Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit

by Craig Bailey on February 9, 2010

in Microsoft, SEO

Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit If you are interested in knowing a little more about the IIS SEO Toolkit (I give it the big thumbs up), I’ve written a little review over on my XEN SEO blog (note I originally wrote the review based on the beta version, but it has been updated based on the release in mid Jan). Plus, as mentioned in my previous post, I also discussed the SEO Toolkit with Andrew and Michael on Frankly Speaking last week.

And if you are in Sydney tomorrow (Wed 10 Feb), I’ll be presenting on it at the Sydney Windows User Group (here’s the SWUG post with details). Tomorrow will be a big night – its the first SWUG meeting for 2010 and Nick (@aussienick) has some great prizes lined up including a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. He’s also presenting on the latest Entertainment Technology news straight from the horses mouth – Robbie Bach that is :-)   – and an update on the latest Microsoft product releases. See you there! You can RSVP for the meeting here.

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Frankly Speaking on SEO

by Craig Bailey on February 7, 2010

in Microsoft, SEO

Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit

A big thank you to Andrew Coates and Michael Kordahi for having me on their Frankly Speaking podcast to chat about SEO. You can listen to it here.

Frankly Speaking (for those who aren’t yet familiar with it) is an Australian Tech podcast (or perhaps even an Australian Microsoft podcast) and listening to it should be on your weekly To-Do list.

SEO is a big topic of course so we only scratched the surface, but here’s a summary and links to the various items we touched on:

Have a listen here.

BTW I wanted to apologise for the volume of my voice being low at times. This is due to one of the following reasons (I’ll let you decide which):

  1. I’m really shy and talk softly
  2. I have bad microphone technique and even though Michael spent a while giving me tips at the start and then repeatedly gesturing for me to speak closer to the microphone throughout the interview I kept moving away from it.

In any case, they did a great job boosting up my volume in the final cut. Thanks guys.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, congrats to Christian Longstaff on baby number #2 arriving this week.

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Putting the boot in to Microsoft

February 5, 2010Microsoft
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Apparently February is ‘put the boot into Microsoft’ month. I must have missed the memo. Or perhaps it only got sent to the ex-senior-management@microsoft.com mailing list. In any case it’s been good to see that some have taken the directive to heart. Oh hang on, cancel that – there actually hasn’t been much said [...]

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Search as an Experience

February 4, 2010Bing
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It’s easy to think of search (ie searching on Google or Bing) as simply a (boring) research activity. And in turn, to think that all the innovation in search is about providing a ‘better’ result. But what does ‘better’ mean when it comes to search?
Joseph Pine’s TED talk on what consumers want is a good [...]

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Search market increases in 2009

February 2, 2010SEO
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It should come as no surprise that search engine usage is increasing – but perhaps the rate of increase will (come as a surprise that is). comScore figures released this month show that search usage (note: includes search engines and related properties)  increased by 46% in 2009. Google sites were in the order of [...]

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Coding Kihon

February 2, 2010Developers
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I loved Sara Ford’s thoughts about coding katas. Yes, most coding should really be referred to as coding kihon (as you practice daily), and coding kumite when you’re deep in a project. Nice one. I also enjoyed Steve Andrew’s post on Shotokan Development that Sara linked to.
Oh, and good luck in your new [...]

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Links: TFS + Git, .NET Performance Testing

January 30, 2010Microsoft
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Some interesting resources noticed recently.
Richard Banks has a writeup about getting Git and TFS Working Together.
Meanwhile Paul Glavich has a nice 180 page free download about .net performance testing and optimisation. It’s part 1 of a new book he’s writing. Download available here.

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Bing Finance and Data

January 28, 2010Google
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Bing’s new Finance updates are nice. I guess. Here’s a search for ‘msft’ on Bing.
 
Click on the Investor Data button and you’ll see this:

Yep, that’s a charting error. But let’s assume that little issue will be resolved soon (and it may even be something on my machine – there’s a bit of beta [...]

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Angus McDonald on User Stories

January 28, 2010Elcom
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I really liked Angus’ recent post on User Stories (Wikipedia link about User Stories here) and how he grapples with question of whether they are even needed. User Stories feature prominently in the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 releases, so you’re sure to hear more about them (in the Microsoft space that is).
The value in Angus’ [...]

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Azure in Australia

January 27, 2010Azure
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I’m looking forward to the upcoming Azure launch in Australia, if for no other reason than finally learning what the proper pronunciation is Is it a-zue-er or is it azsh-or ?
Tuesday Feb 23 in Sydney is the official launch. Mark your calendars!
But for added goodness, get along to a user group [...]

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Australian ALM Conference

January 18, 2010Microsoft
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Good to see that the new dates for the Australian ALM Conference have been confirmed (as per organizer Anthony Borton’s blog post on Monday).
It’s now set for 13-14 April 2010 at Luna Park (in Sydney).
The conference has a great line up of sessions and speakers, and will be the official Australian launch of Visual [...]

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New Years Resolutions – Link More

December 23, 2009SEO
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Yes, it’s a little early, but I thought I’d get in with my blogging resolution for next year. I’m going to link more.
I used to write a lot of shorter link posts here pointing to sites, news and blogs I thought useful. But with social networking popularity and Twitter in particular most of my [...]

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adCenter versus AdWords

December 22, 2009Google
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The true test of any company, product or service is in their Christmas message right? (I’m joking).
So let’s consider how Microsoft adCenter and Google AdWords stack up against each other. I spend a fair bit of money with each, so it’s reasonable to expect something useful in the Inbox at Christmas time.
Microsoft AdCenter
First up, [...]

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Frankly Speaking – Microsoft Podcast

December 22, 2009Microsoft
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I can’t be any clearer: You must listen to this podcast.
Frankly Speaking is the new weekly (kinda) podcast from Andrew Coates and Michael Kordahi. The guys have hit their 6th podcast (in less than 6 weeks!) so they are definitely on a roll.
They cover technology news, Microsoft news and conduct interviews with all kinds [...]

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Microsoft Visual Studio and Quality

December 20, 2009Visual Studio
Visual Studio 2010

I was pleased to see Somasegar’s blog post last week announcing that the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 release is being delayed. The reason: quality. The Beta 2, whilst good, isn’t up to the standard they wanted in order to meet the current release schedule. Thus, they’re going to extend the beta period in [...]

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The Problem with Internet Explorer

November 26, 2009Microsoft
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After watching the second keynote from PDC last week, I’m now puzzled by Microsoft. In the first keynote, they seemed to get everything right. Embrace open source. Embrace cloud. Embrace what their customers want and need. Embrace strategic change. 
In the second keynote they seemed to do the opposite. Steven Sinofsky, in a somewhat self-congratulatory [...]

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Why Microsoft needs to ‘own’ WordPress

November 19, 2009Azure
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WordPress running on Windows Azure.
You can see it announced, discussed and showcased from the 23:56 minute mark in Ray Ozzie’s opening keynote at Microsoft PDC this week:

The reason this is so significant is because it represents an important strategic shift in the ‘yes we do support open source’ talk that Microsoft has been [...]

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Shower Thinking

November 9, 2009Personal
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UPDATE: I’ve been using the AquaNotes Aqua Notepad for the last few weeks, and highly recommend it!
I think best when I’m standing. And particularly well when I’m having a shower. In fact – but don’t picture this – some of my best ideas have been captured only as a result of me rushing out of [...]

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How to explain SEO to cynical developers

November 6, 2009Search
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Have you ever been involved in the hiring process for your company or team?
If you have, then perhaps you’ve been astounded at how terrible the CVs of many highly intelligent candidates you interviewed were. Senior developers who excelled at their craft, were recognised as brilliant by their peers, and yet, couldn’t seem to put [...]

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SBTUG: Social Networking and Chocolate

November 5, 2009Community
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If you’re like me, then you probably cringe when you see people referring to themselves as a ‘social media strategist’.
And if they point to Gary Vaynerchuk as their main example of why you too should embrace social media then I really despair. Too often it seems, we’re told of the wonderful success stories, with [...]

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