Well that’s it, another year has come and gone, and what a year it’s been for all those involved in Search! Panda kills websites from February, Google removing our precious keyword data and the demise of Yahoo Site Explorer . Sounds pretty grim, however I personally think this year has been transformational from a Search point of view, a lot of the theories spoken of in 2010 have now been confirmed, social signals are playing a bigger role, Places optimisation becomes more important, Google + attempting to take on Facebook, the list really does go on.

In my opinion 2011 has created more opportunities within the industry, sure it’s pushed us out of our comfort zone, but that’s a good thing. As SEO’s we now have to become more focussed on page structure, content quality, click through rates, bounce rates, trust factors and developing a site into a brand not just building anchor text links.

Yes Google still has quite a way to go in terms of search quality but I think 2011 has seen positive changes in the SERP’s, changes that make the job an SEO more challenging and diverse.

So with all this in mind I thought it appropriate to put together a roundup of all the key elements that have made this year what it is, in my opinion.

Let me warn you before you continue, this is going to be a monster, I’m talking 3000 words +, please do not go any further without a warm drink and a few snacks.

The problem with detailing such a busy year is deciding where to start, so much has happened, however I’ll follow some advice from one of my favourite reads this year ‘Eat That Frog‘ and, well, eat that frog/panda!

The Panda Bomb!!

So, way back at the beginning of the year Google released a post about a new update that had rolled out across US sites.

If your traffic looked like this;

…You were no doubt hit by Panda and saw anywhere between a 15% – 60% drop in organic traffic from Google.

This update was designed to weed out sites with low quality pages, however what defines ‘low quality’ is still very much up for debate, but here are some general guidelines.

> Keep content as unique as possible

> Try to add value instead of rewriting the news

> Delete old content that adds no value

> Increase social signals and trust

> Focus on usability and page structure

> Minimise ads and affiliate links above the fold

The update soon hit the UK and the rest of Europe during April/May leaving many webmasters wondering what was going on, the confusion was based on a couple of simple misconceptions; many thought Panda was set to destroy websites with duplicate content, so article directories and scraper sites, right? The problem was this was hitting websites that were in no way duplications, not internally or externally, so what was going on? The second misconception was that this was set to hit on a page level, so if you had some poor pages somewhere on your site, then these would be dropped. However, Panda was based on a threshold, if your website tipped it then your whole site was hit, not just the crap scraped articles from 2005.

The truth is Google only wants to deliver the most relevant, most trusted, most authoritative results. Panda analyses pages based on the above guidelines and decides where domains should rank depending on how they meet these guidelines.

In May I wrote about City Visitor and how they had been badly hit by Panda, this was based on referrals some of our clients get from them:

City visitor is basically a directory with very little in terms of content, why would Google rank this when they believe they do a better job with their places listings?

My guess is this was tactical, but it gives some insight into what types of content Google considers to be ‘low quality’.

As SEO’s we need to understand these factors so we can best advise clients on how to structure the pages of their site, to convince them to invest in content and to help them design pages that will not only attract search traffic, but that also add value to the web as a whole.

The JC Penney Disaster!

Towards the beginning of the year someone thought it would be a good idea to ‘out’ JC Penney for link spam, the story went up on the New York Times, and the same day Google cracked them with a penalty across all page levels.

Now this was unlucky for JC Penney, had they been a smaller brand it wouldn’t have been front page news and Google would have unlikely taken any action, however this was a warning to all major brands out there who are actively utilising SEO as a marketing channel. It’s surprising how many brands are running the risk of being called out because they won’t give SEO the investment it needs, instead they pay peanuts and get a load of crap paid links.

The mistake JC Penney made was stupid, the links were in no way defensible, but the worst thing about the whole affair was that they paid an agency to go out there and do it!

Big brands need to take SEO seriously, invest in getting the right things implemented by the right people; short cuts simply aren’t acceptable when you are under the microscope.

Social Signals Really Work..

In late 2010 we found that tweets which linked through to pages seemed to give a ranking boost, we utilised it well to influence rankings over a number of core terms with nearly a 100% success rate. This year we are seeing more and more that socially active domains are able to rank much faster and much easier than sites that don’t. It’s still a very difficult thing to measure and allocating budget to it is a challenge, but building social referrals and mentions to the pages of your site is a sign of trust and does have a positive impact on your overall SEO strategy.

One thing we know for sure, Google wants to give weight to social and referral signals;

“Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1′s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality. For +1′s, as with any new ranking signal, we are starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.”

This statement is specifically referring to +1′s, however we have seen positive impacts from Stumble, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and other social sites.

How these signals work is still not fully understood, there was talk of a ‘socialrank’ around a year ago, however nothing more has been confirmed on the exact signals. Personally, in my opinion, social signals seem to be noise signals, it’s a quantity game, the more people recommend the better the results.

Having said that I do believe authority and relevance will work its way into the mix, how popular are the accounts pushing the content, how old are they, how well used are they?

This will have to be worked out before too much weight is given to social signals; otherwise it is too easily manipulated.

Google’s Social Push

The last section brings us on nicely to Google’s attack on the social space and using referral data to drive their rankings.

Back in June Google launched ‘Google Plus‘, a social platform looking to take on Facebook, with one subtle difference; Google understand that not every relationship is the same, you may choose to share things with family that you wouldn’t share with colleagues, for this reason Google promotes circles. Circles are made up of groups of people within your network that you can separate and share on different levels, a brilliant idea, although I believe a social network stands and falls on simplicity and this may hinder world domination.

Anyway, that’s enough of what Google + is, how is it going to affect our SEO efforts?

To be honest we are struggling to find any correlation between Google + shares and rankings at the moment. Google have said they will be slowly integrating the data into their algorithm but as yet I personally haven’t noticed a change in organic results. However, others have tried testing Google +1′s with some pretty compelling results.

I think there is quite a long way to go before Google are able to gauge enough information to drop the link graph, if they ever could at all. Google +1 sharing suffers the same problem as any other signal, it’s easily manipulated. 2012 will be interesting and no doubt Google + will become more and more important.

Googlebot Capability

SEO’s and javascript have never really mixed due to Google’s inability to successfully crawl and index content behind Ajax and javascript. However, Matt Cutts announced around a month ago, that Googlebot now has the ability to do this, and straight away Facebook and disqus comments were popping up in the SERP’s.

“Googlebots, or the spiders that crawl web pages, are now reading Facebook comments on websites just like any other text content and the more interesting part is that you can also search the text of these comments using regular Google search.”

Should we leave best practice and start dynamically inserting content with JS? Well there are some that think it’s not an issue anymore, however there are plenty that still consider good old html to be the best way to feed Google your content. As for me, I need to see a lot more evidence to consider abandoning best practices.

There was a good test carried out here which basically shows Google is capable of a lot more than we think, however this isn’t always displayed in the SERP’s, if at all.

Taking all this into account I think it is very important that we fully understand what Googlebot can and can’t do, and what information it is collecting and counting from our pages.

With 140+ thumbs up on SEOmoz you have probably read this already but if not, take some time out to read Mike King’s post on SEOmoz about the ‘Headless Browser, some great insight and ideas, also check out the comments, very good.

The key takeaway from the post was that we need to be more focussed on the user experience; Google has the ability to understand what our pages look like, how a user may interact with them and, as we have known for a while, what sits above the fold.

Due to the amount of rubbish in the SERP’s Google is not actively basing rankings on usability; however you can bet as Google gets more sophisticated and as the Panda algorithm develops, user experience is going to be a key factor.

Google Freshness

Freshness is massive at the minute in my opinion, but not because of the new results we’re seeing for certain terms, instead I think (and have done for 18 months now) that the freshness of pages we get links from has a massive impact on rankings.

I posted back in March about links in fresh content and then again about ‘FreshRank’.

Historically SEO’s have used PageRank, MozRank, Link Authority or some other link based metric to decide where to build links, this is dated in my opinion and the new formula should be a mix of domain authority and quality, fresh content. These two factors play a huge role in the rankings we have managed to achieve in the last couple of years.

I am pretty sure that Google is using a ‘freshness’ score to help decide how important links are, but the more important factor of fresh link building is that they seem to last!

Add social campaigns to your fresh link building campaign, plus a few pieces of viral content on top of that and you’ll almost have an unstoppable mix. Lazy SEO will almost always lose to this ..

New Google Analytics + Features

We got a brand new Analytics interface this year with some nifty new features to help us optimise our campaigns.

Mashable do a great job of breaking down the top 10 features, however there are a few that I particularly like.

Multi-Channel Funnels

Multi-channel funnels are a set of data to help you understand the conversion journey. Historically analytics packages have credited either the first or last interaction with the conversion, however a visitor may have hit your site multiple times through multiple channels in the course of a conversion, multi-channel funnels allows you to see all of this data!

Since the day it landed we have been collecting data to understand the full value of SEO, not just the first or last conversion value but any assists, quickly finding out that natural search is anywhere between 30 – 60% more effective at driving leads/sales.

Read more about it here.

Speed Reporting As Standard

In times gone by you would have to add a little extra code to get site speed data from analytics, with the new version it comes as standard.

Not only is this important for making sure your site is fully optimised but it is also excellent for auditing your site. You may be getting a high bounce rate on a certain page, or you may see a drop in conversions, in both cases speed maybe an issue and now it easily established.

Social Engagement

With so many businesses eager to get on board the social train its great to see Google coming up with a tool that helps us analyse social interactions.

Google analytics integrates with ShareThis and AddThis to itemise social activity, allowing you to see what content has been shared and how much, essential for optimising your social strategy.

Google Places

In my opinion many businesses are failing to unlock the full potential of Google places, either they are dismissing it or are too lazy to do a proper job of making it work. Over the past 12 months we have had significant success attracting location based traffic through Google Places, and with 53% of mobile searches having local intent it’s something you cannot afford to miss out on.

At the end of 2010 Google changed the layout of Google places giving it more prominence on first page results, since then they have been gradually optimising it, making it more and more important for local businesses to be listed. Google has no intention of rolling any of this back so we need to get on board and optimise.

There are a few basic elements of Places optimisation:

1 – Claim your business

2 – Name, Address and Phone Number must be accurate and match any citations

3 – Use relevant keywords within listing

4 – Build citations on relevant directories

5 – Get reviews on Google!

Some also claim that good on page optimisation on your main site and external links are still a factor, but the above are fundamental. You can read more about it in this great Google Places Guide.

Intellectual Page Selection

It used to be that whatever page you built links to, that page would rank, however towards the end of 2010 this changed and has been a consistent feature since.

Google will now take into account your internal site structure, specifically your internal anchor text to decide which pages should rank, you may have a load of links with the anchor text ‘floppy slippers’ to your homepage, but if you have a category page with the internal anchor text of ‘floppy slippers’ that is going to be the page that ranks.

I wrote about it here, back in April, you need to focus on creating relevant hubs on your site leaving your homepage to deal with all your brand anchor text.

Yahoo Site Explorer

Around 3 weeks ago Yahoo Site Explorer finally gave up the ghost….. A moment of silence please…….

Yahoo Site Explorer has been around since 2005 and although it wasn’t the most user-friendly of link tools, it was certainly the quickest to update and often gave great insights into competitor strategies.

It has been rolled up into Bing Webmaster Tools; however we’re still coming to terms with the loss and haven’t delved too deeply into Bing.

What Happened to Keyword Data!

In October Google decided they wanted to make life difficult for the SEO world by encrypting search sessions of anybody signed in to Google.com.

Apparently this was for privacy reasons … cough!BS! … but is proving a bit of nightmare since it rolled out. Across all the sites I work with the average amount of keyword data affected in 12%, that’s a lot of data for websites that get 100′s of thousands of visits every day.

As it stands we don’t know fully how this will impact but it is still rolling out and the percentages could get higher!

It’s The Industry To Be In!

I honestly believe the Search & Digital Marketing industry is the most exciting place to be in this day and age, it is fast moving and a constant challenge to keep up to date with, but the diversity appeals to me and to a lot of other people who move into the industry on a monthly basis.

The recent Search Benchmark report suggested companies are looking to increase their online spend over the next 12 months in SEO, Social and PPC.

Where else can you reach an audience as targeted as with search marketing?

This is just one of the very positive industry reports with another suggesting SEO is the marketing channel to rule them all!

32% of small businesses were asked ‘if they had to put all their budget and time into one channel, which would it be?’ the answer? S E O..

This all makes for a very exciting 2012, I know at Branded3 we’re seeing massive growth in SEO, Social Media and Online PR and as the market place becomes more educated so will the need for transparent quality services.

Anyway, I think I better leave it there, this blog post is taking its toll but I hope it makes up a little for the lack of content in 2011; I have plans to be a lot more active in 2012.

So, if I have missed anything important (which I’m sure I have) please add it in the comments with any relevant links, but for now it’s goodbye until 2012, hope everyone who celebrates it has a great Christmas and happy New Year! For those that don’t have a great holiday!

Until next year……

Wow, how could I forget rich snippets!!!! Please see the following, massively important;

Rich Snippets Everywhere

Google’s Take

Rich Snippet Must Read

In the next 12 – 18 months I personally feel the search landscape will change more drastically than we ever seen before, Google has already begun to roll out multiple changes and the failed buy out of Groupon clearly shows the direction they would like to take their search engine.

We also have Facebook firmly knocking on the door and making their intentions clear in terms of how they see their own search share growing.

These two web giants have one thing in common and that is they are both trying to make search more specific, Facebook with their like system and unparralled social data and Google with their local business data and new places results.

Let’s just take a look at the two strategies in a bit more detail before I get to my point;

Google Places and Local Search

Google updated what was known as ‘Google Local’ to ‘Google Places’ in April this year clearly stating;

Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real world, and we want to better connect Place Pages — the way that businesses are being found today — with the tool that enables business owners to manage their presence on Google

Everybody knows Google’s main algorithm is failing, the search results are becoming flooded with spam websites regurgitating content from Wikipedia and other authoritative hubs, I only posted a few weeks ago about the spam levels in the SERPS and Rand Fishkin just a week ago.

The fact is it is getting worse and Google seem defenceless against it, so what do they do?? They bring in full page Places results.

So now you have to be a genuine business, with an address and local references if you want to be on the first page for a local term.

Can it be manipulated? Yes, certainly but it’s not as easy as spending £50k on anchor text links.

Not only have Google rolled this out on ‘local’ searches, such as ‘restaurants in london’, they have also rolled it out on broad terms such as ‘hotels’, ‘cars’ and even ‘flowers’.

These changes send a clear message to those of us involved in search, Google is going to become more and more focused on the intention of the search not just the words within it, moving closer and closer to semantic results that up until now have been a bit of a red herring.

You then have to consider rich snippets, which are literally a form of Facebook ‘likes’ but from a business perspective and even more recent than that Google have admitted that tweets and other social signals play a part in the ranking algo.

The Facebook Challenge

As we all know Facebook now gets more traffic than Google and potentially has more leverage, potentially…

Their strategy at the minute seems to be a fairly straight forward one, using like data to rank websites, Google has ‘link bait’ and Facebook has ‘like bait’ and let me tell you there is huge potential in ‘like bait’. A test recently drove more than 25,000 visitors to a fairly basic story after a ‘like’ base had been built up. So don’t just ask people to link any more, ask them to like!

When you combine this like system with all the data Facebook has on our interests, friends, conversations and recommendations you can easily being to see that a Facebook search engine could be phenominal.

Of course they have obstacles to overcome such as ‘like’ spam and the general intention of those who surf Facebook but the raw potential is unquestionably there.

The Point

My point is simple, these two search engines, in my opinion, are the future and will dictate the general flow of traffic around the web for years to come. On top of this they both have relevance in common, they both want to guide us to the most specific information, products and resources possible.

Both search engines will have the intention of the user in mind, so if someone searches for flowers are they wanting to buy flowers? Are they wanting to view images? Are they wanting gardening advice? These are the questions we need to start asking ourselves as search marketers, how do I link my site with the correct intention.

In SEO particularly it tends to be a quick scan of the keyword tool and then implementing an optimised but dry web page, then we build links.

In my opinion we now have to start asking the following questions:-

• Will I need a business address?
• How do I get people to review my products?
• What demographics am I targeting and where do I find them?
• Do I provide a solution, information or both?
• Are people discussing us socially, if not how do we get them to?

and of course…..

• Am I developing a brand

So if you sell cars, where do you sell them from? Do you have positive reviews and feedback? Are people referring to and talking about your service? These are the things you need to start worrying about.

Directories even the biggest out there like Yell are going to to struggle as these changes are fully realised, why would Google send traffic to Yell when it has 10 local business listings with endless positive reviews? Why use a middle man?

The changes will also have an impact on content empires like ezine articles, this impact won’t be anything like the directories thanks to long tail search queries but it will certainly be felt as Google switches to a more intention focused SERPS.

Whether were working for clients or working on our own sites now is the time to build a business not just a website.

If you have a content rich website, what added value do you offer?

If you have an e-commerce site, how are you getting reviews?

This for me is the future, ‘like bait’ as well as ‘link bait’ and ‘social recommendations’ as well as ‘commercial reviews’, as we move through 2011 it will become more prominent and into to 2012 it will be a must.

SEO has always been about evolution and staying ahead of the curve, however these changes are coming thicker and faster than ever, are you going to be ready for them

As awlays thoughts are welcome

This is my first post on SEOWizz and you may have heard Tim mention me before as the guy who jazzed up the blog. My name is David my primary job is managing a small new media business and Tim has kindly invited me to share some information on something that has become a bit of a forte for me and my business which is social media.

Just over a month ago Mark Zuckerberg & co also known as Facebook dropped a bit of a game changer at their annual F8 conference. The announcement of Open Graph has created a whole new layer to Facebooks existence and functionality as it moves another step closer to becoming the first true semantic search engine. Before I get into that let me break down the contents of Open Graph.

Open Graph API

The API is a piece of web based software which allows the interaction and communication between websites, their pages (objects) and the Facebook database (Open Graph). Its both an attempt to allow webmasters to better inform Facebook of their contents and allow them to build an even more content rich social network. Let’s say you went to watch Strictly Come Dancing on BBC iPlayer or something on 4OD and by doing so automatically allowed the API to access your information on Facebook, it could then recommend alternative shows to watch based on your favourite film and television listings on your public profile and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Social Tools

Facebook have made the API and basic tools so that developers can very easily and cost efficiently take full benefit from the new system. Within hours plugins were popping up left right and centre for all of the popular content management systems. The most employed thus far are the vast array of different “Like” buttons you can install on every page and/or post on your website. This tool allows people to “Like” content for the first time outside of the confinements of Facebook and with the action “Like” feeling far less a commitment than to subscribe or become a fan the result is far higher conversions while an even greater commitment is now made as the item or object in question now appears on said users Facebook Wall and in their friends News Feeds. One of the benefits of Open Graph is its simplification of the communication and linking relationship between Facebook and websites by eliminating the need to login on site to like it. The only time you will be required to login is to share additional information and really interact which currently only some of the larger sites are making use of. See the Social Tools.

Open Graph Protocol

Another feature which has been developed into a zero maintenance plugin is the Open Graph Protocol. It appears using the new FB meta data is a way for both Facebook to drill down the webs content types better and giving webmasters the ability to better categorize their business or service, allowing you to give every page on your website aka “object” a specific type. A full list of the object types can be seen at Open Graph Protocol and include types such as song, tv show, website, blog and even as niche as person, city, restaurant, album, school, band and activity.

The example below is a screenshot from one of our sites <head> and as you can see the fb meta is published in the image below. This can be synchronized with the page https://graph.facebook.com/mywebsite where pretty much anything from a user profile to a group will display you some basic object meta. Its funny how one minute no one cares about meta and then all of a sudden Facebook, the second largest website is reinventing it, and if that wasn’t enough even the peer to peer sharing service previously known as Azureus is using meta for its cross search engine media search.

So What?

So why are people referring to this as “something new” and a semantic search engine if they are talking about using methods as primitive as meta data? An easier way to sub it up would be to describe it as a relationship generated search engine with their algorithm relying on social connections between different users, their recent activity and profile criteria. Therefore the answers FB Search spews out will not always be definitive but tailored to what it thinks you want. A website will also be able to give you a personalized browsing experience as well by connecting up with the API and making use of the same criteria Facebook is using, win win.

Its too early to say for sure though I can imagine a situation where Facebook index a backlink’s value based on the backlink’s relationship to the user searching for that keyword. For example 5 points for a link on your friends profile, 2 for on a friend of a friends profile and 1 point for a friend twice removed? or will they will even take backlinks whether internal or external into account in their indexing at all? The prospect of a comprehensive search based on web pages your connections have recently visited or their friends have recently visited is both overwhelmingly interesting & scary.

Facebook Connect failed in the long run because while the likes of Digg and other large websites adopted the system, it wasn’t user friendly enough nor cost effective for small business owners and didn’t offer enough functionality. The world wide web has embraced Open Graph “Connects successful successor” with arms wide open due to its simplicity and generous benefits to be a part of the future of the internet and get in early.

Experience

I’m testing several of the social plugins on various websites I maintain. Those include the “like” button, the recent activity box, the social recommendations box and of course the Open Graph Protocol which produces the meta for the entire group of plugins. So far I have seen the traffic from Facebook more than triple, although I’m not saying the traffic was of great quantities before their inclusion. The websites in question are also now directly accessible via Facebook Search with of course Facebook knowing as much information as they can currently collect. Once I have more time and research I will post any further findings in the effect Open Graph has had for me. The majority of things I socially promote get between 10 and 20 tweets but some articles I have been posting lately have been getting up to 100 Facebook Likes in little time.

The API requires you create an application for your website for it to function properly and your choice of making it connect on the web side is down to what software or content management system your website runs on. I found setting up both the like button and meta painstakingly easy and would recommend any webmaster who thought their site and content could both add value to and benefit from the platform to give it a try.

Examples

While I may have only scratched the surface of integrating the Open Graph API other websites have been coming out every few days with different very intuitive ways of utilizing this new software. As well as being able to use it for bookmarking you can also add the objects comments to your web page allowing people to act as if they were commenting on Facebook when they comment on your web page.

Take example #1 Blored.com a relatively new website which relies on Facebook API for all of its content creation. I’m not doing a tutorial on how it works so I will break it down into the process. I go to blored and it asks me to write something I like in a box and click the button. When I do that, it creates a page with that sentence as the title and the meta title and fills the content area with links related to the one just created. However it also automatically puts it into the Open Graph system as your like and it appears on the wall as David Likes “Insert Funny Sentence” where the funny sentence is simple pulled by Fb from the meta. If someone decides to click it, they’re then taken to the website to like it, see more related funny likes and create their own if they wish. I have seen some of these empty pages with half a million likes in a matter of days.

It’s terribly simple maths, lets say Average John has 200 friends/connections on Facebook. John then decides to like something. That something is then appears on the majority of Johns 200 friends news feeds. Chances are people who know John share similar tastes/sense of humour and thus 1 or 2% “convert” and decide to “Like” the object also. This chain goes on and on and on potentially feeding Johns “liked” object some traffic.

Controversy

It begs the question at what expense? Facebook have been clever with their approach with Open Graph as past developments have failed and/or gotten them into trouble. This for me is a digital marketing opportunity like no other and the ability to eventually laser target your advertising campaigns with a choice of criteria to make even the likes of Google Adsense quiver. On a human level I appreciate it is at the expense to our privacy. Far more information is now freely available than before and the deep connections people make while freely browsing the internet may leave a lasting Facebook stereotype.

Final Thoughts

Do I honestly think its a game changer? Yes, why? because firstly I could be forgiven for thinking their plan was to get into the search business all along and with Google’s so far falling short of the mark efforts to enter the social media game its potentially an open net (no World Cup pun intended). I mean we love Google, they provide us both great services as webmasters and people who need a search but with them encroaching on pretty much every digital industry outside of search did they really think no one would come knocking?

Google aren’t going without a fight though, Wave was a little complex and even though was boasted about due to what was possible within the browser at the same time mine still crashed an awful lot, and with Google Buzz and their privacy mishaps right at the beginning their latest attempt is opting for a new homepage. To me they failed at this so far because their services seem so separate and disintegrated. While they aren’t intimidated by Facebook’s 400 million plus users the fact people on average spend three times as much time on Facebook as they do Google might (See Facebook Press Statistics). The question is do I go to the iGoogle homepage? my account page? gmail home? Buzz? Wave? Im Lost, are you? A system in dire need of some reorganization and structuring I think. Perhaps their latest efforts are in a view to fix this cumbersome issue with a service aggregating homepage. Where Bing will come into this I’m really not sure but with the FB search being powered by Bing it’s inevitable we shall soon find out.

Facebook Insights the FB’s interpretation of analytics was also well covered at the recent F8 conference but more on that another day. Why is this on a Search Engine Optimisation blog? Because social media suddenly became more relevant.

I shall soon put together a series of tutorial articles at Pixelloop on how to actually incorporate these tools in general websites and content management systems such as WordPress. Links shall appear at the bottom of this article once they are published.

OK lets address the first issue, SEO wizz grew up! Yes I was up until 4 am this morning with David from Quixotic Media cleaning up the last few bits of the design. I know many of my readers use the thesis theme and if you want a top notch design for a reasonable fee you should head on over there and see what they can do for you.

The new design is all part of my strategy for 2010, 2009 has been a good building year for SEO wizz but it is now time to take things to the next level and make a challenge on the SEO big shots in the UK and anywhere else for that matter. I think the design incorporates commercial and social interests quite nicely and will be perfect for the marketing push I plan on rolling out in 2010.

So I guess now is as good a time as any to take a peek at what 2010 may have in store for us and how we should be approaching our online strategy.

Nothing Changes

Throughout all the years I have been working in the SEO industry the basics never really change;

1) Create a quality resource, product or piece of content

2) Ensure Google can access the site and deal with any broken link issues

3) Keep you site architecture as flat as possible, linking to your most important pages from the home page

4) Keywords need to be in all the major areas title tags, body, images and I would still utilise the h1 and 2 as good practice

5) Generate links through content distribution, link partnerships, viral content and blog entries

6) Do it over and over again until you win

These are the bones of SEO, sure there are a number of technicalities hidden within each area but don’t be led astray by the ‘just write great content crowd’ – you need links and you need to emphasise the relevance your site has to key phrases.

Define What You Really Want To Accomplish

This is particularly a problem for bloggers, I have lost count of the amount of people that have emailed saying “I am blogging about making money online and need loads of traffic, how do I get it?”.

First off I think how original, secondly I think well what is your business plan??? To publish low quality or regurgitated content and hope the links and traffic are going to come flooding in??

You need to be smarter than that if your plan is to build a business out of your site.

It’s not just bloggers though, how many derelict ecommerce sites are there out there floating about?? Tons!

So if the online business world is for you then I would start by asking myself the following questions;

How much do I want to make?

If you answer is ‘as much as possible’ then stop. You need a target, a goal, something to aim at or else the chances are you will fall apart in the first year when you’re barely making $10 a month with adsesne.

Set a goal of income, a reasonable amount, then if you make more you have over achieved.

How are you going to make it?

It is no good thinking content will win all, I’ll paste ads everywhere and be a ‘click’ millionaire!! Time for a reality check.

Search traffic takes time to build and social traffic will not click your ads or buy your affiliate products, it’s a fact unfortunately.

So decide what products you are going to promote, how you’re going to build an opt in list, are you going to promote services? If you’re going to use affiliate links don’t just simply paste them on, sell them in a few articles beforehand.

One word of warning on affiliate products, do not sell them if you haven’t used them and found them to be of good quality. Your readers will never forgive you for selling a scam.

Test the product, illustrate how you benefited from it, and show the results… your conversion rates will be far higher.

How are you going to get traffic?

Erm SEO??

Yes you are going to continually optimise your pages; however you may have a product to sell right away, why wait?

You could use banner advertising on relevant blogs, google adwords or even free ads, depending on the nature of your product.

Don’t sit back and wait for pure search engine traffic, go out and get it if you believe you have a product that converts.

Are you going to use social media?

This is a tough one for purely commercial sites, will it really do them any good? My opinion is no, unless they have something to offer the social scene, which in my opinion they should.

Social media is not going to drive home sales or even give you tons of links, however what it does is give you an ideal opportunity for users, clients and industry experts to interact with your brand. It allows you to answer concerns quickly and sell the benefits of your service or product easily.

Social traffic will not turn into sales, but if your brand is out there, this means there is a good chance your company will get mentioned within context and this could lead to a word of mouth referrals.

Many of you may think I am anti social media, I am not as you can clearly tell from some of the widgets on this site, I simply believe in using social time sparingly. Many webmasters indulge in the hope it will lead them to riches, this is not the case, social media is exactly what it implies, the opportunity for you to socialise with others in your industry and with those who share similar interests.

No Investment, No Reward

Something that I learned quickly all those years ago is that if you’re not willing to invest you have lost already. The investment doesn’t have to be huge but you have to be willing to take it.

So many webmasters don’t want to pay for a nice design, for tools that cost more than a dollar or for recurring membership fees; some even think it is a waste of time paying hosting and for a domain. Granted there are scammers out there that will sell you big piles of rubbish, this is one of the online learning curves I try and prevent people from feeling when I write this blog, it can be really harsh.

My advice here is to find a reliable resource, and then use reliable resources that the initial resource recommends. Also don’t just buy, look for reviews before hand and any reviews that simply sell the product are probably scams. It’s a tough world but you have to be willing to push through it to succeed.

Plan your budget before hand, how much can you spend per month on;

1) Hosting and domain name
2) Advertising
3) Link Building
4) Design and functionality

Once you have this sorted the only other investment is your time. Don’t try and cut corners, software cannot write you a viral piece of content. Put your all in this is your business now and the rewards are real.

Believe You Can

If you are thinking “I’ll give this online thing a try” you’re going to lose.

If you are thinking “If I can make some money free, then I’ll invest” you’re going to lose.

If you are thinking “I’ll just build it and they will come” you’re going to lose.

If you actually believe in your business model and are willing to invest your time, money and talents into making your online dream a reality then you will more than likely win, even if not at first your attitude will drive you there.

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have had sites that have flopped and I have felt like jacking it all in, but every time I learned something new, I developed a new skill set and still am learning and developing monthly if not weekly. You have to be willing to keep betting on yourself, that’s the difference between those who do and those who don’t.

Making a living from your online business is not guaranteed however the possibility is a reality, in 2010 bset a goal to take your site to the next level, double your investment whether that investment be your time or your hard earned money.

Keep reading SEOwizz and have a fantastic new years eve.

All the best to everyone for 2010!!! See you at the top of Google!!

p.s. Sorry for the post length I got carried away.

I don’t know if any of my long standing readers have noticed lately but I have been posting a lot less and my interaction on sites such as stumble, twitter and other social networks has been almost none existent.

Now besides being extremely busy there are other reasons for this, the truth is social networking and spending time on these sites building profiles has never been my strong point, the time it takes to become involved and interact, in my opinion, cannot be justified. I have found so much more reward in developing other areas of my blog and general online portfolio.

Before I go deep into this post I want to assure anyone who I meet or who have met via social media, or those who found my site via social links, that I am not disregarding them as ‘not worth the effort’, if you found me via social media that is great, I love interacting with others who are interested in SEO and other internet marketing strategies, however the ROI of time spent on social sites is simply overrated in my opinion. WOW that was a long (probably badly written) sentence!

You see originally I am from an internet marketing background, ranking sites and making money via affiliate products and ad clicks, I soon found myself in the Google Adwords game but quickly abandoned ship when it became too expensive to use for affiliate marketing. I only really decided to test social networks when I started marketing SEO wizz back in March this year, it was a test, it was time consuming and unfortunately the stats show I have wasted my time somewhat.

Any without any further waiting, here are my 5 reasons I have found social media to be an unprofitable strategy.

The Time

If you really want to build a network via sites like digg, stumble and twitter then you are going to need to put the hours in, I found at one point I was spending more time on these sites than I was spending on my own site! That can’t be right can it? Tweeting, stumbling, answering questions etc….

I met people yes, I got to help a lot of nice people and I also got help from a lot of nice people, but that rarely turned into leads, sales or links and on that note I’ll continue.

Low Conversion Rates

When I talk about conversion rates I am referring to SEO enquiries, ad clicks, affiliate clicks and subscribers. Social media simply does not convert compared to search traffic, that’s why I spend my time building my own site and its link portfolio.

Adsense: I have messed around with adsense on the site and trust me it converts nowhere near in the same league as it does on my other niche blogs but I haven’t really optimised the site for adsense. Still I found that search traffic has around a 2.45% click through rate and social traffic has about 0.13%. That is a huge, huge, huge difference. If I wanted to advertise on a site why would I ever pay to have my banner or link on a site that receives 90% social traffic?? That’s a bad investment.

Just to clarify at this point, for the exercise of establishing click through rates I have classed all referral and Direct traffic as “social traffic”

Affiliate Links: I did a 3 month test of having affiliate links in the right column of SEO wizz and yes I got quite a few commissions from it; however the same was true as was with the adsense. I made around 56 sales and only 1 came from social traffic, yes that’s right 1!! The rest came from Google with a few coming from Bing!!! So if you are in this game to make money social traffic is probably not the best route.

Subscribers: This is a figure I was quite surprised about, as I expected social traffic to do a lot better than it did. Search traffic has around a 0.6% subscriber rate whilst social traffic is a little better at 0.8%, now yes social traffic is ever so slightly better when it comes to developing a readership but only just and those readers aren’t going to buy from you, they’re simply going to read, which is fine but don’t be under the illusion that readers = profits.

SEO Enquiries: I won’t even go into this, just believe when I say the percentages are that low for social media that it’s not worth bothering with.

Social Visitors Are Not Looking For Solutions

I think this is the main factor to consider for any new online business and that is “social visitors generally aren’t looking to a solution to a problem”, they want interesting content and funny articles (the majority do anyway). Visitors that come to your site via search are inputting keyword after keyword into Google to try and find help to a problem or a need they are looking to satisfy. I get loads of long tail search traffic on terms like “how to rank higher in search engines”, “Where have all my links gone”, “Why is my site not ranking” and “how do I get more traffic”. These people are looking for answers, for products and for services.

Social traffic fulfils a purpose but does not provide profit.

Link Acquisition

When I was spending hours on twitter and stumble I kept telling myself, hey it’s a great way to build links. The truth is 90% of my links have come from my own link building efforts like, article marketing, directory submissions, blog carnivals and press releases. Yes I have links from some viral posts not from social media sites but from other websites that have found my content. Saying all this one of my biggest link building strategies has been through keyword targeting. I published a post on Bing SEO back in the summer, I did and still do get search traffic to that post, over 500 a month and it is still continuing to pull in links for me, around 350 as it stands. The long tail targeted posts on my site get search traffic and convert into sales, clicks, readers and links better than any other form of traffic.

High Bounce Rates

Now this is only a minor factor but still social media traffic involves huge bounce rates, I think stumble averages around 85% with Twitter not far behind. Now I know there is no concrete evidence to show this effects search engine rankings, however no matter how you look at it high bounce rates on a content rich site never looks particularly good. In comparison bounce rates on search traffic is around 50%, again which would you prefer???

Right I have battered social media enough, let me offer a little consolation and make a few points about what social media can actually do;

- Help you brand your site
- Help you rank for your company/site name (first page domination)
- Build friendships
- Help you find advice on topics
- It can be fun

Despite these facts, in my opinion, social media should be kept in its rightful place and that is to assist in connecting with people and not as a business building tool, because the truth is that it is a highly unprofitable way to spend your time online.

Just so I don’t get scorned, Yes I do use twitter a little and every now and then I login to my stumble account, however I am sick to death of the spam!!! Stumble my “diamond shop” home page and review it??? Come on guys, even if I stumble it it’s not going to make your site profitable!!! Spend your time doing something more worthwhile, like ranking for “buy diamond rings” (hmm I wonder how much search traffic it gets?).

Also just to clear something up, I mentioned at the beginning of the post I have not been posting as often as I once did and there are a number of reasons for this;

a) I decided to post once a week, this allows me to put together a better quality post.

b) I have been so busy with client work

c) Link building does more for my traffic than posting 3 times a week for the sake of it ever could

Has my traffic levels dropped? Nope they have increased.

Have I lost subscribers? Nope they have increased.

Have I lost anything? Yes!! The pain in my hands from typing 3 or 4 times a week

Seriously everyone the advice you read on most social blogs, in my opinion is false;

- You don’t need to post every day

- You don’t need to create endless pointless lists

- You don’t have to spend all your time on digg, stumble and twitter

Don’t let huge subscriber lists fool you, it does not equal success or profit (unless your goal is to get as many subscribers as possible, then it equals success).

Remember it’s easy for the high profile bloggers to say “just create great content and submit it to social sites” the fact is they have a load of loyal readers who hang on everything they say and go out and push their content all over the web, meanwhile 98% of start up bloggers do the same thing and realise it doesn’t quite work the same.

Don’t bother submitting your posts to these sites, if someone really likes your content they will submit it and pass it around their network. This is where social media comes into play, not by spamming social sites but by allowing networks of friends to share content easily.

I hope I haven’t offended anyone with this post; I value all the friendships I have built up via multiple means. I enjoy writing and interacting with those who read and interact with my content, all I am saying is that none of this = money, profits or anything like that.

If you want to read another excellent post with a great take on social media head over to Jason’s business blog (sorry Jason I pinched your image).

Also if you want to read some more posts on the value of social traffic head over to Allyn’s Blogger Illustrated post on Social Traffic (very funny guy) and Griz’s take on social media traffic. Both are a no holds barred assault on social traffic, so if you think you might get offended; best not click the links

Until next time!

This blog posts is based on a question I was asked by my good friend timethief and it relates to blog directories. Technorati, blogcatalog, bloglines etc… all directories where you can list your blog and get a link back to your site; in return these directories normally suggest that you fire a link back to them.

So let’s get straight to the point and really we need to answer it in 3 ways.

1) Are blog directories worth joining?

2) Are the links from directories worth getting?

3) Should you send a site wide link back to the directory? (normally in the form of cute badge )

Let’s discuss this in the above order;

Should You Join A Directory

This is the simplest to answer, joining a directory and participating in the social aspects of it are a completely personal decision. I have been a member of blogcatalog for a while now and every now and again I join the forums, I also get involved with Yahoo answers and have the old bloglog member’s box at the side.

This is not for the purposes of SEO, this is simply to meet new people and input my knowledge here and there when people are struggling to understand SEO concepts.

So, should you join a directory?? Yes if you want to benefit from an online community and develop new relationships, just like using stumble, twitter, digg or any other social platform.

Are The Links Any Good?

A link is a link at the end of the day but for the purposes of this part of the post let’s concentrate on link juice.

In order to gage how much link juice these directories pass I went to my SEOmoz tools and looked at my top 445 links.

My actual ‘blogcatalog’ directory link did not make it into the top 445 (being beat by articles on article directories), I did however get a link from the discussion area but it passed zero in terms of link juice:

Technorati made it in the top 300 just passing 0.03 link juice, yahoo and other directory listings were nowhere to be seen.

OK, however even a zero link is worth it if it passes anchor text, ermmmmm, nope just a bare link at these directories.

So no juice, no anchor text and no relevance, are these directory links really worth it?? Let me answer that at the end of the post, sorry to keep you in suspense

Should You Link Back?

Most of the links we send back to blog directories come in the form of badges we litter our sidebar or footer with. Should we??

Well let’s look at this logically:

It’s not a reciprocal link

It won’t be penalised for been reciprocal as the link from our sites point to the homepage of the directory and the link from them comes from a deep page, it’s what is known as triangular linking, not as bad as reciprocals but not great.

What are we left with?

Simple, you are left with 10 badges on every page of your site leaking link juice and helping the directory gain link juice. Even if you no follow these links it is still lost link juice since Google’s link evaporation announcement, in that no follow links might as well follow as the link juice is lost either way.

So my answer is straight forward, I do not recommend linking to every single blog directory out there, all you are doing is building their rank whilst diminishing your own.

So We Don’t Bother Submitting Our Blogs To Directories?

Ah well, not exactly.

You see even though these directory links carry very little link juice and you cannot anchor the text, they still carry something just as important, trust. If you have a link from technorati, blogcatalog, fuelmyblog or any of the mainstream directories, you have links from highly trusted sites. This will help build your trust and enhance your rankings.

So, to some up:-

YES join directories to socially interact
YES Get a link from these directories
NO Don’t link back to the directory with badges that appear on every page of your site

You may have noticed I’ve removed the badges I had to blogcatalog and technorati, I was going to keep them on hoping someone might favourite me but that hasn’t happened, so I got rid as they offer no other benefit to my site.

This is all my opinion and I am sure there will be social bloggers out there telling me I’m wrong, but that’s life I guess.

Hope this has helped decide how you might deal with blog directories in the future.

If you maintain your own blog you will no doubt often come across ‘writers block’ or the need to find better content rather than writing about what you got up to over the weekend.

Going through writer’s block can be a frustrating and challenging time, however there are some tips and tricks that can help you overcome some of the common problems.

The problem usually starts because we feel the need to make every post innovative and new, the truth is with millions of blogs floating around the place it is hard to make anything new or unique, so you have to search for new angles or ideas rather than a brand spanking new concept.

I often find myself wondering what to write, sometimes I choose not to write figuring my readers will appreciate a well thought out post rather than something I jotted down in 5 minutes, however when I do feel completely stuck I generally work down the list of following actions to help spring me into life.

Head To The Forums

Forums are not the best places to look for breaking news or new ideas, but they are a great place to look for questions that people genuinely want to know the answer to. Yahoo Answers is full of questions that people need answers to and cover many different industries and niches. Looking through some of the questions will also help you optimise your posts, as the users asking the questions are no doubt searching Google for the answer as well.

Use this effectively and you will not only have a helpful post but one that also does well in the search engines.

Read Some Blogs

I am not suggesting you steal content here but blogs are great places to get ideas for your own work, it may only be a paragraph in the article that sparks an idea and enables you to go away and write a quality post.

You may not agree with something that has been said within the article, what better place to contend it than on your own blog.

You are never going to know everything that is happening in your industry no matter how good you are, so other blogs can be a great form of finding news and sharing it with your reader base is never a bad thing.

Search For Angles

If you are one of these people that reads things and takes them on face value then stop! No matter how much authority a blog holds there are always other opinions and angles to explore. It could be breaking news that has been written in a very subjective way, make it objective look at the other side of the story, conduct a little research and write.

In an industry like SEO a lot of things are often repeated so you have to look for new angles and ideas, plus the landscape changes so frequently there are no cast iron rules and there a lot of room for theories.

Just try and be different, look where the majority are heading and make a constructive attempt to go the opposite way, however don’t blindly disagree or come up with a crazy theory without even the slightest research.

Test a Theory

Have you ever read something and thought “something doesn’t sound right?”, if so have you ever tested the theory or idea? This is something I like to do here at SEOwizz, if I read something about a new product, idea or technique I like to go away and research it for myself, test it and deliver the results to my readers.

I often read things I totally disagree with but instead of outright opposing it I go away, get some facts together and publish, sometimes I find I am wrong, rarely but sometimes. If you do this your readers will no doubt appreciate the time you have taken to trial the idea regardless of the outcome.

Give Your Opinion

Everybody has got one so why are so many people scared of publishing it?? This is what allows the big sites to get bigger and the small ones to stay small.

Bloggers feel the need to back up their opinion by linking to something on one of the authority blogs, now there is nothing wrong with this but how about giving your own opinion for once, surely you don’t agree with everything you read?

I have had many posts linking to this blog from articles that disagree with my opinions or research, I don’t dislike these people for disagreeing with me, that is what the internet is about, sharing ideas, opinions and thoughts.

If you are an expert in your field have more confidence in your own opinion and don’t be afraid to voice it.

Chunk

Sometimes you don’t have enough information to write a full post on a particular topic, however you may have lots of little ideas you may be able to string together or even two subjects you can chunk.

On this blog I have mixed SEO with social media, coding, usability and even local business practices. Your blog needs to be focused but that does not mean you cannot think outside the box a little.

Just Go For A Walk

I honestly find walking is one of the best ways to clear my head.

Sometimes I just have so much going on at once it is hard to think straight, family, clients, research, finances, tax returns (yuk) and of course my blog, how is anyone supposed to write with all that going on. Take a walk, take a breath and you will be surprised how it can clear your mind and help you to focus a little better.

Building content is a crucial aspect of SEO, we all need to do it effectively as possible and writing a load of rubbish is never going to work in today’s internet marketing environment, if you find you get stuck, follow the above and let me know how it goes.

I am away on business next week so posts maybe thin on the ground, I’ll try my best to slot one or two in though, if I have anything interesting to say

A lot of webmasters who dismiss SEO as gaming the system usually come out with the broad statement “Just create unique quality content”, hmmm, how true do you think that statement is?

Well to be honest creating quality content is part of SEO, but ask these same webmasters what quality content is and the answers will differ wildly. You see the basic concept of SEO is having a great resource that attracts links but knowing this concept is not enough to increase you rankings on Google, the fact remains you have to know how to do this successfully.

Let’s first look at the chart below which highlights some of the areas that make content ‘great’. Remember this is from an SEO perspective with a view to ranking higher in Google. To rank higher in Google content must attract links, if it does not your going to be sat deep in the index.

If we want to rank our content must be keyword focused putting maximum emphasis on our chosen keywords. The content must be link worthy and structured in a way that is relevant to our audience. Let’s look at these factors a little closer to see what makes ‘great content’.

Focus Keywords

These elements may seem trivial but when added together they make a big difference.

Headings – These are your h1-h6 tags but in my opinion you should only really worry about the first two. If your title tag includes the exact keyword you are targeting, try to include a new variation in the h1 and h2 tags.

Bold Keywords – If your going to use bold keywords place them at the top of your content for maximum effect.

Title Tag – This is the one that must be optimised. Use your exact keyword in the tag, separating it from other text with hyphens rather than the underscore.

Body Text – Use your targeted keyword variations all over the body text naturally and try to use the exact match as close as possible to the top of the document.

Outbound Links – It has now been proven that using your targeted keywords in outbound links will increase your ranking ability. Don’t over do it and try to incorporate it naturally.

Variations – Don’t get fixated on the exact keyword, look to use many different variations that link to your core subject. Google can now recognise relationships between different word groups so rather than thinking of what matches think “what is relevant”?

ALT Attributes – Even though the strength of this technique can be questioned it is still good practice to use considering the ease of implementation. Focus your main keywords on the first couple of images on a page.

Link Worthy

Useful Resource – This could be any sort of “how to” guide relevant to your area, it could also include a list of links pointing to other useful resources around the web. The idea of a resource page is to create something that people are likely to bookmark and return to.

News breaking – If you can be the first to break news in a particular area it is always going to have a good chance of going viral, not only will this give you direct link backs but it will also supply you with links from social bookmarking.

Research – This has been a source of content that has worked really well here at SEOwizz. If there are areas in your industry that have not been fully investigated then, look into it, is it possible to research it and will people be interested in the findings?? A good piece of research will drive thousands of links to your content.

Controversy – This type of content has been used for a long time to spark linkbait, however I recommend using it wisely and be sure you know your subject matter before firing. It can create lot’s of links but at the same time damage your reputation.

Humour – How effective this is will depend solely on your industry, however I find a little humour makes for a more interesting read and seems to grab the readers attention more effectively.

Content Structure

Short Paragraphs – Your content structure needs to make reading it bearable, creating short paragraphs will make the content easier to digest.

Images – Try to break up all that lovely content. Images that explain the content are excellent at engaging the reader.  Graphs, charts and even cartoon like images help your reader to understand your message, sometimes without reading the content.

Headings – Again headings are a natural way to break up the content.

Spelling/Grammar – Try your best to keep things as accurate as possible, I’m sure your readers will forgive you a typo here and there but lot’s of mistakes are sure to turn readers off and even question your credibility.

Natural Flow – Giving a natural flow to your topic will help readers follow your writing through to your conclusion. Jumping around makes for difficult reading and most visitors will simply click the good ole back button.

Unique, Relevant Info

Industry News – Keeping on top of industry news is one of the best ways to keep your content relevant, however you can run into problems with keeping it unique…..

Don’t copy content – By this I don’t just mean word for word, I mean don’t simply give a summary, add your own thoughts and opinions and refer to others who may have differing or controversial opinions.

Angles – Just because an authoritive site has published something it does not make it gospel. Are they right? Have they done enough research? Have they created enough credibility? Reach for the journalist in you to create new and opinionated content.

Value Your Opinion – If you have created a site you obviously believe you have some sort knowledge or experience in the area? So why do so many not have the confidence to publish what they believe? Be confident, you have an opinion, put it out there! There are always going to people who disagree but as long as your confident in your knowledge don’t worry about them.

Stay On Topic – If your a social blogger it is not as important to stay on topic, however if you are an authority on an area it is a good idea to keep it relevant. Google is known to categorise sites by theme, what is the general theme running through your site? If it is a miss mash, this may dilute SEO efforts.

The Linkerati

I am sure you have heard the term “linkerati” before but if not it simply relates to the online content junkies (like me ) who regularly surf the web for new content with a view to dishing out links to new and refreshing pieces.

This is why you must be involved in social media, you need to know where people in your niche hang out. Only then can you begin to appeal to them. You can also use search trends to find out what the latetest buzz searches are and see if you can tailor your content and subject to one of the latest search spikes. Use Google Trends to check this out.

One of the best ways to appeal to the Linkerati is to simply make friends with them. Get involved in social circles within your niche, throw them a link or two first and your bound to be noticed. DON’T simply spam people with links, try to build relationships first, offer to do some guest blogging, offer advice or even ask for help. Your network will help drive links to your content from all angles.

I know this is a pretty long post but I though it was an important one to address, simply knowing the basic concept “build great content” is not enough to effect your rankings positively, you need to apply some of the above factors to create great SEO focused content.

You are not going to be able to apply all of the above all the time, so don’t get hung up on it, simply apply the above when appropriate, if you have a great idea for a post, jump on it and try to implement as many factors as possible.

Hope you found this helpful.

I know this blog is normally firmly based on SEO, but this post kind of is, and then again kind of isn’t. You see I read a lot of blogs, internet marketing, techy,SEO and other web marketing based blogs.

I read a lot of GOOD quality info on one hand but then some terrible info in the next breath, the kind of information you get really cross at for wasting your time. The point is throughout all the blogs I read there are certain ones, that no matter what the quality of the post is like, always get, dugg, tweeted, sphunn whatever!

The posts can be a complete waste of two minutes of your time but why are people still spreading this junk all over the web?? For example the latest post on Graywolf’s Blog , Can You Get a Website Indexed with No Links and XML Sitemaps?.

Not only is the post brief and lacks any real context but it is also old news (just wanted to add at this point that I have nothing against Graywolf, in fact I subscribe to the blog as it ‘usually’ has some quality perspectives published.), so why does this kind of content become retweeted 44 – 50 times and get’s sphunn 40 odd times? It ain’t all that great but people are still submitting away.

OK….Rant over, first of all why is this important to SEO?

Well, a strong social presence drives traffic and community traffic drives links to your site, the links increase your search position and your search position increases traffic.

You understand yeah? If not read my article on seo and the social media mix, it goes into a lot more detail than above.

Let’s get back to the point here, why do people spread sub standard content around the web?

Well the more I thought about it, the more it became clear, the secret to getting people to love you, even when your, well, crap, is popularity.

If you are popular within your community and 80% of the content you publish is quality then your followers are still going to vote for the other 20% thats rubbish, but how do we become popular? If your into SEO and looking for natural link votes then you better no how to get popular or you are missing out on a search position boost.

Below are few obsevations I made about the following blogs that seem to get great coverage no matter what they publish.

Their Real

What do you mean Tim? Of course their real.

Yes but the way they write and explain concepts is, how I would imagine, they would explain it if they were stood right in front of me. They let their personalities filter into the way they write, this makes their work more interesting, therefore leads to a stronger following who will stand up for their new leader at any cost. Being true to your personality helps people connect to your publishing and set’s you out from the crowd.

Add some personal info

This blog could easily have turned into a very formal boring business type blog. That would have made it dull and I would have missed the exposure I have gained through making good friends.

I made a commitment when I started the blog that 1- I would make the SEO advice simple and easy to follow, and 2- That I would also make it a little less formal than a dull business blog.

I sometimes have rants, talk about personal gripes, out dodgy SEO practice or am simply transparent with my tips and advice.

I look at blogs with solid followings and they always attempt to engage with the readers by sharing personal information about themselves, whether it be a cat, spouse or experience, sharing personal info builds trust between you and your readers.

Get interesting

Whatever were writing about it is easy to fall into the “dull” trap, this can happen even more when we know our subject inside out, however it is important to engage people by adding an edge to our articles.

A couple of ideas for spicing things up are adding real life studies, being funny or talking casually, go off topic every now and again, try and be creative with your writing.

Ultimately it all ties in together, bring as much of your personality to the table as possible, your not an information robot, your a real person, you don’t simply talk about the same thing throughout every minute of your day, mix it up, your audience will gain trust in you, hopefully like you and spread your content around the web even when it’s rubbish. Easy peasy

Thanks for reading, as always let me know your thoughts.

We all know how important it is to build links and the massive impact it can have on our rankings. In today’s SEO industry I honestly believe the days of emailing webmasters is over, as it is time consuming and usually not worth it.

The other options we have are content generation and directory listings and link building in this way has to be done carefully, we should be writing relevant content for articles and submitting to relevant directories. There are obviously other methods of building links like blog carnivals, guest posts, squidoo etc… but that’s not what this post is about.

Today I really wanted to discuss how we encourage visitors to link to our content. Of course were looking to write quality editorial content, the type of content a reader would like to reference on their own site, therefore allowing us to build links naturally. The rules of creating quality content or ‘reference worthy’ content changes regularly therefore it’s impossible to guarantee the success of a piece of content, however there are things we can do to help the content building process whilst at the same time giving it the necessary elements that are going to get it referenced around the www.

Non commercial status

This is an unfortunate element of building links to content, in that if your content has a commercial edge it is less likely to be linked to. At the same time 90% of content writers do so with earnings coming into mind somewhere down the line. The trick is to direct attention away from the commercial element of your site. You may have noticed I removed the adsesne from my posts, well, from my whole site actually. This is simply to tell people who read my content, that I didn’t put it together to make money with adsense. This was a big decision for me as the adsense earnings were significant, but I’m willing to sacrifice the short term gain for, hopefully, a long term advantage.

There are lot’s of things you can do to help dampen commercial intentions, like design, ad placement and choosing an appropriate domain name. I may advertise on this blog again in the future but it will be with a different strategy in mind. It’s a shame bloggers and content writers need to think like this as just because something has ads in the sidebar does not mean the content quality is poor, but try to build up your authority and reputation before planting ads on your site, this is my opinion anyway.

Make It Easy To Read

Try to make your articles as easy to read as possible and as visually pleasing as you can. If you write about a complex aspect, break it down so that it provides value to a novice as well as a seasoned pro. Aim for smaller paragraphs instead of a long page with no breaks, use graphics and videos where necessary. Doing this may take a little extra work but your link popularity will reap the rewards.

Beef Up The Authority

Very often we write from our own knowledge or expertise, but if you are giving an opinion try to back it up with some research or link back to an authorities site that has spoken on the matter. This will give you added credibility and again, encourage readers to link back to your content.

Don’t Forget The Hook

I wrote about “how to write effective linkbait” a week ago, and it basically stems around using emotional hooks to ignite attention. Be contentious, show unique research or report on a brand new concept or application. I did a little research into bing rankings 2 weeks ago, the articles are still pulling in links (total around 3500) and traffic on those pages is as much as my home page.

Another method to attract links from emotional hooks is carried out on the Seth Godin Blog . He writes emotion stirring content and switches off the comments?? People who wish to respond have no choice but to do so from their own sites. Genius! If you have the writing skills.

Treat Them Like Babies

Are you lazy? Well even if your not most of your readers are, so make it easy for them to share content on your site. Digg, stumble, sphinn whatever it may be provide the links at the end of the post, if not they WILL simply pass the article by regardless of it’s brilliance.

Make Your Intentions Pure

I write this SEO blog not because I secretly want people to hire SEO Wizz but because I genuinely like helping people and shedding some light on an industry that sometimes comes across somewhat mystical. If you are simply writing content for an adsense click your readers will see right through it, if you intentions are to genuinely help people or entertain people, then the rewards will flow back in your direction.

I hope these points will assist you in creating reference wrothy content and help you attract links back to your site.