All posts in blogging


Other SEO blogs linking to us

 

While perusing the SEOptimise Google Analytics reports for last month, I noticed a few traffic spikes where I did not necessarily expect them. Upon taking a closer look, I discovered that many major traffic sources only show up as such on blogs, or rather blogs that are popular on social media.

Tonight I was delighted to be invited to speak at the London Blog Club and presented about the WordPress plugins which I find most useful.

Here are the slides from my talk:

20 Top WordPress Plugins – 2011 Edition – Kevin Gibbons, London Blog Club

If you have any questions on this please let me know in the comments or on the meetup.com page.

Paris: small Eiffel Tower*

These days the “content is king” and “you need great content” mantras are everywhere. While some people in the SEO industry challenge it by stating that great content is not enough, you need to push, promote or market it as well. I rarely see an article that actually explains what great content is or actually could be. Also, many sites that allegedly offer great content provide mostly big or just long content.

It seems that many content creators rely on size to measure greatness, while on the Web it’s often the other way around. The faster someone can convey a message, the greater the content.

With the latest Google update aimed at so-called content farms, we’ve seen a flurry of articles focused on content quality. This is a good start, as content farm articles are often just long without offering value. Long or even big shallow content is not enough these days. Great or quality content is the key.

I’ve been guilty of producing big content instead of great content myself here on SEOptimise. Let me explain the differences between the three common types of content you encounter on the Web today:

Google.com results for [news]

Outgoing links are one of the most underestimated weapons in the arsenal of every SEO and webmaster. After all, you want to get backlinks not give away links by linking out, don’t you? So it seems to be a contradiction. Popular wisdom also suggests that you would lose by linking out rather than gain some SEO value.

Probably you haven’t noticed yet as I haven’t told you yet: starting from 2011 I’m stepping up my efforts on SEOptimise. I write more regularly for the blog and I’ll help the SEOptimise team with their blog SEO among others. So I start with the basics: broken links.

Blogs amass a record number of broken links over the years as they often deal with short-lived developments or news.

The Web deteriorates fast and with it your site quality when you link out. In my last post I argued that linking out is important for SEO. That’s true but you have to keep in mind who you link out to. Seeing hundreds of websites either disappear or move without proper redirects can teach you a lot about the Web and links. What did I learn?

Recently I noticed that the SEOptimise blog ranks at #1 for the query [seo blog] in Google.co.uk

Then it dawned on me why we rank at #1: the single most important factor to getting there was linking out.

Yes, it wasn’t link building or even getting links; it was simply linking out. You could argue that it’s lots of great content etc, but many SEO blogs from the UK have great content. Nobody is linking out like we do though.

*

For most people, SEO still is either a complete unknown, magic​ or the scapegoat for almost everything that doesn’t work on the Web.​ In particular, bloggers seeking attention, publicity and links love to leverage all the ignorance and prejudice​ and launch attacks on SEO as a whole again and again.

Recently, another popular blogger, who leads one of the most important technology blogs (which uses all kinds of SEO techniques​) did it again. This time it was not the average “SEO is rubbish” attack; it was a broader “search sucks” attack where of course not search engines themselves are guilty of being broken but the scapegoat: SEO.

*

Michael Martinez of SEO Theory published an article a few days ago that explains in depth how useless it is to chase Google’s algorithm. I won’t repeat what he wrote here, you can read his explanation in case you haven’t yet:

Martinez refers to reverse engineering the Google algorithm as futile and decries good old ranking factors as obsolete. I would probably not go as far as he does but nonetheless my approach is similar. I always tried not to obsess about what Google really counts and what not. I was always keen on knowing what is out there in the know but I followed my own “secret list” of ranking factors.

2011

After writing the rather humorous post on predictions for 2011 I noticed more and more trends so I finally decided to write a 30 trends for 2011 list again this year. These trends are the ones you really have to know about if you ask me. These changes take place already or are unfolding and you can’t afford to ignore them as an SEO, web design or other Web professional. So here they are:

Recently both my own SEO Blog SEO 2.0 and the SEOptimise blog have been featured in a few “top SEO blogs” lists. While I was of course delighted to get so much appreciation for publication I write for I also noticed that some of the “best blogs” weren’t best at all while other really good blogs about SEO were missing. Thus I decided to compile a list of 30 great SEO blogs you might not know yet.

These blogs and the respective bloggers involved are often funny, intriguing and posting in-depth articles. Others are on point and stay on top of events or cover SEO in a manner everyone can understand.

OK, long story short below are the blogs I refer to. For each blog I have a post I recommend as an example of the respective writing skills.​

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →