All posts in blogging

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.

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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.

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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.​

As we all wind down for the Christmas week, I thought I’d revisit some of the best comments left on my guest blog posts over the year…

Christmas Penguin
Image credit: Flickr

Regular readers of my Twitter feed will know that I am a regular guest blogger, often appearing on websites such as Search Engine Watch, Econsultancy and Search Engine Land, as well as writing here on the SEOptimise blog.

Some of the responses to posts I write are extremely knowledgeable and often provoke informed debate.

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The UK SEO community was so inspiring during the last several days. After the sudden death of Jaamit Durrani, one of the most popular UK SEO specialists the community has proven that even a huge loss like this one can have a positive impact. The way people have come together to support Jaamit and his family and to spread the love all over the Web and in real life as well has made the virtual tubes feel a bit warmer this winter.

I’m probably not the right person to commemorate Jaamit though, others who have known him better than me already did write some powerful tributes.

Today I want to write about another case of loss many business people will face online. The loss of reputation. A by now infamous New York Times article dealing with an ecommerce vendor who even provoked bad reviews to get better rankings on Google has highlighted this topic last week. So what do these two quite different negative news have in common? People are dealing with problems or even downright tragic events and are trying to turn them around to have a positive impact in the end.



Many of us in the SEO industry bemoaned the decision of Sphinn, the only social news community for search marketers, to remove the voting option. This way a community turned to a completely editorial site. That may be not as bad for for the Sphinn team, instead of fighting spammers and voting rings they can focus on seeking out valuable stories now. On the other hand it has been a huge blow to the

global SEO village: Where can we convene virtually? On the manifold forums, Twitter or Facebook?

This opportunity was quickly seized by some of the most active Sphinn users and prolific social networkers. They created a new social news community for us out of scratch. It’s called SERPd and it seems to work well from the start from the user perspective.

Today I presented at a4uexpo London on 40 Social Media Tools and WordPress Plugins. This was split equally between the two sections and I’ve shared the slides and individual links, plus provided a very quick summary for each below.

a4uexpo – 40 Social Media Tools & WordPress Plugins


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