Cayman SEO

A life in a day is a movie that was produced by the Scott brothers and Directed by Kevin Macdonald, an Oscar-winning director. Whats most interesting about it are the cast members - all video was submitted by Users from Youtube.  Everyone was instructed to submit a video of themselves on that particular day, 24th July, 2010 and over 80,000 people did.   Here is the 90 minute video... The movie is being promoted by Google on December 5, 2011 Screen Shot of Google promoting 'Life in a Day'  In as much as I think the movie had an appealing concept what strikes me most is that Google is promoting the youtube link on its homepage.  And as soon as you click on the link, the obvious redesign on youtube is apparent. Google is setting the stage for Google TV or the relaunch of it.  When Google first launched Google TV - the mistake it made was trying to copy its 'search' based algorithms that did not work for video ( Link to 10 Google Products that fail...

Freshness Upate (reminds me of Mentos) Mid November 2011, Google announced its most recent algorithm changes .  But my question is how does it affect websites in the Cayman Islands?  Well, here is a breakdown... The first change is in Cross-language information retrieval - we are not affected at all because we are an English speaking nation.  All our websites are already in english and do not need further translation.   The second change is in snippets.  (the description of your results page) This would affect your website because Google is now going to use relevant text on your content pages vs. using either your header or menu content.  The solution for this is to have relevant robust content on each page and not to focus on Menus or Headers as much. Less Emphasis on boilerplate anchors - This will probably affect your website if you have multiple links pointing to it using boilerplate anchors.  I just remove the boilerplate-like ancho...

As users, we have been very demanding of Google.  We have expected them to ensure that we find what we are looking for within split seconds of clicking on the search bar.  And for the most part, Google has delivered.  There are of course  big issues that have happened  and other issues that  continue to happen and thats only because no one company is perfect. If I didn't have a background in website development, I would probably be taking Google for granted.  If my professional career did not involve a deep understanding of all of Google's algorithms - I possibly wouldn't care about their history or their future.  I would probably be more excited about Voice Search  and the Apple iPhone 4s' Siri Personal Assistant . Here is a video that was recently released by Google on Youtube and it talks about their evolution.  Its a nice look back at what they have achieved and what they want to achieve in the future.  Its very inspirin...

As a Search Engine Optimization Expert for the Cayman Islands, it is important for me to know where web searches are coming from at any time of the year and this hasn't changed at all in the past couple of years, did you know that most of the searches for the major keywords for "Cayman Islands", "Cayman" and "Grand Cayman" originate from Jamaica? Here is a Screen shot from Google Insights:  Searches from 2004 for "Cayman Islands" are predominantly coming from the Cayman Islands The time range of these results are searches done from 2004 to the present time.  A far second are searches for the same keyword, "Cayman Islands" being done in Trinidad and Tobago and an even further third are searches being done in the United States.   There is some variance with the locations of the searches being done in the last 12 months but Jamaica is still predominantly where the searches are coming from, here are the rest of the countries searc...

I have been in the Search Engine Optimization business for the last 6 years in the Cayman Islands.   For the last 4 years I have been the Founder, General Manager, Accounts Person, Sales Person, Cleaning Person, Customer Service Person and every other person imaginable. From a staff of 1 person (myself), Easywebsites has grown into a company of 15 employees (11 full time employees).  I have also personally had to transition from being an employee to becoming a business owner.  I haven't fully transitioned yet and everyday I am learning something new.     One of the biggest challenges is becoming a Sales Person, selling Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is a big challenge because unlike other products and services, SEO is not a one time service.  SEO Services are consultative in nature and it would be very difficult to teach anyone how to sell a service that took me over 5 years to completely understand.   Selling a service that requires a compre...

I am very proud to say that one of our clients, www.caymanluxuryproperty.com is now number 4 on Google for the keyword, " Cayman Islands Real Estate " Now, some of you might ask, well, if you know what you are doing then they should be no. 1 - and you would be right, I agree.  But there are certain limitations to an SEO contract and one of them would be budget limitations.  Given the resources at my disposal and knowing  our online competitors are, I am so proud to be no. 4 for such a competitive industry.  We just beat www.cireba.com (the association website with a kazillion links pointing to it) and www.caymanlundteam.com (the top remax agent in the Cayman Islands). The only 3 companies ahead of Cayman Luxury Property for the keyword, Cayman Islands real estate are top 3 franchises for Coldwell Banker, Remax and Century 21.  These domains have been around awhile and they have a kazillion real estate related links pointing to them both locally and Internati...

Did you know that if you belonged to the restaurant industry and that if you optimized your website properly, you are looking at over 10,000 searches per month?  Thats 10,000 possible customers. I hear it all the time, "business is slow" and if I didn't do a proper keyword search, that might possibly be true but finding the proper keywords and structuring a website using web-based standards could very prove you wrong.  Yes, business is slower but more importantly, there is business!  There is alot of searches for "restaurants" in Grand Cayman. Enabling your business to attract current online trends and to show up across a broad range of online presence including social media is whats needs to be done so that your business will not suffer or close, like what has happened to some of restaurants in Grand Cayman including local favorites like Senior Frogs and Bacchus. A simple combination of SEO and Social Media strategies can easily help your website get to the...

There is only one property rental website in the Cayman Islands that shows up on the first page of over 800 search terms and no, it doesn't belong to any of the big real estate companies.  Sorry.  In as much a real estate companies have more experience renting property, we, as search engine experts simply have that edge in creating websites. The website was built because of the strong demand of online searches and simply no relevant website showing up for these searches, it was an opportunity that we saw, realized and ran with and now, we are proud, oh so proud to announce to the world that www.cayman4rent.com is the most visible property rental website (both long term and short term) in the country.  Yippeedoodee!  Thank you to users who have used it and to our partner's who have agreed to provide us with their listings.  In no particular order you will find listings of these progressive rental companies on www.cayman4rent.com: Long Term Property Rentals Ra...

We have had quite a few clients who have come in for Social Media Training and the biggest objective that I have heard is this, (paraphrasing) "I don't see how facebook or twitter can increase our sales."  The second biggest objective is this (paraphrasing) "I am not comfortable sharing my personal information online for all the world to see." I am going to answer both questions on this blog entry.  Please allow me some leg room in explaining how social media has changed the landscape in which we do business. How can Facebook or Twitter increase our Sales? In an impromptu training session I drew a chart, which I have inserted here: The broken line in the middle represents the changing time. Below the line is the old way customers found your business.  TV, Radio and Print were mediums we used for advertising and customers would either call us, fax us or email us to communicate their needs/requirements.  There are other facets to advertising your busines...

We just moved offices to Regency Court on West Bay Road and of course the first thing that you have to do when you move offices is ensure that all Google,  Bing and Facebook Maps are updated.   I realized somewhere in the process that not alot of people update their Google, Bing and Facebook Maps so I decided to blog about how to ensure your business address is on all maps. How to Insert your business on Google Maps Go to  http://maps.google.com/ Sign In or Sign up for Google On the search field type "Cayman Islands"  Move/drag the Map with your mouse or mouse pad until you get to the correct location of your office Click on "edit" which is located on the top right part of the map These editing tools will appear on the top of the map, click on "Add" and a field will appear asking if what type of location you are adding, choose your type of business and then red (red-ish) push-pin looking button will appear. Drag and drop that to your location. A m...

Just a very quick update on TLD's that address the geo targeting tool that Google released, or is it unleashed.  One of our internal website www.cayman4rent.ky already had a page rank of 3 and was very visible for online searches for most rental keywords in the Cayman Islands and it its domain age was not even 1 year old.  When google inserted the fixed geo-targeting location on Web Master Tools it was a wake up call of sorts. I quickly read up on what this could possible mean to the .ky and realized very quickly that Google was going to remove the .ky from its US data centres.  I wrote a blog regarding TLDs back in February and you can read it here .  On that blog I showed the fact that www.cayman4rent.ky was showing up for major keywords such as "grand cayman rentals" in the Cayman Islands but it was not showing up for the same keyword in the United States.  I was crushed really because it mean that I would have to give it a neutral TLD such as a .com for it...

The Google Panda/Farmer update has been quite tedious for a lot of media companies out there, including ours and we are still in the midst of figuring out how affiliate travel sites have been affected.  It is with caution that we have removed affiliate travel sites from our flagship websites such as www.destination.ky and we are going to delay the expedia affiliate for www.cayman.com.ky for the same reason.  More updates on the Google Panda algorithm as we continue to test the waters. Without further adieu, here is a list of keywords that are being searched for at this precise moment.  Please note, as always that this result is from Google Adwords Keyword tool and for a more precise keyword search you will need to use more than this but you can use this tool to source our your root keywords. 1. cayman 2. cayman island 3. grand cayman 4. cayman grand 5. cayman islands 6. island cayman 7. grand cayman islands 8. grand cayman cayman islands 9. cayman islands gran...

Just an update on my previous blog about the TLD (Top Level Domain) wars .  Last week we redirected www.cayman4rent.ky to www.cayman4rent.com because we were not showing up for local searches in the United States and Canada and the website was on the first page for major keyword 'grand cayman rentals' if searched in the Cayman Islands.  But if a user was searching in the US or Canada, they would not find us on the first page. So we did a few things to the website... 1.  We redirected www.cayman4rent.ky to www.cayman4rent.com 2.  We changed the geographical target to "United States" on Webmaster Tools 3.  We did a 301 redirect to all the existing URLs to the new URLs. We are very happy to announce that even if we are still not showing up for the major keyword, 'grand cayman rentals' yet, we are now showing up for 'grand cayman rental' (singular) on # 6 (right under tripadvisor) and we are actually showing up in Canada on #4 for that keyword as we...

A few years ago, a client asked me if it mattered whether the TLD (top level domain) of a website was a .com or a .ky for Search Engine Optimization and a couple of years ago, I answered 'No, it doesn't matter' because there were several factors that determined search results and not just the TLD.  Also it is important to note that Google's local search wasn't as strong as it is now.  The TLD informed Google where your site was located and that was a good thing. Things have changed though and because we are a tourism destination and because we need to attract users in the US before they come to the islands, my answer then is wrong now. Yes it matters depending on your target market's geographical location.  If your business is in the Cayman Islands and caters to users in the Cayman Islands ONLY then it still doesn't matter - use the .ky because its FREE and available to everyone on island.  But if your business objective is to attract customers before ...

I just read about this on Danny Sullivan's blog and then followed the link going to the official Google blog and both times, I couldn't believe what I was reading.  But at the same time, its hard not to believe it.  So here is the scoop:  Google's team created fake searches like ' hiybbprqag ' - hiybb-what?  Yes. That word that's not a word. It didn't mean anything but the assumption is that when you search for a term that doesn't really mean anything, the search results of two different (rival) search engines differs.  It is a solid a assumption since both search algorithms supposedly operate separately.  But more than that, the Google Team inserted websites that had nothing to do with the search query.  They tested these synthetic queries and inserted websites that had no relevance to the search term whatsoever.  (gasp!) Google returning wrong results!  Surprise, surprise! Google and Bing had the exact same results.  The Google t...