.
For more information please read Matt Cutts article on changes according to Google:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

2009-07-22T07:37:00.000+02:00

Bing.com

2009-06-19T09:51:00.000+02:00

Came across this little ad. Seems as though Bing.com is on a massive advertising punt to overthrow the Google BOMB. Wonder if it's going to work.

If anyone's had any good experiences with BING.com or wants to share their thoughts, please do.

BING.com is it the new Google? For those of you wanting additional information on Bing.com read all about it: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30983177/

Let the traffic begin!

2009-06-18T16:13:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the official opening of the TRAFFICFUNDI blog. I am very pleased to say that in no less that 30 mins, I've managed to setup a BLOGGER account and find a relatively nice template to make this blog stand out a little more than your usual run of the mill site that pops up every 3 seconds.

For those of you wanting to find out more about TRAFFICFUNDI, who we are and what we do. Stick around. Join our TWITTER group, MEET us on Facebook and MINGLE with us on Linkedin.

If you're into Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Advertising and Entrepreneurship beyond your wildest dreams, then you've come to the right place.

Our official site is http://www.trafficfundi.com/ but as a result of plenty graphics, logo's, designs currently flying around, the site has not yet been officially launched.

Stay Tuned.