Time flies by. It’s more than two years by now that I write the highly popular “30+” list blog posts to get links and traffic for SEOptimise. I’ve often tried to abandon them, to write tutorials or other types of postings but list posts with around 30 items still rule. They get the most

• shares on social media
• links
• attention
• traffic

for several reasons.

This year some of the big guys in the SEO blogosphere started doing 30 something lists as well, SEOmoz does them, SEL compiles them. They even surpass my lists in some cases as they spend obviously more time on them than I do. Their success with this technique has just confirmed to me that 30+ lists work. That’s why I will tell you how to write them.

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We all love case studies. Who is we? We in the SEO industry, we in social media and online marketing, we business people. Case studies show on real life examples, real websites, projects and campaigns that something works.

Good case studies are more than proof though. They also show you how to market or optimize a site. They show an example of how it actually works.

Case studies combine both, the insight of a how to articles and the business proof of a finished campaign. They shows the results from experience.

These are some of the reasons why I’ve collected a comprehensive list of 30 SEO, social media & marketing case studies that prove the ROI of it All.

Yes, the ROI in SEO, social media and other kinds of online marketing is still too often fuzzy. We want success stories, numbers and explanations so that we can reenact the steps you need to succeed. So here they are, enjoy:

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Recently I’ve read one of those awfully misguided anti-SEO posts. It linked to another blog post called SEO FAQ. It wasn’t an actual SEO FAQ though. It was just another awfully misguided blog post from a guy I have never heard of before and who only reveled in the attention he got from displaying his ignorance. People got angry as usual in such cases of blatant provocation and disregard.

Sadly the Google algorithm still sometimes prefers those who raise hell instead of those who provide useful resources.

So that completely useless SEO FAQ ranks at #2 for SEO FAQ in Google.com and misleads lots of people looking for answers to most basic SEO questions.

Thus I decided to provide a new SEO FAQ. I want to outrank this fake resource. Also I want you to copy these questions and to provide your own answers on your own blog.
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Image: Happy Beaver by stevehdc.

Welcome back to the weekly Twitter column. Yesterday many people on Twitter cried out in outrage about a misled tweet from @vodafoneuk – in it some apparently tweeting under the influence employee made a badly spelled comment about the hygiene of homosexuals.

Then the person also threatened to hunt for beavers!

This is indeed outrageous! As you probably know beavers are an endangered species and have been extinct a few years ago in the UK. Hunting them just to vent your anger is the last thing to do. Continue Reading »

Wicked by xlorddashx.

Black hat SEO is both a myth and a reality we have to face sooner or later as SEO practicioners. While I abide by probably one of the strictest SEO codes of ethics around and SEOptimise is a clean white hat SEO company company itself we still can’t deny that there is black hat SEO.

The sheer existence of black hat SEO techniques must be acknowledged for several reasons.

As Rishi Lakhani noted on his new SEO blog: You need it at least to know what to avoid or to know how competitors who perform worse than you still manage to outrank your site.
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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…

Image credit: krisdecurtis

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Robert Scoble by Alex de Carvalho

In the attention economy the attention rich win over those who get less attention. As controversy and ignorance creates more attention than common sense and boring expertise we have to deal with the phenomenon of SEO bashing every now and then. People pointing fingers saying “look at that, how stupid they are bashing SEO again” create even more buzz.

Web 2.0 celebrities can use this attention gap in order to push their own interests. Failed entrepreneurs like Jason Calacanis have done that in the past repeatedly to ride the wave of negative hype. So this time I was a little bit astounded to hear it from Robert Scoble the web pundit everybody seems to listen to.
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CC Image by radcarper.

Do you remember the term link bait or link baiting? While 2006 and 2007 link baiting was all the rage in recent years it seems people don’t talk or write much about this practice anymore. Has link baiting vanished? Not at all.

Link baiting is daily business right now, it’s the norm.

Indeed I would go as far as to state that link baiting is currently the most important link building tactic or strategy (depends on the bait really). Continue Reading »

“He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone.” I admit reading or rather scanning the “confidential” Twitter documents obtained by Techcrunch from a hacker and published in excerpts. Of course I was curious. On the other hand:

Was this whole Techcrunch Twitter hacked scandal worth it?

Are we wiser now? Has humanity gained some new insights? Did Techcrunch prevent a corrupt president from breaking the law?
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“Yeah, I’ve launched an SEO campaign based on generating buzz through the blogosphere and increasing my link juice to ensure I get great SERP positioning…”

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