TheVanBlog | Van SEO Design » This Month In SEO

A Ghoulish Collection of Links | This Month In SEO - 10/08

Steven Bradley — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:49:19 +0000

Boo! Did I scare you? I didn’t think so, but today is Halloween so why not dedicate a month’s worth of links to the eve of all hallows. Nothing below should scare you. You may agree with what’s on the other side of the links or you may disagree, but there’s no reason to fear clicking any of them.

Plenty to get to and more at my Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Sphinn profiles.

Now on with the show and if you’re in the U.S. remember to vote on Tuesday.

Social Media

The election here in the U.S. is changing social media. More and more political conversations can be found and more and more mainstream media types are paying attention. Great for us, but that doesn’t help the sites become profitable. Enter Google with open social and some new patents to potentially mine social profiles for better ad targeting. People are paying attention and the money may be coming, but don’t overlook the Achilles heel of different types of social sites.

Micro blogging is still all about Twitter even as sites like Plurk attempt to take the mantle. Twitter is going mainstream and you need to take a look at it. Why? Maybe four months of thoughts from someone who used to think Twitter stupid will convince you.

What? You’re already using Twitter. How about some tools then to make the service more useful. Ok, you’re convinced and have enough tools. So are you conversing or broadcasting? Or are you so advanced in your Twitter skills that you practice mind control?

Digg banned your profile, you say. What kind of karma is that? Are you sure you didn’t do something to deserve it? Maybe you were pushing your commercial site a little too hard. Sorry about the ban, but at least the rest of us can learn something from your troubles. Maybe some who haven’t been banned are feeling a little naughty and looking to boost their profile into that space you just vacated.

Don’t worry about that Digg ban. There’s still StumbleUpon and it’s not too late to learn the most important things to do if you want to have success there. Are three things too much? Then just skip to the most important thing. Self submission isn’t limited to StumbleUpon, but should you do it? It may hurt you if you do. Then again is self submitting really all that bad?

Blogging

If you were starting over as a blogger with a beginner’s mind what advice would you offer your beginning self? Would you offer tips for starting out part time? Would you teach yourself to write better headlines? Could you and your beginner self occupy the same space-time without tearing apart the fabric of the universe?

Do you view your readers as a market or as a community? Think relationships before sales and think community before market. Then look for ways to build your community. It takes a community to build a blog or raise a child or something like that.

Before you begin marketing think strategy. There’s a lot of competition out there and you need to have a plan. With strategy in place you can look to get featured in mass media or drive easy traffic to your blog. Other bloggers will be important to connect with, especially if Microsoft has its way and gives links from blogs a boost.

With strategy and community in place and the New York Times and the blogosphere linking to you, it’s time to make some money advertising. Which ad server will you use? And now that the money is flowing in you can afford a better server. Do you know how to move your blog to its new host?

WordPress

Are you geared up for WordPress 2.7 yet? New look, new features. There’s a lot to like. Even if you’re not geared up for yet another upgrade it’s still a good idea. One reason WP gets a new version is to close holes that have been discovered and to make it more secure. No matter what version you use or will use you’ll probably want to optimize WordPress as best you can.

Ready to build your site completely with WordPress? It can be used as a full CMS you know. You’ll want to design and develop your own theme and consider some of the trends the popular blogs are using. Enhance your design with jQuery, tweak your navigation a bit and you’ll be all set.

Categories or tags, pages or posts. Which should you use? Whatever you decide you may want to show off how many subscribers you have. You can do it without needing FeedBurner’s help. Did you know there are many different ways to display content in WordPress? You can even change what gets displayed under different conditions using context includes. And if you prefer not to do your own coding you can create custom content types with the Flutter plugin.

Design And Development

Dreams can come true again, When everything old is new again. Could be what explains the retro and vintage look in modern design. More likely it’s the reaction against the web 2.0 style. Colorful is still in and can be a good source of inspiration. Art is another great source of inspiration for design. Have a look at some stunning images.

Web design matters. People will start making decisions about you the moment they come in contact with your site or worse in the agonizing moments they wait for your site to load. Logos matter too. They can communicate a lot and speak for your brand. If your site isn’t cutting it or your logo is saying the wrong words it’s time to think about a redesign. Just remember to include the key elements all top sites should have.

At some point your design will likely take a trip through Photoshop. Will your toolbox be ready? Does your toolbox include a color mixer for choosing a color scheme? Have you given any thought to how comments on your blog will look? Do you know how they can look? And there’s no doubt images will play some kind of role in your design. Where will you get those images from?

Sooner or later your design is going to ask to be turned into an actual site. Do you really need to use CSS? Can’t you stick with that table-based layout? Sure you can, well, sort of. It’s actually still CSS. And since you’re using CSS how well do you really understand positioning. Do you know your absolutes from your relatives from your fixed? Even if you know, how well do the browsers know. Time to get out those cross browser fixes and tools for testing.

You should be able to get your CSS to display cross browser, but sometimes a little JavaScript is needed to fix those browser headaches. JavaScript can do much more when folded into Ajax. You can add effects like search suggest or full featured shopping carts. And you can’t beat 20 earth-shattering tutorials from one of the best sources for tutorials. Ok, they may not litterally shatter the earth, but they are worth reading.

Link Building

Before you can move on to advanced concepts of link building you need a firm grasp of the fundamentals. With a basic understanding in place you can then develop an overall strategy. Directories might become one tactic in your arsenal and if so you’ll want to know how to identify the good from the bad. And perhaps most importantly you want to understand how to measure the value you’re getting so you can readjust both strategy and tactics.

Follow, nofollow, dofollow, don’t follow, let’s call the whole thing off. Are there benefits to PageRank Sculpting? Is PR Sculpting worth the effort? The answer might depend on whether your site is a Ferrari or a Gremlin. Since a followed link is preferable to one that isn’t followed should you turn your blog into a dofollow blog? Will it increase the quantity of comments on your blog at the expense of quality? No matter which side you lean on the nofollow/dofollow fence, one thing is certain. Internal linking does matter.

Link algorithms change. Today’s best tactics may be useless tomorrow. What works today could hurt tomorrow. Will the link you turn on today return the favor? Will it still return that favor next month?

Do you ask for links in emails? Should you? Is there really anything wrong with the practice or is it simply the implementation that’s awry? When you have control over the anchor text in a link how many words and characters do you use? Might be more important to know the answer than you realize? Maybe you’re tired of all these link building specifics and prefer to let links into your site grow naturally.

SEO

You have 5 goals when optimizing any page on your site. Do you know what they are? If you don’t you could always try a little Q&A with Google directly. Maybe it will help clear things up. Of course Google can’t be entirely up front about everything so myths will often prevail. They may not always be right, but that’s no reason not to learn from your fellow SEOs.

You can never have too much knowledge of keywords. Most any guide that comes your way is probably worth a look, though some guides are more comprehensive than others. Keyword Discovery is not enough. You’ll still need to measure the effectiveness of your keywords and go beyond the research to apply what you’ve learned. You can leverage keywords through older posts and then start the research anew by mining the conversation on social media sites.

How do you know when your SEO is done? Well it’s never done. You need to keep measuring where you are to adjust for where you want to go. You can use a checklist to make sure you’ve covered your bases, use advanced search operators to explore the current situation, and even spy a bit on your competitors without getting into trouble.

Not everyone has the same love of SEO tools of course. Fortunately the community is happy to share it’s opinion. And while tools can tell you where things are now and have been in the past, patents can give you some ideas about where things might be going.

So what should you measure with all the tools you’ve collected? Is PageRank the ultimate measure of online influence or is it a horrible measure of that influence. The reality is probably somewhere in between.

Business And Marketing

What’s step one in starting a business? A sound business plan, of course. It should be obvious, but sadly too many businesses neglect this necessary first step and fail. It’s not the only reason some businesses fail, though. There are at least 5 reasons your affiliate marketing business might not succeed.

Some do succeed so how about some inspirational stories about how they did. And while it may sound counter intuitive sometimes the way to end up with more is to give everything away.

Hand in hand with a solid business plan is market research. Where do you go to learn more about an industry. You might stop off at the magazine stand as part of your research or you might find the top sites in the industry to learn about the market.

There’s a psychology to selling. People make decisions emotionally, sometimes out of a fear of losing something they have. You want to persuade people instead of forcing them to see your point of view. Make them realize the truth on their own instead of telling it to them directly. Stories can be powerful persuaders and if you do everything right you’ll be consistently driving people toward closing the sale.

It’s getting closer to the witching hour. Day has turned to dusk and the night is beginning to fall, bringing with it ghosts and ghouls, witches and goblins. And maybe a few late night trick or treaters. Break out the big kitchen knife and carve up a pumpkin or slice into a piece of pumpkin pie.

Enjoy the weekend and happy reading.

Post from: TheVanBlog | Van SEO Design

A Playoff Worthy Lineup Of Links - This Month In SEO - 9/08

Steven Bradley — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:16:59 +0000

This Month In SEO almost wasn’t as my laptop decided last week was a good time to call it a day for good. Fortunately the laptop’s hard drive didn’t agree. Should we dedicate the post to Steven Jobs and my new Macbook? Maybe fall would make for a good dedication as the season’s recently changed.

Even better would be the Fall Classic. Baseball playoffs started a few hours ago. There’s only one October and a seamhead like me has to dedicate most anything this time of year to the greatest game every invented.

You know the drill by now. Lots of links below and even more at my Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Sphinn profiles. And once more I’ll throw a little love to my new Small Business Forum. I hope you’ll join the conversation there.

Now on with the show.

Social Media

Why get involved with social media? Because organizations and individuals who build a community around their brand win. The secret weapon in that win? Perhaps combining social media with a little empathy. So if social media is such a good thing, what’s the value of a social media visitor? Is the goal to bait people into linking to you and spreading your message? Is the value ultimately in how social media affects search? Maybe what we need is some quality metrics.

Many will tell you the goal of social media is branding and when it comes to branding you can’t beat microblogging through a service like Twitter. Not all is sunshine in Twitterland though as the company recently bowed to Google pressure and nofollowed bio links. Some would argue that Twitter was never about link building in the first place, but still…

Then again is microblogging really all that hard? It’s simple isn’t it. It’s just a dialogue after all.

Social media is more than microblogging. It’s actually two crazy monkeys and one clever fox. The monkeys are Digg and Reddit and if you want to influence social media you might want to first learn what drives Digg and Reddit users. And if you want to know what drives a top Digg user why not ask. Brian did. And Diggboss answered. The fox? It’s not Sphinn. Sphinners are a dysfuctional lot. The fox is StumbleUpon

Blogging

It might not be as important as the state of the union, but the state of the blogosphere seems to indicate it’s still growing and the lines between blogs and mainstream media are blurring. Blogs have attracted somewhere between 77 million and 184 million unique visits, depending on who’s numbers you believe. Either way it’s a lot and you probably want a piece of that pie.

It all starts with blogging ideas and here are 50 ideas you can adapt to your blog. What to do with those ideas? Follow these 7 steps and you can turn them into more coherent posts to attract some of those millions of visitors.

You have your ideas and know how to construct a blog post, but what makes for good content? Sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it. Be opinionated. Be emotional. You can even take a cue from politicians and launch a negative campaign on occasion. Just don’t be spineless.

No matter how well written, your post you can always add a few new dimensions to improve things. Your post design matters and could help lead to new visitors subscribing. Where should your calls to action be? Might they convert better at the bottom of your post? If you want someone to subscribe after reading it only makes sense that’s where the subscription form should be. Done right you could end up with one very effective blog theme.

With everything in place to convert visitors to loyal readers, now it’s time to promote your next post. Don’t stop at a single post, though. Mine the long tail to develop an overall seo strategy for your blog. With a little work you might be able to take your blog to the next level. But keep in mind through it all who you’re trying to attract. Is it eyeballs or brains you’re after?

WordPress

WordPress 2.7 is on the way and it aims to be another big release with some pretty major changes. The future of WordPress is looking good. Or is it? Not everyone thinks all is rosy in WP land. With all the love thrown in WordPress’ direction a little critique can be a good thing. Still it’s unlikely WP is going anywhere so make sure to keep building your WordPress developer toolbox.

Your toolbox could start with knowledge from more than 25 beginner articles. You could then include some advanced rss parsing so readers can subscribe to only those posts they’re really interested in. Toss in a little Ajax for a better auto completing search form. And did you know there are a variety of ways to display content in WordPress, giving you more control of what readers see on different sections of your blog?

With your toolbox full it’s time to start designing your WordPress theme. You can build one from scratch or use another theme as a framework and build on top of it. Magazine style themes are popular. Regardless of the style make sure to understand how WP handles and displays categories. There’s a lot you can do with categories. More than you might initially think.

If you work with themes you’ve likely spent some time customizing WP files. Stop. Instead of customizing the existing files, write a plugin instead. It’s easier than you think. Speaking of customization and plugins, have a look at the new Customize Your Community (CYC) plugin and give your readers their own profile page. Have you installed the AllinOne SEO plugin? Sure you have, but are you taking advantage of its full potntial?

Design And Development

Looking for design inspiration? Want to create outside the box? Would 40 layouts give you some inspiration? Maybe your design needs a little energy to make it irresistible. Maybe a deeper look at the color brown is all you need for inspiration. Working on a logo? Want to know the process one graphic designer uses to create them? Inspiration is all well and good, but remember others are being inspired by some of the same designs. It can lead to some techniques being overused.

Design aesthetics are important as long as you remember your design is meant to communicate. Are you aware of all the issues involved in website communication? Did you know that contrasting elements aids in that communication and enhances the meaning of design elements? One thing your design should aim for is to communicate a strong brand. What colors should you use to convey your message?

How well do you know JavaScript? If your JS skills are still a bit lacking you might find these 75 techniques really useful. Only 75? Ok, how about 10 more techniques to make your JavaScript smarter. Among the tips you’ll find is to adopt one or more JavaScript libraries to speed up development. jQuery is becoming one of the more popular libraries around and it’s about time you took a look.

Is a website ever truly done? All sites can be made more effective, but to do so requires some analysis of how it’s currently performing. You might think alternating table rows with color makes it easier for readers to absorb the information, but it it true? Does zebra striping tables aid or hinder communication. And why make people come to your site when you can send your site to them. HTML emails can be a great way to interact with your audience and remind them you still exist.

Link Building

The total amount of link juice in an isolated system remains constant. Oh way that’s the first law of thermodynamics about the conservation of energy.

Still link juice is a finite resource. It creates a gravity around a site the pulls search traffic to it. Build more links into a massive site and the gravity increases. What happens when those massive sites stop linking out. Much as light doesn’t escape a black hole, links don’t escape black hole seo. Then again a site that does nothing but link out can bring people back every day.

Once upon a time link building was synonymous with directories. Few would argue that’s the case today, but that doesn’t mean directories can’t be a valuable part of a link building campaign. They still have power so how can you get the most from web directories? All directories are not created equal. Before you start submitting your site know the red flags to watch out for.

Once upon that same time reciprocal linking was an effective way to build links. The future though, is in building relationships that lead to links. One way to build a relationship with a blogger is through their blog. Leaving comments that add value to a post is a great way to get to know someone. Don’t stop with bloggers. Start looking to build relationships with the general media. It’s not what you know, but who you know after all.

It’s still a bit confusing I know. Let some experts demystify it for you. You’re right, experts can sometimes talk over your head without realizing it. Why not let an SEO kindergartner explain things instead. You could always grab a guide to one-way link building or watch a video on developing hooks to get others to link to you.

No matter how you build links, please don’t be an idiot about it.

Conversation With An Idiot Link Broker

SEO

What are the top search marketing tools? Are they Firefox extensions? Do they analyze backlinks? Will they help you with more than PR and SERP analysis? Sometimes the best tool is your own brain. Amazing what real people can figure out when they put their mind to it.

Me no unnerstand URL rewriting. Google say no worry. They good at unnerstanding and figuring out. Ummm…no offense Google, but I’ll continue to rewrite my dynamic URLs and make them search friendly and people friendly. Most of the industry agrees with me too. Maybe next time you could just tell us how to redirect things the right way.

And penalty of not I’m still on the side that thinks duplicate content is a big issue and can hurt a site. Google, I know you’re trying to help, but sometimes that help confuses the situation more.

Should you be concerned with measuring search rank? There’s a loaded question. Instead of arguing it based on opinion, how about testing to see whether or not a given rank is worth holding onto. You can learn a lot from some time tested advertising strategies. You could also turn your attention to images and worry about how to get them to rank.

Once you get past the idea that your rank is the end goal you’ll be ready to write effective SEO articles. Sure they can improve rank if done well, but they can do so much more. And no, seo copy writing is not all about stuffing keywords. It’s not natural. Think about using phrases related to your topic instead. Everyone else is using that phrase, shouldn’t you include it too?

It’s tiring being an SEO isn’t it? So much to learn and as soon as you think you have a handle on the rules, the rules change. Might be time for a break from SEO. Go enjoy a bowl of fruit instead.

Business And Marketing

Need a lesson on affiliate marketing? One lesson you may be interested in is on the mechanics of arbitrage. You know to buy low and sell high, but how do you measure each side of the equation to understand if you’re going to make money.

Of course if your arbitrage is buying AdWords to sell AdSense you may not make Google so happy. A large audience can certainly help with marketing your affiliate products, but stop complaining that you don’t have that audience. Just grow a pair, will you.

Many offline wholesalers and retailers are moving their business online to expand their market. If your business is selling products through a website shouldn’t you spend some time analyzing the online retailers with the highest conversion rates. Are you still using manufacturer product descriptions? Why not take a look at how customers review those same products on your competitor’s sites. In the end you just need to be a better choice than your competition.

Mini or micro sites have lost some of their luster as the Google algorithm seems to favor large authority sites, but can you create a bunch of mini sites that funnel search traffic to your main site? WordPress makes setting up a mini-site easy and with some decent content you can make a few bucks from each. A network of micro-sites could even help build links and build brand awareness.

There’s a lot to know when it comes to building and marketing your website. Would a checklist help? How about the best damned checklist ever? How about 6 tips for making your message sticky? Did you know that listening to your market is one of the surest ways to success. It could help you craft a message and build your brand without having to spend a lot. And once your basic message is in place you can put some money into AdWords to extend your brand’s reach.

Search Engine News

What does search mean to you? To search engines, search means advertising. Google is expanding where they place ads. Look for some on NBC in the near future.

If the deal goes through they’ll be displaying ads on rival Yahoo. Does Yahoo need the extra ads, because more advertisers use Google or because Yahoo’s targeting is so poor? No question Google is the 800 lb gorilla in search, but is the company really a primate or would bees in a hive be a better analogy.

Oh yeah, did you hear Google released a browser? You downloaded it and used it and formed an opinion of it already. But just in case you wanted to read or reread the initial thoughts or compare it to IE8…

My first TMISEO on a new laptop. Seemed to go ok, even if I’m getting it to you a day later than usual. This was the post that almost wasn’t. Fortunately the old hard drive was in tact and a few weeks of collected links were able to be easily transferred.

It’s autumn I know, but summer’s still hanging on here in Boulder, at least on this Wednesday. Works for me since it should mean nice weather for softball in a couple hours. Enjoy your mid week wherever you are and know you’re closer to the coming weekend than the one that recently passed. Happy reading.

Post from: TheVanBlog | Van SEO Design

Hot Links To Beat The Heat | This Month In SEO - 8/08

Steven Bradley — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:30:21 +0000

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
—Henry James

I wonder how many 100 degree days Henry James lived through. I’ve experienced one too many the last couple of months. Still why not dedicate This Month In SEO to the end of summer. By the time we met again the leaves will be turning and fall will bring with it cooler air. A special shout out to my brother David who celebrates a birthday every August.

As always there’s much to get to and much more at my various social media profiles. Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Sphinn. And if you’re looking for a little more in depth conversation you can catch me at my new Small Business Forum.

Ok, enough about me. Enjoy the links and on with the show.

Social Media

Does your business “get” social media? Many still don’t and try to force traditional marketing methods on social networks with less than the best results. Whether your business is big or small social media marketing is a great investment of time.

Fortunately small business doesn’t need to live near the cutting edge. That’s not to say you should ignore the social web. Do so at your own peril. Maybe the secret to “getting it” is a little more reading to understand the landscape.

Ok, you do “get” social media and are playing in the space. You’ve likely realized you can learn a lot from using a service like StumbleUpon for a year. You might even have figured out a few of the ingredients for a successful Digg campaign. If not, you can always mimic some of the habits of those diggers who have a successful track record.

Looking past SU and Digg? Maybe the new features at Mixx will be more to your liking or perhaps new services like Social Browse and Social Median will be the ones to hook you.

Twitter is still the big name in social networking, despite challengers. You don’t need to be a big brand to make it work for you. Not all is rosy of course, particularly when it comes to Twitter’s business model or lack thereof. But Twitter’s problems aren’t necessarily yours and tips abound for getting the most out of the service.

One of the upstarts, Plurk, is finding it’s users come up with creative uses for the service that you should care about. With so many networking services out there it can be difficult to participate in all the conversations. If that describes you then FriendFeed may be just the thing to keep up with all the discussion.

Blogging

Reading is fundamental if you want to be a better writer, but do you know how to read? Of course you can read, but do you really know how to read to improve your writing skills? It might even help you find your passion so you know what it is you want to blog about. Passionate or not, at some point you’ll likely be stuck to find a new topic. Topic in hand should you follow best practice to keep your posts short? Screw that, just write for your audience.

You know how to read, you’ve found your passion, and you’re not worried about how long your posts are. How exactly do you craft these things called blog posts? Good thing for us Darren has a series going. Is it a list post you want to write? It takes more than a number of bullet points to make them perfect. And with all this writing you’re going to need something to write with. I use Scribefire, but perhaps another tool will be ~~write~~ right for you.

Great content is the foundation for a successful blog, but it’s not enough. You still need readers. It’s one of those if a blog post falls in the forest sort of things. If you want to grow your readers you need to understand the audience you do have. What do they want? What makes them tick? How do you get them to engage more with your blog? And if you’re a company blogger take a few tips from someone who blogs for one of the biggest companies around.

WordPress

The more I work with WordPress, the more I like it, and the more I realize how capable it is to act as more than just a blogging platform. WordPress has matured to the point where it can serve as a full content management system that’s truly customizable.

Working with it is not all that hard and will a little learning you can easily create your own WordPress template. The development community is active and you don’t need to look far to find themes, tutorials, and resources.

WordPress is not immune to comment spam, but with a few simple tweaks and a plugin or two you can seriously cut down on the amount of spam your blog receives.

Even if you’re not a theme developer you can still make improvements to your theme. You can make your blogroll more dynamic with the help of some script libraries, you can add an overlay login form, or you can add links to make social bookmarking your content easier for your readers. And again, with such an active development community it’s easy to find simple hacks for most common requests.

Ok, I love WordPress, but I admit the built in search isn’t that useful. Instead of complaining about it you can take search into your own hands by integrating something like Ligit into your blog. Too much work? Then just install a plugin to make WordPress search suck less. While you’re in plugin mode you can install one to manage your ads or take advantage of the many available plugins to improve WordPress SEO.

Design And Development

Hopefully you don’t need to be convinced about the importance of web design. Less is more and a simple design can really help your business. Assumptions can be costly and you should avoid common pitfalls with elements like forms.

Do look beyond the obvious, though. Just because every other ecommerce site has the same setup on their category pages, doesn’t mean you should too. Hopefully if you give your site enough attention you won’t see signs that it’s underperforming.

Form follows function. Your design should be functional first and pretty second. It should function for the average user as well as those with difficulty hearing. Your site should work well for as many people as possible and it should be easy to navigate. But it can still be pretty and your navigation can still be very creative. Just make sure it works.

Do you get tired of seeing the same fonts used on every site. I do. I’m even more tired of using the same few fonts when developing new sites. Sometimes I see a font I like, but don’t know which one it is. Good thing there are tools to help identify them.

But still it’s not like you can use any font you want, can you? Maybe you can. If you don’t mind a little Flash, you can always try sIFR3 (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement). And if you don’t want to go the Flash route you can always use FLIR (Facelift Image Replacement).

JavaScript libraries are a great way to build extra functionality into your site’s interface. One library that’s quickly gained popularity is jQuery. If you’re not sure how to get started with jQuery has Yura got a guide for you.

One way to take advantage of jQuery is through simple css sprites that can add some nice effects to rollovers on your navigation. jQuery isn’t the only library of course. MooTools is another popular library and you might enjoy taking it for a spin to create a spectacular photo gallery for your site.

Site visitors probably aren’t viewing your source code, but that’s no reason your css should be sloppy. By following a few simple principles your css can be clean and optimized and by following a few more you can be a css master. It doesn’t end with your css though. You can and should learn best practices for the entire development life cycle; from preparing a contract to administering the site after it’s finished.

Link Building

Your content is great, but what are you doing to promote it? If your content falls in the forest…wait, didn’t we do this already. There’s a difference between building links to content and promoting content so it attracts links. So why aren’t people linking to your best content? Maybe you need to grow your network of influential friends. Then again maybe that great content wasn’t as linkworthy as you first thought and you’re back to building links to it.

So I link to Jenny and she links to Bill. Bill links back to me and also links to Suzie. What time does the train arrive in Chicago? Huh? No one said there would be any math in this post. Sure we all know links are important, but how different links might be viewed by search engines can get confusing in a hurry. How exactly does the link graph work?

Is it woven like macrame? Is it about being kind to others? I do know it’s not about being selfish and hoarding links. Jenny, Bill, and Suzie are more likely to link to you if you remember to link out to them.

Authority links are great, but what is authority? Does anyone really know? Could it be we still need PageRank to help us figure it out? Anchor text is important, right? Or could it be that Google is changing the algorithm to make it less important? It really does get confusing sometimes, especially if so many SEO gurus are teaching you the wrong things.

But you want more links don’t you? Maybe the answer is adding fries to your meal. Maybe all you need to do is expand a little on past techniques. Sometimes the answer is in observation. By keeping your eyes open could you really find something so effective you’re surprised it’s even allowed? And do you really need to wait for links? Won’t some link building methods provide instant or nearly instant links back to your site.

SEO

Once you start your keyword research when do you stop. You can dig and mine for words forever, but really how many keywords are enough? You’ll likely want to know whether your market refers to your products in plural or singular, but do you need to rethink stop words? You should try to own the SERPs for navigational queries and you might want to think about queries looking for the freshest results.

One reason to go deep into the tail with keywords is to help new sites rank. New sites simply don’t have the links to compete for competitive phrases. By digging deeper you can uncover those phrases with less competition that can drive traffic while you build links.

Of course you don’t need to settle for low competition phrases. As long as your patient you can spread the field a bit and little by little start pulling traffic from the head as well as the tail. You may not need to compete for everything though. Is your business local. Does it matter if people outside your area find your site? Local is where it’s at for many so don’t forget to add your location to your page titles.

Really, what is black hat anyway? Is it automatically unethical? I mean, Google won’t always penalize you for things like keyword stuffing. They even like to have a little bit of spam in their results, hard as it may be to believe. And let’s face it most black hats aren’t anywhere near as slimy as some internet marketers you’ve come across. Viagra anyone?

Business And Marketing

At the heart of every successful business is a solid business model. But could it be that having a bassackwards business model is the way to succeed online? Or is a seemingly bassackwards model not so backwards at all?

You do need to think about how you’ll monetize your site so choose your strategy wisely. Do you sell products? Did you know that some simple pricing changes can greatly impact your bottom line. There’s a lot to the psychology of pricing.

AdSense is a popular monetization strategy, but should it be? Is it time to say goodbye to AdSense? Or is success all about finding the right niche? A little split testing might be the thing to increase your ad revenue.

Advertisers tend to look down on the content network that is AdSense, but should they? Advertisers do have ways to make the content network work for them. And if you’re part of the network it might be a good idea to understand those ways in order to make your site more attractive to advertisers.

Like it or not you don’t control the conversation about your business. Product reviews count more than product descriptions. What do you do though, when a competitor leaves a negative review. Should you ignore it or fight back? One thing you don’t want to do is fake your persona. Genuine is what resonates.

Your time is limited so use it wisely. Learn to manage your time and do your homework so you know the right project to work on. Spending a little time up front to research your market can save you both hours and money down the road. Email is one way you can reach a lot of people in a short amount of time and get your message out. Some say it’s all about the list, others see it as spam, but before you make up your mind read Chris Garrett’s series on email marketing.

Search Engine News

Google made a few changes that will affect optimization. They’ve begun searching for synonyms, which should make all those advising to write naturally happy.

Google Suggest finally moved from the lab to the general public. Most people will see it as a useful way to save a few keystrokes, but the savvy will see it as a way to gain new insights into keywords. Google also released Insights for Search to compare search volume across regions, categories, and time frames.

Google is not the only search engine. It just feels like it sometimes. Sure there’s Yahoo and Live and isn’t that Jeeves guy still around in some form? Cuil is the latest competitor hyped to take away Google market share, but is it all that relevant. Maybe the biggest competition for Google will come from meta search engines, though given many of the meta engines are pulling Google results is it really competition?

And Now For Something Completely Different

If you made it this far, you’ve absorbed a lot of information. I thought you might like a look at the lighter side of the world we live in. Enjoy a fairy tale, some comical seo sales pitches, and the best answers anyone has every given to Google’s interview questions. Who says SEO can’t be fun?

Time to enjoy a long weekend if you’re in the U.S. If you’re not, expect a quieter Monday than usual as many of us are firing up the grills and saying an unofficial goodbye to summer. When August began Boulder was in the midst of 100 degree temperatures. August is leaving town with more bearable days and cooler nights. I’m looking forward to fall and don’t mind the summer goodbye.

Enjoy your weekend wherever you are, whatever you do, and no matter how many days you get to stay away from work. Happy reading.

Post from: TheVanBlog | Van SEO Design