Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez is the Director of Search Strategies for 1st Query, an Internet Marketing firm offering organic SEO and PPC services.

Meta tags DO matter — get it right for a change

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 13, 2008 in Seo Myths

The latest legal news roundup on SEOmoz includes an erroneous statement. Sarah Bird, Esquire writes about meta tags: “While not valuable for rankings, metatags (at least title and descriptive tags), are important for SEM. “.
Bullshit.
I don’t expect attorneys to understand search engine optimization as well as I do but when you make a statement […]

Google adds a third index for site search

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 12, 2008 in Intermediate SEO

Matt Cutts mentioned on his blog that Google Custom Search Engines now have a special site search index.
This seems like a major step in the right direction as site search has been a real issue for me. Site search is the third navigation tool that every Web site designer (and SEO) MUST take into […]

Brief hiatus

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 8, 2008 in General

In case it hasn’t become obvious, I am swamped and just too busy to write new posts this week.
I’ll get back on track with some SEO Theory posts starting again Monday. Have a good weekend.

Link building versus search engine optimization

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 7, 2008 in Link Theory

In case you missed the online reputation management asssociation post, there’s a link for you.
Debra Mastaler wrote about the May 2008 Virginia SEO meetup yesterday and I read with interest the couple of paragraphs beginning with “It was really surprising to hear the diversity in the answers to ‘what’s working in link building’”.
I was not […]

Online Reputation Management Association

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 5, 2008 in Advanced SEO

When you read the headline “online reputation management association”, what do you think first? What do you expect this article to be about?
There is not yet a definitive meaning that the expression online reputation management association confers, but it would be simple enough to create more than one definitive meaning (note: to do so […]

Ballmer blinks but search still suffers

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 4, 2008 in General

Now that Steve Ballmer has thrown in the towel and given up on buying Yahoo!, people are free to engage in artisitic analysis about what might have happened. Based on Ballmer’s statements in various statements to Yahoo!, Microsoft employees, and the media, it appears that all he really wanted was to capture Yahoo!’s PPC […]

Systems-based Search Engine Optimization

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 2, 2008 in Advanced SEO

There are many definitions for the word “system”. When I was in technical school many years ago, our Systems Analysis class was provided a definition similar to a system is a collection of hardware, software (rules governing how the hardware functions), and people (who use the hardware) that work together to combine a specific […]

Jason Gambert and SEO

Posted by Michael Martinez on May 1, 2008 in General

What follows is my own personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer, co-workers, or associates.
Jason Gambert wants to own the SEO trademark for our own good, to prevent “bad” SEOs from tarnishing the reputation of the industry. Because they disagree with his methods, many SEOs refuse to link directly […]

How competitive is a query space?

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 30, 2008 in Intermediate SEO

How competitive is a query? When SEOs want to piss on each others’ parades, the first words out of their mouths are often along the lines of: “That’s not a competitive query”. That usually means, “I don’t compete in that query so it doesn’t mean anything to me so I’m going to be […]

SEO Glossary updated

Posted by Michael Martinez on April 29, 2008 in General

I have updated the SEO Theory SEO Glossary with new definitions (culled from more recent SEO Theory posts). I’ve also standardized the entry formats although I’ve left the commentary in place. I’ll probably come back and clean up the commentary in the next update. You’ll see I added a section on search […]

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