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Back in March we wrote a blog post regarding one of our current SEO R&D projects, HD Movie Trailers Online. It’s been about 6 months, so it would be timely to post an update on the progress of that project.

First, we have taken a minimalistic approach to the search engine optimization of this site. We’re doing about as much SEO as the average blogger or website owner might do, except we are armed with a little understanding of how the search engines work. We don’t have any overly grand expectations that we will dominate the niche, but we want to be competitive. We will also gain a better understanding of how we should sell our SEO services to our clients.

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If you will remember a few months ago I dispelled the importance of Google’s PageRank in organic search engine ranking position (SERP). The argument has been blazing for a while now, but I think that most professional search engine optimization (SEO) experts now agree with my side of the argument. PageRank just doesn’t mean that much anymore. Now what?

You wonder where you should spend your efforts to get those highly prized organic SERPs. Just like SEO, the answer is complicated yet simple. When you get right down to it, SEO is an exercise in common sense. And so is the answer to what has replaced PageRank as one of the most important factors in high rankings. We’ll call it Google Trust and Authority.

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The foundation for any search engine optimization strategy is developing a list of relevant keywords or relevant keyword phrases that searchers type into search engines to find a Web site like yours. Not all keywords are created equal, so we need to set some criteria for the types of keywords that we want to target in a SEO campaign.

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Robert B. Mullins a prolific songwriter and multi-instrumentalist approached Abraxas to develop a straight forward Web site with the primary goal of getting his songs in more ears while taking very little effort to maintain and update. Robert is more interested in writing and recording songs than being a Webmaster. We took the challenge.

Understanding that Robert wanted to spend as little time as possible dealing with uploading and editing Web pages we developed Robert B. Mullins – Songs & Music, a simple WordPress site with a few features customized for his purposes:

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At Abraxas we spend a fair amount of time doing research & development projects. R&D is a big part of keeping up with the latest SEO trends and concepts as well keeping our Web design and development up to par. While we won’t blog about all of our R&D nor will we reveal every detail about our experiments and findings, we do feel that it is important to discuss some of the aspects of our more public oriented projects.

Our latest project is a Web site called HD Movie Trailers Online. This is the sister project to the music video site we discussed previously. This project has a similar approach, but with different goals and using some different SEO techniques. Not only are we trying some different (or at least refined) SEO techniques we took the opportunity to explore automation and simplification on the back end for CMS (content management system).

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In the first weeks of January, Google began rolling out a new and more power version of their search engine, code named “Caffeine”.

Is your Web site up to snuff? Has your Web design company or developer taking into consideration the future of Google search and SEO in general? If you are using the World Wide Web as part of your business strategy or if you are trying to figure out how to incorporate a Web strategy, understanding what “Caffeine” has in store is important.

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As a Web designer and developer, Firefox has become my Web browser of choice. I’m not using Firefox because I hate Internet Explorer or because Google Chrome is Safari based. I use Firefox because it offers the best tools for my job of designing and developing search engine friendly Web sites. One of the reasons is that Firefox has a plugin interface which allows software developers to write “mini applications” that work within Firefox.

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2010 looks like it will be a big year for SEO (search engine optimization) with a lot of the web trends of 2009 such as Twitter making its way into SEO. 2009 seemed to be a dismal year for most every industry including SEO. With the US economy picking up and the ever increasing awareness of technology, we are looking forward to leaving 2009 behind us.

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One of our current projects at Abraxas Web Design & SEO is Web design and development for Mike Collins & Associates. Mike Collins & Associates  is one of the larger IT firms in Chattanooga with offices in Chattanooga, Nashville, and Knoxville.

Mike Collins & Associates (MCA) came to us asking for a new Web design that would both help them build on their current client base and be used as a resource for their existing clients. MCA’s previous design was done in-house and based on templates. They wanted to go beyond the original design with a more compelling look.

After meeting with the “stakeholders”, we began thinking about the Web design that MCA needed. Today we have a total of three mockups that we have presented. The first mockup is a very clean, straight forward design that focuses on information. The second mockup again straight forward and clean but put more emphasis and graphics and animation to draw the user to the information. The third mockup is a combination of the first two. These mockups were rendered with Adobe Photoshop.

[View with PicLens]

This article continues from SEO Tip: Improve PageRank (Google PageRank Demystified…Sorta) Part 2. As with any of our articles you should be aware of the disclaimer:

Disclaimer: Chattanooga Search Marketing Blog features SEO and Web Design tips for the benefit of our readers and clients in order for them to understand what we do and help them with their own SEO projects. As with any SEO technique, these techniques and tips are based on our experience and are our best opinions. Our opinion may change and this tip may still exist.

It has been a little while since I started this series of articles. I expect that everyone is waiting on pins and needles to learn more. After I bashed PageRank in the previous installment; you are wondering why you should read this. Honestly, PageRank isn’t going to help you much with SERPs.

Here’s what it will do for you: PageRank is Google’s way of measuring how important your Web site (actually Web page) is to the overall World Wide Web. If you have a PageRank of 10, then you must be very important. If you have 0 PageRank, then you aren’t important at all. Most Web site home pages have a PageRank of 3 or lower. Depending on what your PageRank is that is how Google treats you – but not in SERPs.

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