SEOptimise » seoptimise

Chelsea Blacker Joins SEOptimise London Team

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:35:02 +0000

We’ve been quietly working away on a few things here at SEOptimise during the last couple of months, so it’s probably about time we made a couple of announcements!

Firstly, you may have noticed that in December we opened a new London office in Paddington. Alongside this, we recruited two new SEO execs – Gillian Cook and Pak Hou Cheung – both of whom have written some great posts on the SEOptimise blog already.

And now we are delighted to welcome Chelsea Blacker to head our London SEO team. Chelsea has a huge amount of experience in SEO, having worked within the search industry agency-side for the last 5 years. In addition to this Nick Clarke will be joining the Oxford team as a content writer later this month.

So following a very successful 2011 which included some great new client wins, conference speaking at leading industry events and topped off with a search award - we have plenty to look forward to for a very exciting year ahead!

SEOptimise Blog – We Want Your Views!

Rachel McCombie — Tue, 31 May 2011 10:50:02 +0000

You’ve probably noticed that we’ve recently given the SEOptimise website and our blog a brand new look. We’d like to hear what you think of it!

We’d really appreciate it if you could leave a comment if you have thoughts on any of the following:

What do you think of our new website?
What kind of posts would you like to see more of on our blog?

On-site optimisation tips?
Link building ideas?
Social media strategies?
Useful tools?
Lists of resources?
Results of experiments?
‘How to’ guides?
Industry comment?
SEOptimise news?
Video blogs?
Anything else?

We’d love to hear from you – please leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

How to Link Out for SEO Benefit

Tad Chef — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:44:26 +0000

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.

Most people seem to assume that linking out leads to:

Users leaving your site
Search engines assigning less value to your site (aka PageRank leaking)
A bad user experience as readers interrupt reading to jump to other sites
Supporting your competition
Appearing less authoritative (so that you have to link out to others who know better)

to name just the most obvious perceived drawbacks of linking out people.

All of this can happen, but doesn’t have to. Also, even if it does happen, a short term loss can be a gain in the long run.

You can try to mitigate the negative effects of outgoing links by linking out correctly and by adopting a strategic approach to it.

The SEOptimise blog has thousands of outgoing links in the editorial part and we rank at #1 for [seo blog] in Google UK despite or because of this, so we must do something right, mustn’t we? In SEO terms, you refer to us as a so-called hub site. Some people assume that Google loves hub sites and favours them in search results. Aren’t we the best proof of this SEO benefit?

So the question is not whether you link out but how. Let me split this up into several more specific questions:

Negative Approach to Linking Out

How to deal with users leaving your site via outgoing links

Link out in a new window/tab using target=”_blank” in your link. This way, users will stay on your page or return by closing the new tab or window. This was frowned upon by some Web users before everybody used tabs, but these days it far less of a problem. You can have lots of tabs open in modern browsers without experiencing any issues.

Link out at the bottom of the article. Treat your blog post or page like a landing page and streamline it. It starts with an eye catcher, then some easily readable lists or tables follow; structure it with sub-headlines, citations and small digestible chunks of text using a bit of bold and italic text decoration. Then add the external links at the bottom of the post or page. Just like scientific publications do – the Internet was originally based upon this concept.

Add internal links to similar articles before the outgoing links. Add thumbnail images to these internal links.

How to convince search engines to assign more value to your page by linking out

Link out to very relevant high quality resources using deep links. I see people linking out to the homepage of Wikipedia.com, Flickr.com, BBC or even Google as the source. These links are worthless. Even if somebody clicks them, they are useless as nobody will search on those sites for the actual page you refer to but which you are afraid or too lazy to link to.

Of course Google engineers are smart enough to figure out which links are useful and which are not. Search engines don’t work on a page to page basis; they also form topical clusters. Just check the Google Wonder Wheel to see what I mean. Google does not favour outgoing links just for the sake of them; it also categorises the pages linked out linguistically.

Don’t be stingy. Link out plenty or don’t link out all. Why? Google has been known for years to favour so-called hub sites. Hub sites are sites that link out to many other authoritative and relevant sites. In the SEO industry, hub sites like Search Engine Watch or Search Engine Land have been the most successful publications over the years in spite of other sites like SEOmoz or SEO Book being even more on topic and targeted.

How to make sure your visitors have a good user experience

Link out where it makes sense. Add sources and additional resources below the article. Don’t link out to obvious sites like Google, Facebook and Twitter when mentioning them. Rather, link to actual messages or updates and your profiles on those sites where appropriate. Use self-explanatory anchor text for both internal and external links. Highlight links with CSS, but don’t overdo it. Link to the subject of your article in such a way that people who want to go there don’t have to look hard.

How to ensure you don’t support your competition, or rather how to make it a win-win situation

You can’t prevent your outgoing links from supporting your industry peers; even by crippling them with nofollow. Either you link out to colleagues from the industry or you don’t. Decide not to link out, and they won’t link to you either in most cases. Decide to link out and they will link, like and Tweet you as well in most (or at least many) cases. So, embrace linking out to industry peers wholeheartedly and don’t be nit-picky about every single link.

How to appear more authoritative by linking out

Link out to those people who offer really in-depth articles on parts of the topic you write about. Do not link out to people who are describing exactly the same but better. Link out to those who cover certain aspects that you don’t.

Also, collect the links you want to link out to before you actually write your own post so that you can expand on the issue or concept that others have covered before.

Don’t reinvent the wheel just for the sake of making yourself appear as the first person who has written about a certain topic. You aren’t, and everybody knows it. You can also find your own angle and provide links to others with a more general approach.

Positive Approach to Linking Out

Now that we have dealt with the issues you might face using external links as an SEO weapon, we can add some of the SEO benefits you are after when linking out. Outgoing links are actually the best method to get incoming links. Sometimes it’s as easy as pinging another blogger. Sometimes it can be more of challenge, but it may pay back in manifold ways after a while.

Link out to get noticed

When you start out as a blogger, especially with a business or corporate blog it is quite difficult to get noticed at all. There are millions of other blogs out there and nobody cares about your great content. The best way to make people notice and care is to tell them. You can’t tell them upfront by aggressively self-promoting without annoying people though. This is not a good start. There is a way to make people notice and care: notice and care for others first. Read the blogs in your niche, industry or from your area.

Don’t treat them like competitors. You can’t compete with the whole world anyway. You can cooperate with other bloggers though. That’s the secret behind the concept of the blogosphere. It’s a social sphere made up of bloggers.

Link out to fellow bloggers who are similar to you and write about them in the best case. They will notice you. Do it a few times, Stumble, Tweet, like them, and comment on their blogs. Unless you fail at blogging completely, some of them will start to care for you as well. At least use them as sources and provide ”via” links back to their articles.

This is a strategy that does not work without a blog. So get one. A site without a blog is quite dead these days. A blog is often far less time consuming and rewarding than other options like a forum or a feedback community.

Link out to get backlinks

As noted above, it’s just a matter of pinging other bloggers to get a backlink. Don’t overuse this and keep in mind that ultimately you are after real editorial links from other bloggers or webmasters. Even non-bloggers check their web analytics tools to find out who links to them, and they might link back to you. You just have to provide an incentive to do so.

Link out to become a hub site

The hub site is the holy grail of SEO. For about a decade it’s almost a mystic topic few people write about: a hub site is a site that gets preferential treatment by Google for the sheer variety and resources it connects around the Web.

To become a hub site you have to link out plenty to authoritative sites. Linking out solely to your own properties on other domains won’t suffice. It’s not the sheer number of links, it’s about the authority and variety of sites you link out to.

Hub site success stories

The best example of a successful hub site has been Drudge Report. A study has shown how this one page news site that only contains links has a much higher engagement than major news sites like CNN.

Searching for [news] on Google.com from the US results in Drudge Report being at number 4 in spite of Drudge Report not even having the word ‘news’ in the title or headline of their site, two of the most important on-site ranking factors. Google News and News at Yahoo follow at 5 and 6.

There is barely any “SEO” on Drudge Report at all, so it is really difficult not to attribute its success to plenty of linking out. Alltop is another good example for a link-only hub site. They rank in the top 10 for generic queries like [design], but also competitive keyphrases like [seo news].

So you see: a “one man show” site can compete with huge organisations mostly by linking out.

SEOptimise has been in the top 10 for [seo blog] for years, but just recently when I stepped up my linking out efforts by providing several highly popular 30+ resources lists in a row, we moved up to #1 in the UK.

Merry Christmas from all at SEOptimise [Infographic]

Kevin Gibbons — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:02:51 +0000

We’ve created an infographic to help celebrate Christmas with our readers and clients this year:

Have a great Christmas and a happy New Year everyone! Also, stay tuned to our Facebook fan page for some very embarrassing photos and videos from our Christmas party last week.

How to Write Highly Popular 30+ Item List Blog Posts to Get Links and Traffic

Tad Chef — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:57:19 +0000

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.

In the web design/web development niche even more people publish lists like that all the time.

Why 30?

For some reason 30+ lists are better suited for the Web than top 10, 20 or wahtever lists. I have a few ideas why that is the case but these ideas are just speculation. What I do know for sure is that the so called task ROI of most 30+ lists is higher than the top 10, whatever or top 100 lists.

One crucial success factor is that people tend to think in dozens not necessarily tens IMHO.

The decimal system makes us read and write top 10, top 20 or top 100 lists but the more “natural” way to count is by using dozens as in twelve hours. That’s why a number like 36 sounds better to many of us. Even though 30 is two and a half dozens this number just seems to entice people to read.

Also most people are tired of top 10 and 20 lists, they have been overused. Here again 30+ sounds more natural.

Last but not least you simply can’t compile a list of 100 items without broadening the topic or lowering the quality of the list.

Most lists are comprehensive enough with around 30 items.

More items would often be redundant or less relevant. A top 10 list also implies a personal selection of some kind. You have to choose “the best” 10 while 30 items cover a subject in depth.

That’s why I sometimes even reduce the number of items in a list, at least in the headline. One of my favorite lists has been the one about advanced SEO which contained 55+ links but only around 30 items officially.

Delicious

I collect great posts from SEO blogs in my Delicious account onreact.com and I tag them according to a set of rules. I add mostly tags I’ve used in the past to categorize these posting in relevant groups.

Then from time to time I take a look at some of the tags and those that contain more than 10 or 20 items get my attention. Sometimes they are almost thirty already so I just have to copy and paste the links. I delete the unworthy ones and add some from outside my Delicious bookmarks but the bulk of the work has been done while reading social media, search and SEO news in the morning each day.

Sometimes I have to combine several tags into one trend. The brutal thruths about Google, SEO etc. have been such a list. It was clear to me that there was a trend in the industry to write about the less glamorous parts of the SEO game but I couldn’t name it. Then the inspiration came out of nowhere and I have found the common ground to add it up to a list.

In some cases I don’t use Delicious at all. I simply get inspired and write down approx. 30 items from the top of my head.

Twitter

From time to time I use Twitter to crowdsource list items. The SEO FAQ list heavily relied on input from my Twitter followers. Also the black hat SEO techniques list has grown with a little help of my friends.

You have to ask the right questions and offer incentives though. The SEO FAQ offered both backlinks and content for those who took part. I asked my Twitter followers about the black hat SEO techniques their arch enemies use. Otherwise people would probably mostly stay low key.

Link list or item list?

A simple link list is not the best kind of list. Sometimes I just have to compile a list of resources and link them beacuse there are so many of them. Such a list can overwhelm though. Many people like lists because they want to have a quick overview about a subject, not a huge reading list. Therefore a combined text item list with added links for further reading is the best option. This way you get both kinds of list readers, the save for later bunch as well as the quick overview group.

A simple link list will not be as popular as an item list with added links to prove the points. Still both list formats are highly popular. A 30+ list post done in 4h will get more traction on the Web than a tutorial that took 6 or 8h to write.

Linking out

Another key factor leading to the overwhelming success of my lists posts in general is the massive amount of outbound links. While many SEOs are still stuck in the past and attempt to hoard PageRank and trap users like the news media do I rely on linking out for SEO reasons.

We already know that Google prefers sites that link out

(after all they need outgoing links to determine their PageRank algo) but have no proof yet that they affect rankings directly.

What’s obvious though is that people who you are linking to will link back to you, spread the word on social media and support your blog or even business in the future.

So at the end of the day the fact that I link out to dozens of other blogs get me traffic and links in significant numbers.

Contrary to popular wisdom SEOptimise has improved in rankings in recent years ever since we link out in large numbers. SEOptimise ranks in the top 10 for some of the most competitive search marketing terms while being a relatively small agency compared to the competition.

Also the lists themselves tend to rank quite well. SEOptimise ranks top 3 for [advanced SEO], [SEO techniques] or [social media statistics].

The secret is our broad, organic backlink structure build up by business blogging utilizing these highly popular 30+ items list posts.

10 Online Ways to Advertise for Jobs Without Recruitment Agencies

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:13:07 +0000

This week you may have noticed we have started recruiting for an SEO executive – rather than just writing up a standard we are recruiting post, I thought I’d share the process of how to advertise for jobs online.

This is quite worryingly from Oxford – image credit Flickr

As a disclaimer, I have nothing in particular against recruitment agencies it’s just good to know the alternatives available – and of course everyone likes to know how to do things on the cheap!

Twitter - If you have a following for your company or personal brand on Twitter, it makes sense to reach out to these contacts in order to help find potential candidates. In 2008 PubCon spent $75,000 marketing the conference via email maketing. In 2009 they marketed using Twitter for $0, attendance was up 30% and income 40% – in a recession! That shows Twitter can be an incredible marketing tool if you have the right audience.
Blogging – Similarly to Twitter, make sure you reach out to your subscribers and let them know you’re recruiting. Did I mention we’re recruiting? ;)
Industry leading website’s – This is probably the most expensive recommendation, but rather than paying a recruitment agency commission, it may be more beneficial to reach out to industry leading website’s to advertise directly via a one-off fee. Econsultancy is one of the top digital website’s out there, especially in the UK – so the quality of responses for listings on their job board is likely to be very high. Also there are normally many industry-specific job boards which are either free or charge one-off listing fees which are worth checking out.
LinkedIn – Of course LinkedIn is a huge social media site for professionals, so it’s an obvious choice for advertising jobs. LinkedIn charge $199 for a job listing fee, but as a first (free) step, try sending out a LinkedIn status update to tell your contacts you’re recruiting. Make sure you optimise your LinkedIn profile too, helping to improve its reach.
Local job boards – Outside of the big cities it can be more difficult to find people with the relevant experience. Make sure you find the best people in your region by targeting them via local advertising or job boards.
SEO – try targeting industry specific career/job terms, for example if you can rank for “search engine marketing jobs“, then you’re likely to start receiving a steady stream of applications.
PPC – PPC is far more successful than you may think for recruitment, just watch this very clever idea in action from Alec Brownstein. Alec specifically targeted vanity name searches on top Google execs with the aim of getting a job interview, slightly crazy idea, but it worked! Maybe you could think of something just as creative as a recruiter – although geo-targeting ads specifically based on job-based keywords would be a good start too.
Business parks, Universities & Colleges – if your company is located on a business park, this can be a great way of drumming up some local interest via direct advertising – plus in some cases it’s a nice way of building some quality links too. Perhaps your local University or College has a job board too, hopefully externally available online and containing those little things called hyperlinks…
Facebook Marketplace – If you have professional contacts on Facebook, this can be a great way of making people aware that you are recruiting. Plus it’s very easy to create a quick job listing which can be found via the marketplace by users outside of your network.
Facebook advertising – this is where you can stalk, I mean target individuals based upon profile criteria. Those options include interests and employer – so if you’re selective you can stalk target the right people very cheaply!

So there’s a few ideas to get you started, if all else fails then it’s probably time to turn to your recruitment agent. If you have any more to add to the list please let us know in the comments.

We’re on a Boat – SEOptimise Summer Party 2010…

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:48:28 +0000

Last Friday was the SEOptimise summer party, being such a sunny day we made the most of it by going punting (unfortunately no-one fell in!), followed by a beer or three in Oxford. We thought we’d share some of the photos with our readers.

We’re on a boat…

There’s more pictures on Flickr and Facebook too.

Hear SEOptimise Speak at SMX Advanced London 2010

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:53:47 +0000

The full agenda for SMX London is now almost complete, this was a great conference last year and is expected to be a must-attend event again this year – especially as this is now an advanced conference.

There’s lots of great tracks, but if you’re attending make sure you come and see us on the following panels:
Day 1) Search Ad Quality, Under The Microscope – Richard Fergie
Day 2) Social Media, Search & Reputation Management – Kevin Gibbons

And if you haven’t signed up yet, make sure you use our 15% discount code: KEVING010.

To our American readers not making the journey across the pond, we are also attending SMX Advanced in Seattle this June so we should get to see you there instead! ;)

We Are Recruiting – Come Join Us!

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:20:31 +0000

We are currently looking to recruit an SEO executive to join our great team in Oxford!

Image credit: Flickr

“We are currently looking to recruit for a full-time position in our natural search team. Candidates with a minimum of 1-2 years experience in a search engine marketing role are preferred, with a competitive salary offered based on experience.

The SEO Executive job role will involve working within the search team, assisting with SEO activities, search marketing strategy and client projects.”

More information can be found on the job description page and we look forward to hearing from you!

SEOptimise 2009 – The Year in Review

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:40:55 +0000

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

Total number of SEOptimise blog posts
2006: 293
2007: 518
2008: 723
2009: 877

RSS subscribers
2006: 70
2007: 634
2008: 1,679
2009: 6,798

Technorati Rank
2006: 94,938 – 283 blog reactions
2007: 20,691 – 1,192 blog reactions (Authority 255)
2008: 18,853 – 601 blog reactions (Authority 197)
2009: N/A (trying to fix this!)

Alexa Rating
2006: 82,395
2007: 56,658
2008: 154,688
2009: 25,524

Yahoo Site Explorer external links
2006: 2,758 links
2007: 29,100
2008: 45,445
2009: 51,694

Google SEOptimise query
2006: 9,630
2007: 23,400
2008: 36,900
2009: 41,300

AdAge Power 150 List
2008: 221 Global / 22 UK 2009: 184 Global / 19 UK

Twitter Followers
2008: 959
2009: 10,103

Compete Stats
2008: 63,219
2009: 48,422

There’s a few interesting results in there, the RSS and Twitter count improvements are definitely good to see! More importantly we’ve had a very successful year from a business perspective, achieving amazing results for our clients and some excellent new business wins. Plus we’ve grown and developed our great team and can look forward to an exciting 2010 ahead!

Download Our Free Blogging Guide for Business White Paper

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:07:38 +0000

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.

Our blog has grown incredibly over the last few years. We now have more than 6,500 subscribers and over 8,500 Twitter followers. Our search team regularly contributes, as well as other authority bloggers. I have been invited to write for other
resources, including the prestigious Search Engine Land and Econsultancy – showcasing SEOptimise’s name and enhancing its credibility.

The benefits of our blog have gone far beyond simply attracting the search engines’ attention and it has become a
real source of pride to all my team.

Blogging has worked incredibly well for us, so in this guide, we want to show how it can work wonders for your business too.
We’ve tried to keep it as accessible and non-technical as possible so you can see how quickly you could make a corporate blog work for you.”

Update: Subsequent to this post I was invited to blog for Search Engine Watch in February 2010.

Vote for the Top 100 Online Marketers of 2009

Kevin Gibbons — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 11:05:07 +0000

Very quick post, but Investp are now running the second year of their online marketers of the year poll.

I was quite surprised, but very honored to be nominated amongst some great guys – including fellow SEOptimise blogger Tadeusz Szewczyk. Last years vote was very popular and I’d encourage that SEOptimise readers take part in this and of course any votes for myself or Tad would be greatly appreciated! ;)

Online Marketing Interview & Q&A on LBC Radio with James Max

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:52:12 +0000

Very quick post, but on Sunday evening I was on LBC Radio talking to James Max and answering caller questions about search engine marketing.

Here’s a clip from the show:

Direct YouTube link: Kevin Gibbons (SEOptimise) – Online Marketing Interview on LBC Radio.

I’m also at a4uexpo in London today, so if you’re around let me know!

Should Businesses be Blogging? SEOptimise on BBC Oxford

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:58:17 +0000

This morning I had a great opportunity to speak live on BBC Oxford radio to Louisa Hannan about blogging.

It takes 2-3 mins to get into talking about blogging and understandably during the interview there were a few points I researched but didn’t talk about. So I’ve listed below some of the key messages which I would recommend to businesses getting started or considering blogging.

Direct YouTube link: Kevin Gibbons Blogging Interview – BBC Oxford

What is blogging?

Blogging is in the form of an online journal and it’s an extremely popular method of publishing news, information, opinions and content.
Blogging is easy to get started with, whether for a personal or business site. You can easily signup for free using sites such as WordPress or Blogger.

Advantages to blogging

You can reach a worldwide audience of 1.5 billion people online.
Builds credibility.
Brand awareness – indirectly advertising your business by attracting potential customers.
Helps to build useful relationships and contacts within an industry.
Instantly deliver your message online.
Great way of staying up-to-date and writing about latest, ever-changing trends.
Adds a personal touch to a brand, helping to build and control your online reputation.

How SEOptimise use blogging

Blogging is open to all size of business, so we have managed to punch above our weight in comparison to larger competitors.
We’ve established a strong reputation, highly subscribed blog and been frequently quoted/referenced by leading search bloggers and the media.
In 2009 (to-date) we have received 192,000 visits to our blog! 30,000 alone during the last month.
Time-consuming, but the effort can be justified based on the potential return. Reasonably well targeted paid search advertising clicks are likely to cost in the region of £1 per click. At 30,000 visits per month, blogging is looking far more appealing!

Blogging Facts

Hubspot research reports that companies with a blog have 55% more visitors and 97% more links to their website!
Tumblr reported 255m pageviews in July and 650,000 new posts per day, working out at 6 new posts per second! Thanks for the help finding these Bas! ;)

Type of content to post

Breaking news
Useful tips
Topical content/opinions/advice
Controversial topics (be careful though!)

Tips – Do’s and Don’ts

Write interesting content – such as the ideas listed above.
Write for the web, brighten up your posts, use bullet points and keep them concise.
Don’t re-report recent news, add your own angle or opinion on what this means.
Do link to other industry bloggers, try to connect with them so that you can help promote each other. Thanks Darren for some more ideas.

Example of blogging working effectively

Pearn Kandola (disclaimer, they are a client) wrote a psychology analysis of The Apprentice during the TV show earlier in the year. What worked well was:

They reached a far wider audience, seeing this is one of the BBC’s most popular shows.
They talked about a topical discussion, many people would discuss who has been fired following the show. So this helped to spark discussion.
They used social media, such as Twitter to promote themselves to viewers of The Apprentice.
And they got it right! Boosting their credibility by successfully predicting the candidates who would last the longest, who would eventually get hired and who the most likely to be the next one fired.

Hope you liked the interview and please let me know what your top blogging tips are?

First SEOptimise Newsletter Sent Out – August 2009

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:12:41 +0000

In case you haven’t signed up for our monthly newsletter yet, our first ever one has just been sent out for August.

You can view it online and sign-up here:

How to Get 5000+ Subscribers for Your Boring (SEO) Blog

Tad Chef — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:13:07 +0000

Today the official Feedburner subscribers count says that the SEOptimise blog has reached 5001 subscribers. In spite of the recent addition of Friendfeed subscribers to this statistic it’s still an impressive number.

When I joined SEOptimise as a blog writer roughly 14 months ago the blog had around 1000 subscribers. Even without the FriendFeed subscribers we have tripled the number of subscribers during the last year. This is especially surprising as we deal with a very specific and for most people boring topic: SEO.

We don’t write much about search in general like the most popular blogs that also deal with SEO.

OK, enough of the shock and awe. The most interesting thing about it for you is probably how we did it and whether you can do that too. You can. Le me tell you:

How to get 5000+ subscribers for your boring (SEO) blog.

Admit it.
The #1 prerequisite of making it with a boring SEO blog is to admit it: SEO is boring.

SEO is a topic most people don’t care for, don’t understand or downright hate.

Now that you don’t lie to yourself you can solve that problem. You can not succeed with a SEO blog solely writing about boring SEO. More than that: You can’t succeed with a SEO blog solely addressing the SEO audience. Similarly most other business topics are boring for the average reader. So you have to decide whether you want to address a small community or a wider audience with your blog.

Attract similar crowds.
In case you write for a SEO blog you have to attract the

search
social media
blogging
marketing
web development
business

crowds. Ar at least some of them. You can’t attract them all of the time everybody at the same time but you can attempt to serve content those groups are interested in fro time to time. There are only a few SEO only readers out there. Even search marketers or the search industry as a whole is still quite small. So don’t try to blog for a perceived ghetto of just a few hundred people. Another boring business blog topics most people don’t even know they should are for is CRM. Nonetheless a blog like Inside CRM managed to get very popular among similar crowds and even on social media.

Find the right voice.
When I started writing for SEOptimise I already had some experience with SEO blogging for my own SEO 2.0 blog. I was short of reaching 1000 subscribers on SEO 2.0 as well. My blog was quite personal though. On SEOptimise I was part of a group blog for a business. It was more of a corporate blog. So I couldn’t just copy the blueprint from my own blog. I tried several approaches before finally finding my way of successful blogging here. I tried to write from a UK view point even as an outsider. I tried to write link baity like I did on my own blog. I tried to write very business like. In the end I succeeded with a combination of

controversy
social media buzz
die hard resources lists

Meanwhile the regular SEOptimise staff bloggers changed their styles as well.

Deep PPC insights
analytics advice
timely search engine coverage
local news
broad event coverage

were regular topics on SEOptimise as well. You can’t offer the same kind of content all of the time. You can keep a recognizable voice though, even as a group blog.

Target a few platforms and communities that make sense.
Our blog did well on

Sphinn
Twitter
StumbleUpon
Delicious

We didn’t waste our time with Digg, a place SEO publications can’t or rarely succeed at. Design, environment or self improvement can succeed there. There are obvious reasons why SEOptimise succeeded on Sphinn. The topic of course but also the very active contributions to the community by Kevin Gibbons, one of the most prolific Sphinn users. I’ve been quite active on Sphinn as well in the past but Kevin really made the difference. Sphinn is a niche social news site like there are plenty. Almost every niche conceivable has such a community, if not, there at least forums.

Our blog contributors have active Twitter accounts with a large number of followers. We have a SEOptimise Twitter account with by now more than 4k followers as well.

StumbleUpon was huge last year but in 2009 Twitter has taken over. Still: Now SU even added an SEO category. That means you can reach a very targeted group of readers there. Nonetheless it easier to succeed on SU with every other blog topic.

Delicious is not as popular as it once was but it’s still great for links, even without getting on the front page. Many bloggers will you once you end up in their bookmarks. Our big resources lists have repeatedely gained recognition with the Delicious crowd. Tech, design and web development blogs are most welcome over at Delicious.

Guest blog elsewhere.
Kevin Gibbons did very well by contributing to other blogs and publications apart from blogging for the SEOptimise blog. Additionally my readership came over from SEO 2.0. So you have to tap into similar audiences nearby (topically not geographically) just by dropping in or getting other writers to write for you. A blog is not an island. Make sure to connect with similar bloggers. Also don’t forget to link out to them, this way they notice you the fastest.

I can’t guarantee that you get 5k or 3k (depending on ho you measure) subscribers one year from now as well but these tips will certainly help you in achieving this goal. I think these aspects were among the most important reasons why we got thus far.

Signup for the New SEOptimise Monthly Newsletter

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:23:10 +0000

We are delighted to launch our new monthly SEOptimise newsletter. We aim to pack this full of all the latest search engine marketing articles, tip and tricks, company news and much more!

To sign-up just enter your details below (please click through if reading via RSS/email):

We’ve even got a sneak preview for those who want to take a quick look:

This is different to the current email alert subscription for latest posts, so existing subscribers may like to sign-up for this one too! :D

Update:
The first newsletter has now been sent out!

Visit SEOptimise at Online Marketing Show in London

Kevin Gibbons — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:08:23 +0000

SEOptimise will be at the Online Marketing Show this week at Olympia in London, so make sure you come and visit our stand.

The exhibition is hosted on Tuesday 30th June to Wednesday 1st July and promises to be one of the UK’s top online marketing events. Plus you can still get entrance passes at the show and follow the event on the official @OMS09 Twitter account and #OMS09 hashtag.

SEOptimise will be on stand A138, we’ll hopefully see you there! :)