All posts in blogging

Amazon River by lollyknit

One obvious Web trend in 2010 is what I’d like to call SEO mainstreaming. SEO goes prime time so to say.

A few people still try to “pull a Calacanis” and tell you that SEO is a dirty word while at the same time spamming Google with fake SEO articles. Nonetheless many other, more sane publishers outside the SEO industry acknowledge that SEO is an indispensable part of any and every Web endeavor.

Thus they publish their own resources and articles dealing with SEO and search marketing. Sadly they don’t get the attention they truly deserve while everybody notices those few who dismiss SEO.

One of the things I love about SEO the most is that even after years of optimization there is still room for improvement.

Even the best among us still have potential to improve their websites and blogs.

While reading the leading SEO blogs I sometimes encounter basic SEO, usability and trust issues. They’re not big enough to write them an email or there are simply too many of them to reach out to each of my friends and mentors in the SEO industry.

Also I wouldn’t email the likes of Danny Sullivan and Rand Fishkin out of the blue, they have probably a hundred more important emails in the queue already.

So I decided to follow the line from one Beatles’ song: “With a little help of my friends“. You might argue that the best SEO bloggers out there are not my friends, but reading them a few times a week for years sometimes via multiple channels makes feel as if they are.

Crowd by victoriapeckham.

Welcome back to the weekly Twitter column. Ever since I’m on Twitter I’ve tried to get as many people to participate spontaneously in writing my posts or rather compiling my lists. I always seek contributions for my “30 something” flagship posts. The appropriate term for these kind of participation is crowdsourcing.

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Image: Life in the Fast Lane by t3ermin4t0r.
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We all love the fast life of the SEO industry, don’t we? Each day is a challenge and the sheer diversity of tasks makes this profession so refreshing. As we have to deal with a plethora of developments, hundreds of ranking factors and daily breaking news which can make or brake a business we’re also short on time all the time.
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We’d like to do so much more during a day or the business hours but we can’t.

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Sometimes it seems that the actual time we have to perform SEO tasks is the shortest in between all the Web buzz. This will be most probably truer than ever in 2010. On such days it’s best to remind yourself that there are at least 30 fast life SEO tactics/techniques for 2010 you can sometimes make use of in minutes or a few hours.

Since 2006 I’ve written-up a review of the SEOptimise blog in terms of stats and analytics. As it’s an interesting time to look back on how the site has progressed, I’ve continued this by listing some similar stats for comparison during the last 12 months:

Top 10 SEOptimise posts of 2009

  1. 10 LinkedIn Tips to Optimise your Profile
  2. 30 Twitter Tools for Business
  3. 7 Reasons Why You Need to Deal With Search Engine Marketing Change
  4. 21 On-Site SEO Tips You Can Give to Your Online Copywriter
  5. 30 Web Trends to Watch in 2010
  6. 30+ Advanced SEO Tactics, Techniques and Resources (55+ Links)
  7. 10 Tips to Boost your Flickr Profile
  8. 10 Free Google SEO Tools Everybody Should Use
  9. 30 Resources on Google, Search & SEO Changes in 2010
  10. Social Media Marketing – PR vs SEO – Where Does it Fit?

SEOptimise stats 2009

Christmas isn’t Christmas without someone butchering a much-loved song to make a marketing point and this year it’s our turn. Brace yourselves for the SEOptimise Twelve Days of Christmas Special…
12 Days of Christmas

Image credit: krisdecurtis

Many people read a huge amount of blog posts each day in order to learn and stay ahead of the game in SEO. I used to read loads of posts myself from the industry leading blogs all of the time. But I think you get to a point where, despite it being great to know what’s going on out there, there’s probably only a very small percentage of this information which directly benefits how you do your job. This post from Todd Malicoat about the important things which change in SEO is definitely worth a read.

Bloggers
Image credit: Flickr

I’m certainly not saying don’t subscribe to these blogs – if you’re learning about search marketing you definitely should – but I’ve found that I now skim over far more posts than I used to in order to grab any information which I may find useful, new or interesting. One of the main reasons for keeping up-to-date with the latest news and interacting on sites like Twitter and Sphinn is often to build relationships and a reputation online.

Today we have launched a free white paper, Business Guide to Blogging – this looks at how businesses can promote themselves using blogging, funnily enough. All you need to do is click here to download the guide in PDF format.

Here’s my introduction to the guide:

“The SEOptimise blog began as a way of marketing our search engine optimisation services. We used it initially to attract customers, add to the site’s content and showcase our expertise. It still does all those things, of course, but it has also become so much more.

In today’s weekly Twitter Friday column I want to compare the 3 most common retweet buttons for WordPress blogs. A retweet button is a button that not only retweets the particular post it was clicked one but also displays how many people tweeted that link: On click these buttons also lead to a list of those who tweeted the link.

I have compared 5 categories:

  1. data retention – how long does the service store the tweet/retweets so that you can access them
  2. customization – in as far are you allowed t change the appearance of both button and the retweets
  3. URL shortener/s – which URL shortening service/s are used or supported
  4. issues – things that seemingly don’t work
  5. extra features – features the others don’t have or you wouldn’t expect

Protection 4

Protection 4 is a Creative Commons image by Jasmin Cormier

The white hat vs black hat discussion in SEO often misses one point. It’s not always actually about what color your hat is or how “un/ethical” your practices are. It’s about how SEO is viewed by others.

Decision makers in search and social media rarely take a close look whether your SEO efforts are ethical, white hat, clean or in accordance with their TOS.

They don’t have the time and will to do so. They will single you out, ban you or cripple your accounts based on the assumption that you practice SEO at all. They will penalize you for the slightest misstep while others without the label SEO will get away with murder. That’s the way things work on the Web today. It’s a sad realization but it’s true.

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