SEO Search Now

SEO is not rocket science; it's much more difficult than rocket science. To become a ninja-level SEO master takes years of practice for most people, and like a ninja if you don't practice, one quickly loses one's skills. The reason for this is that the search algorithms shift constantly, and as they are well guarded secrets, you never know what the search engineers are up to. No, it's not rocket science; It's more like reverse engineering a UFO that you can only see off in the distance and whose propulsion system constantly shifts gears.

Top 18 Benefits of Our Service

1. Securing "unidirectional" or only-Incoming (non-reciprocal) links
2. Links with relevant "Keywords" in the Anchor Text
3. Links from industry-relevant pages
4. Links from industry specific article pages
5. Link to your site should not be through a "redirect" script
6. No JavaScript links
7. No links from "framed" pages
8. No "flash" embedded links
9. No paid or time-bound links
10. No email spam used to solicit links.
11. No links from Link Farms
12. No links from FFA (Free-For-All) link networks
13. No links from pornographic and other sites containing offensive content
14. Full data sheet of links created at the end of each month
15. Only relevant established links are counted in the final report
16. No links text nude
17. No “no follow” links

Is Your Brand Too Big For SEO?

I spent the first couple years of my SEO career in the B2C arena and everybody wanted and needed SEO to establish their presence online. Individuals really understood that they needed SEO to make an impression on the internet. A few years later, I moved into a predominantly B2B market and the love for SEO just wasn’t there as much.

Many of the larger companies that I have worked with tend to think that they are already big enough when it comes to online brand awareness or that their new micro-site is aimed at such a small, focused group of consumers that they don’t need SEO.

Large companies tend to have marketing messages and branded material that they’ve used for years and they’re not very interested in having someone else write the content for their new website. Nine times out of ten they do not even take into consideration that the web is an entirely different medium then what they’re accustomed to writing for.

Granted, most consumers aren’t going to search for “luxury automobile” and then suddenly remember BMW, but what if I asked them to name 10 of the top department stores? Of course they are going to be able to name at least 10, but are they going to name your company?

One of the biggest challenges that I have faced is trying to educate marketing departments on the fact that not everyone thinks the way they do. As SEO’s, keyword research is usually our first indication that the general public thinks and talks about their company in a slightly different way than industry professionals.

Show Them Results

One of the best ways I have found to convince larger corporations that they need SEO is to actually show them with results how much better their pages can perform on the search engines.

1. I usually start off with baby steps: by recommending that I rewrite just one of the website’s existing pages, I can usually avoid major hurdles with corporate approval and extensive edits. Ideally for this experiment, you’ll want to keep that existing page online to show them later how much better your new page is performing.
2. Optimize the page to the best of your ability and send as many links to it as possible. Don’t forget to focus on factors that can help drive conversion to really make the most of your test page.
3. In a few weeks, your new page should be ranking higher than their existing page, and it should be performing better with users as well.
4. Show the results to your client and continue explaining the benefits of SEO as part of a comprehensive online strategy.

In these tough economic times it can be hard getting a client to sign up with SEO when they already have established brand awareness and respectable online exposure. Lure them in with small one or two page additions to pique their interest and you can prove the value of SEO by letting your results speak for themselves. Even though they might be doing well, they can always improve their rankings.

What about you? What are some other ways you have convinced large companies to get into SEO?

10 Ways for Great SEO

Most of us see the same tweets, read the same blogs and know the same case studies. We know to optimize titles and anchor text, fix canonical issues, write compelling meta descriptions and so on. In the age of social media, trade secrets are now few and far between.

If that’s the case, and we all know basically the same things, what differentiates a great SEO?

The answer is, simply, the ability to get things done.

Here are 10 things you can do to be a great SEO.

10. Be humble: Value goals beyond rankings

A great SEO knows that the ultimate success involves checking their ego. Ranking for an ultra cool term is great chest-pounding material, but the contribution to the bottom line is the currency that spends. Whether the goals are sales, or traffic, ranking for the ugly terms may not be as cool to the world, but it will be to your company.

9. Be a realist: Focus on sustainability

What can your company really expect to rank for? Think like a search engine. Are you really the right answer for a particular search term? If not, don’t spend your resources working hard for a ranking that you really don’t belong in. If you’re building a business model based on a changing algorithm, have a fundamentally sound reason for choosing your terms. If you don’t, create one. No one agrees on how bounce rate affects rankings, but long term I think everyone agrees nothing good will come of a poor performing, irrelevant page.

8. Know your product: Keyword research wins

As more and more keyword research tools become available, making sense of them becomes increasingly mundane. Successful keywords come from real world terms that often don’t jump out in tools like WordTracker or Keyword Discovery. You must know what you’re looking for and not just wait for it to be delivered to you. Know how the customers speak, and you’ll know what you’re looking for. Your own internal site search is a great tool for this.

7. Understand your resources: Plan your projects accordingly

Keep in mind, the Paid Search team has a huge advantage here. Their results are relatively predictable. Yours are not. Be certain your project is funded, planned, benchmarked and understood by others. If link building is involved, as it should be, be certain that time is budgeted for a diligent effort. Creating, sharing and following a roadmap will buy you the space to work.

6. Learn your surroundings: Identify potential roadblocks and address them

The worst thing you can do as a SEO is surprise, or ambush, people. You need to assume other departments will already be skeptical of your sorcerer ways. It’s only natural. Identify the people that will block your path. Address them with facts, privately. Do not humiliate someone who doesn’t understand SEO. What seems obvious to you may not be obvious to them. Only if you give respect do you earn the right to command it.

5. Embrace your limitations: Plug the holes

One of the hardest things to do sometimes is admit what you don’t do well. Doing so, however, will earn the respect of others and insure that those holes are plugged by other team members. Work on them as you go, but never hide them. Being great doesn’t mean you need to be great at everything. Asking for help is ok, and very much a sign of greatness.

4. Be a team player: Share the glory

Now we’re getting more into the psychology of a great SEO. It’s easy to want to take credit for a change that reaps huge rewards. Remember the IT guy that implemented it for you? Let him know how rewarding it was for the company and make sure his boss knows it. Not everyone understands how they impact the bottom line. Teach them, and recruit them, and your goals will be that much easier to meet. When people are praised or rewarded, they’ll get on your team.

3. Argue with facts: No mudslinging

Take the high road. Something simple like adding related links to a page may be a no-brainer to you, but may look like spam someone that just doesn’t understand the reason. Stay patient. You probably can’t do their job, either. Explain why your idea is necessary, and use case studies. Show them how the sites they use probably do the same thing, and they just don’t realize it. Show how rankings influence revenue, and how your project influences rankings. People can’t argue with fact-based numbers. At that point, your nemesis will need to justify their reasons with facts, and not opinions. Do this respectfully, and firmly. When it’s done, you’ll win. Or, you’ll realize SEO may be hopeless where you’re at.

2. Choose your battles: There’s more than SEO

Sometimes the decision makers understand SEO, and fly directly against a known best practice. If your company values a project component above SEO, don’t pout or write them off as morons. There’s a bigger picture and sometimes a small SEO sacrifice can reap large gains in other areas. A great SEO lives to fight another day and comes knocking at another door. You see, there’s always more than one answer. It’s your job to figure it out.

1. Understand business models: Contribute effectively

SEO is not just implementation, it’s largely strategy. Sometimes it’s a strategy that may not even be known to your company. Bring a revenue strategy, along with the SEO ability to implement it, and you’ll have gotten out of the box. You see, the key to greatness is being more than just a SEO. Bring ways to contribute to the bottom line, and make them happen, and you will have achieved greatness.

So there you have it. The difference between a great SEO, or almost any other professional, lies in their ability to get things done. Navigating pitfalls, effectively communicating and maintaining superior knowledge all lead to greatness. For future reference, I suggest you bookmark this page. It can serve as a great source for dealing with common SEO issues.

If anyone has any opinions on what makes a great SEO, please feel free to share them below. I’d love to hear how you define greatness.

Top 4 Sites For SMBs Navigating Social Media

I know. You don’t care how important the so-called “experts” tell you social media is. You’re a small business owner and that means you’re busy. You don’t have time to be everywhere or to try the “next big thing”. Luckily for you, you don’t have to. If you’re a small business owner you can still use social media to find new customers without letting it take over your life. And below you’ll find what I think are the top social media sites to help you do that. The trick is navigate through the clutter and find the ones that will work best for you.

Yahoo Answers

There are a lot of Question/Answer sites out there, but Yahoo Answers stands out due to its impressively large user base and its ability to put you in contact with folks asking service-based questions broken down by location. For example, there’s a guy in Boston looking for a painter, someone in New York City looking for a wedding dress shop and a guy in San Jose looking for recommendations on a new car. Those are all opportunities for small business owners to reach out and respond to targeted service queries. You just have to know they exist and how to find them.

Yahoo Answers is also valuable for businesses where your expertise is what you’re selling. By going in and answering questions that benefit the community, you brand yourself as an expert in that category. If you’re looking for a guide to Yahoo Answers, look no further because Matt McGee has already written the book on it.
Twitter

It’s hard to talk about small business and social media these days without mentioning Twitter. Twitter is about conversation. It’s about finding the people talking about you and what you sell and forming relationships with them. One of the most underutilized aspects of Twitter for most businesses is the Advanced Search feature that allows small business owners to search for specific keywords located near a particular zip code. Companies have used it to ward off customer service complaints, to answer questions and to create an awareness that you’re not only an expert, but you’re an expert in their local area.

For example, say you run a day camp and are looking for summer labor. You can perform a search for [summer job near:02116 within:25] and find folks located 25 miles outside of Boston looking for a job for the summer. There’s even a sentiment feature that attempts to determine if they’re happy about not having a job or sad, so you know which users to go after. There are many, many ways to harness the power of Twitter for local businesses, you just have to know where and how to jump in.
Wordpress

A blog is a powerful sales tool for small businesses because it acts as a differentiator between you and your competition. Your small business blog will not only act as a customer service and educational tool, but it will encourage customers to interact with you, will be crucial in crisis management, and can even help you pick up rankings for keywords you’re not targeting with the rest of your site. A lot of businesses lose out on customers by failing to establish a point of difference or personal story. Your blog enables you to do that. It’s your space to show your customers who you are, to listen, and to connect with them on a more personal level. As far social media outlets go, creating a blog is often one of the best investments you can make to boost your business and retain and attract customers.
Flickr

Flickr provides an avenue for small business owners to find customers with product-based needs (different from Yahoo Answers, which targets service-based needs). By going into the Groups section and searching for your particular area, you can find a list of groups that deal with topics either related to what you do or parallel topics that may share a common customer base.

For example, a search for Boston may reveal a group of car lovers looking for classic car parts or a gem in perfect condition someone’s looking to sell. A local group for photography may be seeking recommendations on new camera types. You should try to join the groups related to your area to help monitor the conversations and find places where it makes sense for you to join in. To make this task easier, subscribe to the RSS feed so that you’re automatically updated once a new discussion topic is added. You can also use Flickr for new content strategies.

Other Notable Mentions for Small Businesses:

* GetSatisfaction: A hub for small businesses to address customer service issues head on before they become larger problems.
* YouTube: Create product demos, how-to videos and engage customers in a way that separates your company from the herd of “me toos“ out there.
* LinkedIn: Create a profile for both yourself and your corporation and take advantage of the Question/Answer feature similar to Yahoo Answers.
* Facebook: Offers strong demographic targeting options both in the advertising opportunities (very high conversions for local businesses!), as well as with corporate Fan pages.

Social media remains a cost effective way for many businesses to reach out to customers. Because of your small size, you can create more targeted, more manageable online communities that convert both online and off. The trick to tackling social media is not to be everywhere, but to instead be everywhere your customers are.

Study On Google Sitemaps

The Google Webmaster Central blog notified us that Googlers have presented a new study on Sitemaps at the WWW’09 conference in Madrid. The study is absolutely interesting and I recommend printing out the ten page PDF document and reading it. For those of you who don’t have time for that, I hope to highlight the most interesting findings from the study below.

The purpose of the study was to measure the past few years of Sitemaps usage at Google to determine how Sitemap files improve coverage and freshness of the Google web index. By coverage, I mean how Google crawls the web deeper and finds more content that it might not have found. Bt freshness, I mean how Google crawls new or updated content faster, when compared to the normal crawl.

Interesting facts from the study:

* ~35 million Sitemaps were published, as of October 2008.
* The 35 million Sitemaps include “several billion” URLs.
* Most popular Sitemap formats include XML (77%), Unknown (17.5%), URL list (3.5%), Atom (1.6%) and RSS (0.11%).
* 58% of URLs in Sitemaps contain the lastmodification date.
* 7% of URLs contain the change frequency field.
* 61% of URLs contain the priority field.

The paper discusses the process used by Google for Sitemaps. Here is a flow diagram that explains it quickly.

Google sitemaps crawl process

Coverage: The dataset used to measure the “coverage” of Sitemaps was approximately 3 million URLs, 1.7 millions URLs specifically from Sitemaps and the remainder from the normal discovery process. Duplicate URLs were close to one million during the discovery crawl process, as opposed to only a 100 duplicate URLs in the Sitemaps files. In short, the study found that discovery was 63% “efficient” and Sitemaps was 99% efficient in crawling the domain at the cost of mission a small fraction of content.

* The percent of duplicates inside Sitemaps is mostly similar to the overall percent of duplicates.
* 46% of the domains have above 50% UniqueCoverage and above 12% have above 90% UniqueCoverage.
* For most domains, Sitemaps achieves a higher percent of URLs in the index with less unique pages.

Freshness: How fresh can Google get with Sitemaps?

* 78% of URLs were seen by Sitemaps first, compared to 22% that were seen through discovery first.
* 14.2% of URLs are submitted through ping
* The probability of seeing a URL through Sitemaps before seeing it through discovery is independent of whether the Sitemaps was submitted using pings or using robots.txt

The paper then goes on to talk about coming up with ways to determine the crawl order, either via Sitemaps or Discovery. Concepts such as SitemapScore and DiscoveryScore are brought up and possible methods.

The study seems like a great read for most SEOs interested in understanding how Google Sitemaps work and how it can benefit your sites.

Websites for Fun and Profit

Most people are taught that the first rule of SEO club is that you don’t talk about SEO club (some learn this rule harder than others.) This is an important question as far as most people in the SEO community are concerned. Based on the system that information is knowledge, power, and ultimately money, you can see how people often have a vested interest in outing other peoples techniques, or keeping them secret. You also learn very quickly that who you can trust is extremely important. Everyone has their own code. Mine personally is started with - ""their are no hats, only goals". With the essence of that being that only illegal techniques are truly crossing the line, but everyone has to determine their ultimate level of risk and reward (similar to investing or anything else). Hats are bullshit. Techniques and code should be determined by one’s career choice and goals.

Websites for Fun and Profit

Most people are taught that the first rule of SEO club is that you don’t talk about SEO club (some learn this rule harder than others.) This is an important question as far as most people in the SEO community are concerned. Based on the system that information is knowledge, power, and ultimately money, you can see how people often have a vested interest in outing other peoples techniques, or keeping them secret. You also learn very quickly that who you can trust is extremely important. Everyone has their own code. Mine personally is started with - ""their are no hats, only goals". With the essence of that being that only illegal techniques are truly crossing the line, but everyone has to determine their ultimate level of risk and reward (similar to investing or anything else). Hats are bullshit. Techniques and code should be determined by one’s career choice and goals.

Websites for Fun and Profit

Most people are taught that the first rule of SEO club is that you don’t talk about SEO club (some learn this rule harder than others.) This is an important question as far as most people in the SEO community are concerned. Based on the system that information is knowledge, power, and ultimately money, you can see how people often have a vested interest in outing other peoples techniques, or keeping them secret. You also learn very quickly that who you can trust is extremely important. Everyone has their own code. Mine personally is started with - ""their are no hats, only goals". With the essence of that being that only illegal techniques are truly crossing the line, but everyone has to determine their ultimate level of risk and reward (similar to investing or anything else). Hats are bullshit. Techniques and code should be determined by one’s career choice and goals.

SEO Since

Monday, April 20th, 2009: Today I celebrate the completion of my first decade in search. I have been waiting for this day with some trepidation for the past 6 months or so. I am not really sure why or even what this anniversary really means. Does it mean that I am some sort of expert? Well, anything is possible. Or does it mean that I have wasted the past decade with little to show in an industry that my friends and family can hardly even understand? Hmm, I hope not. In truth, it means I not only have a job that I like, but a career that I love.

I represent one of a hundred or maybe even a thousand tenured SEO professionals in the world who have spent their time doing and not blogging about doing. The only notoriety that we typically gain is the word of mouth referrals from our happy clients. To some of us, these clients have become more like friends. These friends make what we do just that much more rewarding. I cannot even imagine doing anything else and came to the realization several years ago that I am going to spend the rest of my life with a career centered around the web. I guess only time will tell what that Tuesday morning in 1999 really started.

Simple SEO Changes to Improve Unexpected Rankings

You may notice that some of your blog posts are drawing search engine traffic for particular search phrases and keywords (especially if your blog has had some time to establish itself with search engines). Even if you are doing keyword research prior to writing posts, you’ll almost definitely see that some of these phrases that are producing traffic are not something that you had intentionally targeted. While this is a nice surprise, it also means that there is likely more potential if you’re willing to make some small, but significant, tweaks.

If you’re drawing search traffic from a phrase that you’re not targeting, it probably means that you could be ranked even higher, and draw even more traffic as a result, if you make some changes to optimize your post accordingly. Just because a post was published at some point in the past doesn’t mean that it can’t be modified and made to be more effective.

In this post we’ll look at a few simple changes that can be made to improve upon these unintentional rankings. By taking a relatively small amount of time to recognize these opportunities and act on them, you could be setting yourself up for significantly more search engine traffic on an on-going basis.

First of all, you’ll need to find the keywords and phrases that are already driving traffic to your site. These are the search terms that you know are already producing results, so making a small effort to move up in the rankings is well worth your time. If your post is ranked 5th in Google for a particular phrase without even attempting to optimize the page, you may be able to quickly improve to the 1st or 2nd spot and see a noticeable increase in traffic. Repeat this process for a few different posts and the results will add up.

As an example, I have a post on my primary blog that has steadily attracted search traffic for the past six months or so. It’s not a ridiculous amount of traffic each day, but it does come from some fairly competitive search phrases and it is consistent every day, which adds up over the span of a month. I recently spent a few minutes to look into which search phrases were sending traffic to this post and I was surprised to see that I was ranked 4th in Google for a phrase that didn’t seem to be optimized. I made a simple change in just a couple of minutes and within a few days the post had moved to the #1 spot for that same phrase. Since then search traffic has been up consistently for that phrase.

To find these opportunities for your own blog, look at your stats from Google Analytics (or a similar program) and see what search phrases are sending traffic to your site. Most likely these phrases will be leading traffic to a particular post rather than to your homepage, which means you can simply optimize that post to more effectively target the phrases that are already sending traffic. Just look through the phrases that are sending traffic and you’re sure to find some that could be more productive. Personally, I start with the ones that are sending the most traffic since they have potential for the best results.

In addition to looking at Google Analytics, you can also use Google Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools will show you some valuable data under “Statistics” and “Top Search Queries.” This will show you 20 phrases where your site is ranking well, and 20 phrases that are sending the most traffic to you. You may find some items on this list that surprise you a little bit. If they surprise you, it probably means that you weren’t intending to draw traffic from these phrases and there should be some room for improvement.

So now that you have identified a few phrases to work with, what should you do? Here are a few simple suggestions.
1. Page Titles

Page titles are the most significant on-page factor for search engine rankings. If your post is ranking very well for a particular phrase that is not exactly used in your page title, you should be able to see some improvement in the ranking if you change your page title to include this phrase. If you’re using WordPress and the All-In-One SEO Pack Plugin this is very easy. From the example that I used earlier, I didn’t remove anything from the existing title, I simply added a two-word phrase that was already producing the search traffic. As a result, with no other effort, that was enough to jump a few spots in the rankings.
2. Add New Internal Links

By adding more internal links to a particular post you will be indicating to search engines that the post is important. This is a pretty simple process, but one that most of us don’t take the time to do. If you’re blog has been around for a while you have plenty of places where you can add internal links. Go back and find posts on related topics and add a link in the content of the page or at the beginning or end of the post. Also, look for opportunities to link from any significant pages on your blog.
3. Change Anchor Text

Another factor that will influence search engine rankings is the anchor text that is used on links that point to that post. You can obviously control the anchor text used on your internal links, so take a few minutes and see what anchor text you are currently using on these links and see if it could be optimized to match the phrase that you are now targeting.

The anchor text of links from other sites to this page will also be significant, but you may or may not be able to change that. In most cases the best you could do is to contact the other blogger or website owner and ask them if they mind changing the anchor text on a particular link. I know some people do this, but I can’t say that I have ever asked someone to change the anchor text on their site for me.
4. Meta Description

While meta descriptions are not going to make a big difference in terms of rankings, an effective description is capable of improving the click-through-rate from the SERPs. For example, if your page is ranking 3rd in Google for a particular phrase, you could enter a description that will do a better job of attracting clicks from those searchers and you may find a 10% in traffic without moving up in the rankings. Again, this is something that you can easily do with the All-In-One SEO Pack Plugin.
5. Add to the Content of the Post

One of the best ways to help a post draw more traffic on an on-going basis is to make the post more useful. Most of us don’t take the time to improve our old posts, but the time can be a good investment in some cases. By making adding new or updated content you will be making the post more useful and hopefully it will attract more links in the future because it continues to be valuable. And more links mean possible improvement in rankings.
6. Write a Follow Up Post

I rarely write posts to target a specific word or phrase, but I did so about a year ago with a post on my primary blog. After a while the post attracted some links and moved up to the number one spot for the targeted phrase. After that I thought it would be nice if I could get a second post to rank well for that phrase, so I published a follow up. Since my site was already recognized by Google as a good source of information for this phrase it was pretty easy to get a second post to rank for the same phrase. Before long I had the first two spots in Google for the phrase pointing towards my two posts.

If you have a page that is ranked very high, this is a very achievable way to grab an even higher share of the traffic for this phrase. However, most of us (including me) rarely think to do this. Take a look at your posts that are ranking well, most likely you’ll find some opportunities where you could write a follow up post to target the same phrase.
Reminder:

One thing that should be pointed out here is that any changes made can also affect your rankings for that post and other search phrases. So if the post is already ranking well for your targeted phrase and you see another phrase that also is sending some traffic, you won’t want to abandon the targeted phrase by making changes that will be counterproductive.

Small Business SEO: How To Launch That Web site

It’s hard when you’re small. Everything seems bigger and more intimidating. Puppies get toppled by bigger dogs, middle schoolers are stuffed in lockers and small business owners back away in fear of this whole “Internet” thing. But like the chess player who grew up to be accepted by the Homecoming Queen, you, too, can overcome! The trick is to never let your fear stop you from your plans of Word domination.

Okay, so say you’re a small business looking for search on a dime. You have your domain, your hosting is squared away, you have a few pages of content up and you’re finally ready to attract the world (or at least your city) to your Web site. Being small means you need to be smarter. It’s about doing all the little things that will pack the big rewards. Where do you start?
Localize Your Site Content

Don’t be afraid to mention your location on your Web site. Don’t make it a secret to the engines or your customers. Let them know where you live (figuratively speaking. Let’s not endanger the fam), where you work and where you’re from. It’s natural information that both the search engines and your users are going to want to know. Who do you target? What area(s) are you relevant to? When are you open? How can people can find you? Tell them.

Where do you slip in these trust and location cues within your content?

* Home page: While you’re out there telling people what you’re about, mention where you’re located. It shows customers you really exist, while also giving the engines’ local algorithms something to snack on.
* About page: Your About page should not only tell people who you are, it should tell them where you’re located. It’s one of the many trust signals users will be looking for and it acts as a great citation for the search engines.
* Press page: Do you have a page on your site that encourages people to get in touch with you for media purposes? Don’t forget to include your address, phone number and email.
* Contact page: This should be a no brainer but you’d be surprised how many people lose their brains writing Web copy. ;) Include your location, a map, your cities served, hours, email address, fax number, phone number, directions and other any information you have that establishes your location.

Create, Claim Your Business Listings

Okay, I encourage you to grab some coffee (and maybe some pizza) before setting in on this task. We understand it’s a bit time consuming, but it’s also important. With reports of nefarious others hijacking unclaimed business listings and then (virtually) closing down the company, you want to make sure you control what’s yours.

3 Awesome Multi-Feature SEO Toolbars Compared

SEO toolbars are highly useful utilities providing us with:

* Lots of useful SEO info at a glance;
* Quick access to more SEO tools and resources;

Why do you need to choose?

Toolbars take much space and also slow down your FireFox. Therefore I can afford to use no more than one SEO toolbar per FireFox profile.

How to compare?

I’ve compiled a quick comparison table (you knew I would) and added some notes below. You are more than welcome to share your own take.

Note: this comparison table is not meant to determine which one is better / worse. Instead, it aims at helping you choose the one that best fits your needs.

Note: I am describing features available by default. The tools can be configured to some extent, for example SEOquake allows to add almost any data (if you have at least some technical skills).

online webmasters

surjan.seo@gmail.com
antonello.leone@gmail.com,
antoniolevy@gmail.com,
antons3311@gmail.com,
anuj.jaipuri@gmail.com,
anujbhatia36@gmail.com,
anurag@gmail.com,
anurita.seo@gmail.com,
anushree7@gmail.com,
apwestern@gmail.com,
aquatech.water@gmail.com,
aquene@gmail.com,
archyboy@gmail.com,
arfelc@gmail.com,
arghya.royseo@gmail.com,
aric.scott@gmail.com,
arick.seo@gmail.com,
[16:32:44] … arielsoleo8@gmail.com,
arih.jain@gmail.com,
arin.herein@gmail.com,
arin.iem@gmail.com,
arindam.khastagir@gmail.com,
arindamsoft@gmail.com,
arman.sharma1@gmail.com,
arnonf@gmail.com,
arpit.agarwal82@gmail.com,
arshikhan.seo@gmail.com,
artclub.paintings@gmail.com,
artiseo20@gmail.com,
artist.4.hire@gmail.com,
artizany@gmail.com,
artjewel@gmail.com,
artsoilpaintingslink@gmail.com,
arunava.royseo@gmail.com,
arunava.k@gmail.com,
arvindv99@gmail.com,
aryan.home@gmail.com,
aryan.seo@gmail.com,
aryan7828@gmail.com,
aryo.sanjaya@gmail.com,
asadaman@gmail.com,
aseosd@gmail.com,
aseosony@gmail.com,
asfriendly@gmail.com,
ash.davis@gmail.com,
asher.elvin@googlemail.com,
ashfaq.eskayseo@gmail.com,
sunil85ster@gmail.com,
aglashish29@gmail.com,
ashish.coder@gmail.com,
ashish.ku.singla@gmail.com,
ashish595@gmail.com,
ashishshani.sahni15@gmail.com,
ashishwd@gmail.com,
ashleylove4u@gmail.com,
ashok.instablog@gmail.com,
ashutoshindian@gmail.com,
ashwini.rajoriya@gmail.com,
asiawebmedia@gmail.com,
asif.vinove@gmail.com,
asifru@gmail.com,
asitabhsoftz@gmail.com,
ask@gerrykasper.com,
askbmwpart@gmail.com,
askimlale@googlemail.com,
aslamkhanjadoon@gmail.com,
asloveu@gmail.com,
astrojith@gmail.com,
astronomyagogo@gmail.com,
asw22pilot@gmail.com,
aswankepritan@gmail.com,
atbotg@googlemail.com,
atef.badawi@gmail.com,
ather210@googlemail.com,
atherfsd@gmail.com,
atherine.seo@gmail.com,
atib.sharma@gmail.com,
atit.dave.om@gmail.com,
atlanticwest@gmail.com,
atomic55net@gmail.com,
atri.rkweb@gmail.com,
attitude912@gmail.com,
attorney.familylaw@gmail.com,
attri.sharad@gmail.com,
atul.saxena3@gmail.com,
atul.seo.linkbuilding@gmail.com,
atul.seo@gmail.com,
atul.shukla.cci@gmail.com,
atulpariharmca@gmail.com,
atulshukla84@gmail.com,
audiolineout@gmail.com,
august.lag@gmail.com,
aulboyet@gmail.com,
aupadhyay014.hws@gmail.com,
aushansingh@gmail.com,
austin.webexchange@gmail.com,
austinyellowbike@gmail.com,
avalanche@gmail.com,
aviksarkhel@gmail.com,
avinabtraders@gmail.com,
avi4mdelhi@gmail.com,
avinash.khandare@gmail.com,
avinash.seo@gmail.com,
avinash.seo1@gmail.com,
avinashsonee@gmail.com,
awaiszaidee@gmail.com,
awasthipoonam@gmail.com,
awesome.anju@gmail.com,
axiomlinks@gmail.com,
ayan.biswas82@gmail.com,
ayeshakapoor85@gmail.com,
aysha.seo@gmail.com,
aysha5050seo@gmail.com,
ayurvedcure@gmail.com,
ayushikashyap@gmail.com,
azamthatte@gmail.com,
azharquick@gmail.com,
azhr21ali@gmail.com,
azrael@gmail.com,
azumi.joan@gmail.com,
babelglossary@gmail.com,
baby.is.shy@gmail.com,
babyfavors82@gmail.com,
babyjuly86@gmail.com,
backgroundclark@gmail.com,
backlinking@gmail.com,
badekkila@gmail.com,
bagri.harish@gmail.com,
bahaar.kapruwan@gmail.com,
bahan_kumar@gmail.com,
bahankumar@gmail.com,
bahuguna2007@gmail.com,
bala1885@googlemail.com,
balaeie@gmail.com,
balaji.angu@gmail.com,
balaji.jaipur@gmail.com,
balbir@gdtechindia.com,
balicenter@gmail.com,
balijee@gmail.com,
balinda.gracias@gmail.com,
balyimez@gmail.com,
bambychahal@gmail.com,
banahansigantayat@gmail.com,
banerjee.soma@gmail.com,
bansal.1977delhi@gmail.com,
bapu.prabir@gmail.com,
bapunu31@gmail.com,
barelylegalblog@gmail.com,
barry.or.s@gmail.com,
barry.schwartz@gmail.com,
basantmalviya@gmail.com,
basit.sea@gmail.com,
bastertony1@gmail.com,
basusumanto.28@gmail.com,
bayouscents@gmail.com,
beekinn@gmail.com,
beena666@gmail.com,
beewen@gmail.com,
behera.laxmidhar@gmail.com,
belinda.gracias@gmail.com,
benifer.gracias@gmail.com,
benjamin.dubow@gmail.com,
berrjames@gmail.com,
bertomartinez@gmail.com,
bertson.seo@gmail.com,
[16:32:58] … besanto12@gmail.com,
bestbeachesindiaseo@gmail.com,
bestmarketoffers@gmail.com,
bestmedicaresupplement@gmail.com,
beststeel@gmail.com,
bestwritingpen@gmail.com,
bfopnow@gmail.com,
bgjaaster@gmail.com,
bgvisit@gmail.com,
bhaba@speedfind.biz,
bhanu420@gmail.com,
bharat.indian@gmail.com,
bharatadesam@gmail.com,
bharats07@gmail.com,
bharatsharandwivedi@gmail.com,
bhargava.gautam@gmail.com,
bhaskar.in@gmail.com,
bhavnaotist@gmail.com,
bhojani@gmail.com,
bhoomionline2007@gmail.com,
bhupendra.kunvar@gmail.com,
bhupi117@gmail.com,
bhupy.sharma@gmail.com,
bibbyjen@gmail.com,
bibhulipu@gmail.com,
biganderson@gmail.com,
bigapplehea@gmail.com,
bigapplehead@gmail.com,
bigboobster@gmail.com,
bigrigjobs.tina@gmail.com,
bigtopbouncers@gmail.com,
bigtsports@gmail.com,
bijan.mobasseri@gmail.com,
bijendra.webmaster@gmail.com,
bikash888@gmail.com,
bikram.chowdhury@gmail.com,
bill.elizabeth@gmail.com,
billurell@gmail.com,
binduiyer@gmail.com,
biojobsinfo@gmail.com,
biosyn.seo@gmail.com,
bipasha.seo@gmail.com,
bisht.seo@gmail.com,
biswanathbhutia@gmail.com,
biswas.prasant@gmail.com,
bkumar.jpr@gmail.com,
bkvoltm@gmail.com,
black.seojob1@gmail.com,
blackberry.zhang@gmail.com,
blackfive@gmail.com,
blee88@gmail.com,
bloggerscircle@gmail.com,
blogghar@googlemail.com,
blooddawn@gmail.com,
blueiceccx@gmail.com,
bnrljtm@gmail.com,
bob_grommit@gmail.com,
bobandbillshow@gmail.com,
bobby.loveme@gmail.com,
bobbyjoshi1@gmail.com,
bolttalk@gmail.com,
bonokeith@gmail.com,
bookingenquiry@gmail.com,
bookworm.seo@gmail.com,
borva.manish@gmail.com,
bossy.decosta@googlemail.com,
boy.seo@gmail.com,
brad.britton@gmail.com,
brad.parker79@gmail.com,
bradmemorialhousing@gmail.com,
brajesh.bharati@gmail.com,
brandburnmedia@gmail.com,
brandy.jone@gmail.com,
brastrapmakeover@gmail.com,
brayn.adam@gmail.com,
bretheartbobby@gmail.com,
brett.gia@gmail.com,
briandiehr@gmail.com,
bridalgown4u@gmail.com,
brijendrav@gmail.com,
brijesh123@gmail.com,
brijk.seo@gmail.com,
brijkishortiwary@gmail.com,
britto.alex@gmail.com,
brokencode@gmail.com,
bronxcity@gmail.com,
brooke.theresa@gmail.com,
bscsjitu@gmail.com,
bselincorp@gmail.com,
bsenthilkumar1978@gmail.com,
bsinfo@gmail.com,
bstablv@gmail.com,
bsthakur81@gmail.com,
btbowtie@gmail.com,
budtheteacher@gmail.com,
bukan83@gmail.com,
bulu4uu@gmail.com,
bumpshack@gmail.com,
buran.fr@gmail.com,
burgess17@gmail.com,
butcherblock.jhon@gmail.com,
buttreeks.maya@gmail.com,
c.chiranjeeb@gmail.com,
c.garcia.sanchez@gmail.com,
cachet.oes@gmail.com,
cafegadgets.webmaster@gmail.com,
caliberintl@gmail.com,
californiavictory@gmail.com,
callum.george28@gmail.com,
calvinjd@gmail.com,
camsfaq@gmail.com,
candidradio@gmail.com,
canny143@gmail.com,
canon006@gmail.com,
capriarju@gmail.com,
carol.rima72@gmail.com,
carolrprado@gmail.com,
carzlinks@gmail.com,
casualultimate@gmail.com,
cathren.johns@gmail.com,
catty.monarche@gmail.com,
caucuscoolertipjar@gmail.com,
cbathagte@gmail.com,
cbccrew@gmail.com,
cc12c90509@gmail.com,
cchgroupmail@gmail.com,
cckcorp@gmail.com,
ccsthiru@gmail.com,
cecilia.yang911@gmail.com,
cel.wickedinnovations@gmail.com,
celticweddingring@gmail.com,
centroluterano@gmail.com,
certvista@gmail.com,
chahal.pb@gmail.com,
chahal.rajguru@gmail.com,
chakde.webmaster@gmail.com,
chamara.hj@gmail.com,
chandan.bhabua@gmail.com,
changwebmaster@gmail.com,
chaoweb@gmail.com,
chapter42@gmail.com,
charan.kanhu@gmail.com,
[16:33:07] … charlesknobloch@gmail.com,
chat.seohi5@gmail.com,
chatonly4me@gmail.com,
chaudhary.2007@gmail.com,
chauhanajitsingh@gmail.com,
chauvantruong@gmail.com,
chd.hunk@gmail.com,
cheaplinkbuilder@gmail.com,
cheeramit@gmail.com,
chenle02@gmail.com,
chennai.vishnu@gmail.com,
chennaipc@gmail.com,
chenpamela1@gmail.com,
chenxiaoping83@gmail.com,
cherryckai17@gmail.com,
cherryflava@gmail.com,
cherylrials@gmail.com,
chetan.jangid12@gmail.com,
chetan12.seo@gmail.com,
chetansoni2@gmail.com,
chh.sangeeta@gmail.com,
chhgvr@gmail.com,
chicsforhire@gmai.com,
chicsforhire@gmail.com,
chiku3717@gmail.com,
chinambbs@gmail.com,
chirag.taneja@gmail.com,
chitta.mybiz@gmail.com,
chris.mcevoy@gmail.com,
chris.ridings@gmail.com,
chris.trismegistus@gmail.com,
christelle.coetzee@gmail.com,
christopher.drew@gmail.com,
christophercarder@gmail.com,
christyhaw@gmail.com,
chrizrahul@gmail.com,
cindyall@gmail.com,
cindywine@gmail.com,
cinemanila@gmail.com,
cityhippy@gmail.com,
citynights.jade@gmail.com,
civilconst@gmail.com,
clicknearnbd@gmail.com,
client@gmail.com,
clyopa@gmail.com,
cmgshradha@gmail.com,
cmode.khaja@gmail.com,
codebowl@gmail.com,
cogdill.builders@gmail.com,
col.rc.goyal@gmail.com,
colin.dolly@gmail.com,
colin.costa@gmail.com,
colin.zwiebel@gmail.com,
collegestudentsmobi@gmail.com,
columbiacityguide@gmail.com,
com@gmail.com,
comartgurgaon@gmail.com,
commas.123.siddharth@gmail.com,
common.seo@gmail.com,
communicationcoach@gmail.com,
company.s.h@gmail.com,
compuone@gmail.com,
contact.seo7@gmail.com,
contact2abhi@gmail.com,
contactatusoftech@gmail.com,
contactkristian@gmail.com,
contactsujit2006@gmail.com,
conveyancingbrokers@gmail.com,
cool3616@gmail.com,
coolkhem@gmail.com,
coolstuffguyster@gmail.com,
coolwebmistress@gmail.com,
covell@gmail.com,
craig@robinsconsulting.com,
craigh01@gmail.com,
crazyphon@gmail.com,
crespowu@gmail.com,
crippledcanary@gmail.com,
crwr77@gmail.com,
csg.linkexchange@gmail.com,
csglobal.seo@gmail.com,
cv0610@gmail.com,
cy.vivek@gmail.com,
cyclecloseouts@gmail.com,
czruqa@gmail.com,
d.tapash@gmail.com,
d@gmail.com,
d007424@gmail.com,
d1taylor@gmail.com,
dadsanddaughters@gmail.com,
dae1481116@gmail.com,
dafidoll@gmail.com,
dafneves@gmail.com,
dailypropaganda@gmail.com,
dangsoftsolutions@gmail.com,
danielle.seo@gmail.com,
danielmarkharrison@gmail.com,
daniels.charles@gmail.com,
dannyjfletcher@gmail.com,
darci.joli@gmail.com,
darren.webart@gmail.com,
darrenjame@gmail.com,
dating72@gmail.com,
dattaraaj@gmail.com,
dave.schall@gmail.com,
dave.steave@gmail.com,
daveosociologist@gmail.com,
daverosenberg@gmail.com,
david.dabin@gmail.com,
david.hunter@gmail.com,
david.wenzel@gmail.com,
davidajackson@gmail.com,
davidhousing@gmail.com,
davidsimonds007@gmail.com,
davijoan@gmail.com,
davis1anna@gmail.com,
dchseoteam@gmail.com,
dcroote@gmail.com,
ddebarajdash@gmail.com,
dealergoat@gmail.com,
dearlinker@gmail.com,
dearsigmunddontpanic@gmail.com,
deba.mishra@gmail.com,
debanjansoftz@gmail.com,
debopriya.biswas@gmail.com,
decosta@gmail.com,
deeepakseomaster@gmail.com,
deeljeabiz@gmail.com,
deep.seo07@gmail.com,
bennett.durian@gmail.com,
deepak.fac@gmail.com,
deepak.mdk@gmail.com,
deepak.raghavan@gmail.com,
deepak.seolinking@gmail.com,
deepakk@gmail.com,
deepaknagpal8@gmail.com,
deepika.chilana@gmail.com,
deepika.koshisk@gmail.com,
deepmalam@gmail.com,
deepnavigator@gmail.com,
deepsmalhotra83@gmail.com,
deepu.ghs@gmail.com,
deepulove@gmail.com,
deepulovea@gmail.com,
deepuship@gmail.com,
dejongwil@gmail.com,
deltaservice7@gmail.com,
dementedjesus@gmail.com,
denish.gupta@gmail.com,
denisyates@gmail.com,
denniegeorge@gmail.com,
denoxphonestore2@gmail.com,
derjitsudan@gmail.com,
deshawn.jon@gmail.com,
designs-tmcclint@gmail.com,
desimoeg@gmail.com,
devenbhagat@gmail.com,
devk54@gmail.com,
dhanjit.dubey@gmail.com,
dhanusree19@gmail.com,
dhar.sukanta@gmail.com,
dharaksandeep@gmail.com,
dhavald@gmail.com,
dhruvtrivedi@gmail.com,
dhvaneshadhiya@gmail.com,
dibyasinghray@gmail.com,
diddy1@gmail.com,
digiaudio.podcast@gmail.com,
digitalbanana@gmail.com,
dilip3183@gmail.com,
dimension@gmail.com,
dimpleseo@gmail.com,
dinagar@gmail.com,
dinesh.gathole@gmail.com,
dinesh.oswaltech@gmail.com,
dinesh.sanodiya@gmail.com,
dinesh2k20@gmail.com,
dinesu@gmail.com,
directeur@gmail.com,
directory@gmail.com,
directoryniche@gmail.com,
dirpandi@gmail.com,
dis4you@gmail.com,
divya.gnet@gmail.com,
divya.webmistress@gmail.com,
diwakar.professional@gmail.com,
dkls8lsj48@gmail.com,
dn.danyy@gmail.com,
dneshs@gmail.com,
dobal.webmaster@gmail.com,
dogwtf19@gmail.com,
dollmakers@gmail.com,
dolson08@gmail.com,
dom.corp@gmail.com,
domainandspace@gmail.com,

Guest blogging for (a lot of) backlinks

Do links in duplicated content pages still pass value?

In my opinion, yes they do. There doesn’t even seem to be a limit to the number of times you can duplicate a page across unique domains to pass link value. You’d expect (or hope) that pages triggering the duplicate content filter at Google would have the value of their outbound links nullified, but I don’t see this happening in many cases. It’s not up to me to out specific examples of this, we’ve all seen it happening. If you haven’t, I’d suggest finding a high competition market and analyse the backlinks to a few domains. If you start seeing links from sites like articleblast.com, goarticles.com and articlesbase.com just do an exact match query in Google for some of the text you find and you’ll find your duplicate articles and inbound links.

Case study: Scraped post at SEOmoz

I decided to take a look at my post (titled “SEOmoz Tools - Top Pages on Domain Kick Ass”) published on SEOmoz a few weeks back. At the base of the article, there is a link back to my site using the anchor “SEO Consultant in London“. It’s not a particularly competitive phrase (nor is there much traffic) but, nonetheless, it’s a valid term and one for which SEOgadget ranked third for until a week or so ago. The article was scraped by at least 21 other domains, the data on which I gathered by using an “intitle” query on exact match for the post title and a randomly chosen sentence from the content, also on exact match.

How do you find scraped content?

My favourite way is just to use a search engine. In this example, I have used an “intitle” operator and a section of text that could only have appeared in the article in question.

Authority LinkBuilding! What and How..

Google consider these sites as an authority in there related niches or in general. And a link from these websites considered to be an authority link. For example Wikipedia is an authority site in Google’s eye. If you succeed to get a link from there, then this link of yours will be termed as an authority link for your website. What the advantage of authority links?

A huge boost in your ranking, increase in your own site trust level. What else you want honey!!

Now many of us think or assume that only a site with .edu or .gov tld can be an authority which is not correct by any mean. Take again t he example of Wikipedia. It don’t have any .edu .or .giv tld but still Google consider it as an authority. Yahoo.com .. a simple .com domain but Google gives sufficient importance to anything coming fromt his domain. (lets forget MSN for some time :P)

But gaining links from these sources can be a real pain in ass. Although you have read at many big players blog’s that ask by sending en email to some student and he will be happily place your link at his or her blog; but trust me here, its like 1 out of 100 person that will actually reply your email and that reply will be not so encouraging. For big name its easy to get links from these sources as people are fame addicted. Once they see that this person is popular in its industry, they gonna accept everything from him, never mind it will be truth or just some stupid personnel thought. And once they get an email from that person they will be in OMG condition fro several days…bragging bout there mail at there blog or website. So what to do to get links from trusted sources for a blog or websites which is somewhat new?

I will tell you one very simple way to get links from Wikipedia. And if that link won’t remain there then believe me some Wikipedia editor is just jealous of you. So what you have to do is simply make a list of all the manufacturer’s/authorities/sources/references/glossaries etc website in your niche. Lets say you have an auto related website. Make a list of all the auto manufacturers and categorize it regionally. Here is an example of that list

How to make money with SEO

There are two ways to use SEO to help your organization. One is reliable and effective, the other is a glorious crap shoot that usually fails but is wonderful when it works. I'll start with the second.

The most common way to use search engine optimization is to find a keyword (like "plumbing") and do whatever you can to 'own' that word on Google. This is Google as the Yellow Pages (with free ads).

The Yellow Pages are terrific for plumbers, because if you need a plumber, that's where you're going to look. Buy the biggest ad, be the first listing, you get calls. Google is a revelation because it's a super Yellow Pages and it's free! The problem: how to be the first listing, because being the 40th listing is fairly worthless.

The answer: You probably won't be. There are 14 million matches for Plumber, and no, you won't be #1 or #2. You lost. In fact, in just about every keyword worth owning, your chances are winning are small.

(To the .00001% of the people reading this who win--congratulations. You can ignore this post.)

This method is so appealing because it's all about converting the non-converted. For free, you show up in front of people who didn't know about you and you get your shot to convert them. This is the marketer's dream.

Am I saying it's not worth trying to win? Of course not. If you can give it a shot for the right set of keywords and not spend too much or count too much on winning, then go for it. But the other method is a lot more compelling (and, yes, you can do both at the same time).

The other way to use SEO is a bit more organic. (Let's call it the White Pages approach). It involves owning a keyword that you already own. Do a search on ShoeMoney in Google and you'll find 340,000 matches. Wanna guess who's first? ShoeMoney. Why is this surprising? After all, he invented the word and he owns the domain.

Someone hears about Jeremy's site from a friend or from a blog or from some other source. They want to visit his site and they type it into Google. He told me that he gets five times as much traffic from this search term as any other on Google.

The power of this technique is that with determination and patience, you will certainly win. It requires inventing a trademark and then building a business or service or organization around this trademark that people actually talk about. You want to be able to say to someone, "just type ____ into Google."

Obviously, the only people who will do this have heard about you in some other way. So this is an amplification and word of mouth strategy, not a blue sky conversion play.

Here's the math:
If you are lucky enough to 'win' at traditional Yellow Pages SEO, you might convert a few percentage points of the traffic you get into customers. On the other hand, if you win at White Pages SEO, if you win because people talk about your unique take and use your name, you convert just about everyone. Think about that... if someone types Seth into Google, they're probably looking for me, and so when they arrive here, they stay, because they found me. If, on the other hand, they type in Cow, most of the people who end up here aren't looking for my book, so they leave.

David Meerman Scott owns the word 'Meerman'. I have no idea if he uses his middle name in real life, but it sure helps him online. Scott Ginsberg owns the term 'nametag scott'. You get the idea. It's like owning the perfect domain, via Google.

When you start to win at the White Pages strategy, it turns out that this helps you win at both. Your blog or site gets more organic traffic, which will organically raise your Google results for other words and phrases.

Step by step:

1. Make an incredible product, offer a remarkable service.

2. Associate a unique term or trademark with it. (Something that isn't generic, and preferably, not a crowded search term already).

3. Assuming that you do #1 and #2, you'll end up owning that word in the search engines. If you don't, revisit the first two steps.

The hard part, of course, is making something people choose to talk about. The good news is that this is under your control, which is better than the alternative.

Extortion SEO Sanctioned by Google

The king of these programs is Ripoff Report -- the darling of Google. Matt Cutts has defended them and their right to publish defaming information -- and he has two reports in there himself.

Inclusion of information like this makes me agree that the search engine results are "cesspools" -- though Yahoo, Microsoft, and the other engines seem to be wise to Ed Magedson, the site's founder.

Thanks Matt and Ed, I now know what to do.

The government has given the sites a pass with the enacting of The Communications Decency Act -- the ruling that buffers sites from being held accountable for what others write on it.

"The Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, attempted to restrict Internet porn -- and, at the same time, give Web sites special immunity. Under the act, Goldman says, 'you can be aware of bad content, do nothing about it, and still not be liable for it,'" Eric Goldman, an assistant professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law and director of the High Tech Law Institute, told the the Phoenix New Times.

"Ironically, the Supreme Court struck down the porn part of the law soon after it was passed. But the exemption for Internet publishers stands. The U.S. Supreme Court has shown zero interest in entertaining a challenge to it, Goldman says, much less overturning it."

Hey, they've created an entire industry: reputation management. There's money in helping people push such sites off the search results. But should sites that publish unsubstantiated stuff get the listings in Google, the engine concerned with the user experience?

Here are some views I received via Twitter about Ripoff Report:

* Jerry Nordstrom, founder of Lead Discovery: "Ripoff Report is a joke. Used by all sales reps to trash the competing company, then they point their prospects there."
* Ryan Sammy of Search and Social: "Its amazing Google allows a scammy website like that to be in their index. I'm a little surprised at Google."
* David Snyder, CEO, Search and Social: "It is a website that instead of helping the consumer, only further hurts the consumer as well as the business it is targeting. It is a game of extortion, that Google is not taking a stance against."

Most of the major industry blogs have written about this and yet Google has taken no action. What does that tell you? Google likes how they have 567 complaints against the Google profiteer companies?

OK, Matt. You've convinced me. I'm starting a site tomorrow and the first complaint will be about AdSense accounts closed with large sums of money owed. Or should it be about Google Analytics killing an entire industry.

One wonders if Magedson was one of the early pre-IPO investors in Google, the company has helped him get rich.

"He revels in his role as a true-blue advocate. But with at least 30 companies now paying him to mitigate bad reports on his Web site, Magedson is facing sticky ethical questions," the Phoenix News noted.

True, the law says it's OK. But gambling advertising outside the U.S. was legal and Google pulled it. There are times when common sense should step in. That time is now.

Social Networks and Posting Effective Comments

I just got done reading a couple of different articles about commenting effectively and pulled some really good information from them both but I have even some more advice on commenting. One thing that I have learned more recently not only about commenting but about combining commenting and social networking is that you can generate quite a bit of traffic if done right by helping the blogs and sites that you make comments on get traffic on sites like Digg and Reddit.

For example, I use Twitter and am connected pretty much all day to Twitter whether it’s on my phone or at my desk. When someone Twitters a website, my tendency is to ignore that link. I have found that if I go and read the article and I’m able to leave comments on that post, there are quite a few other people that are reading that post from Twitter and other social networks that have picked that article up. Next thing I know I’m getting traffic from all of the social traffic that the blog post has been receiving.

So not only do I gain traffic from Twitter itself, I’m able to leverage the followers that Tweet has, but I’m also able to push it on to Digg and/or Reddit and/or other networks and create more traffic for that post. It’s amazing how much traffic you can generate if you follow good quality commenting rules and promote articles that you have commented on. I read two really good articles about quality commenting.

The first article was 4 Effective Ways to Comment on Different Blogs and the second one Formula for Effective Commenting state a lot of great tips. This is the condensed list of what I gathered from them both:

1. Find similar blogs so you can create relevant links and/or relevant traffic.
2. Add to the conversation, don’t just say “Nice Post”.
3. Only link to your blog or site when it makes sense.
4. Be different or intelligent when you comment.
5. Ask questions when commenting. .
6. Answer questions that are asked.
7. Object appropriately, remember comments are moderated.
8. Join the conversation.
9. Keep comments short.
10. Be early in the comments.
11. Respond to comments about your comments.
12. Be funny.
13. Be real and genuine when commenting.
14. Keep commenting.
15. Keep a consistent identity so that you can build a reputation and people will recognize and trust your comments.

4 Very Real Reasons To Have A Blog

I have been blogging for several years now and am a big proponent of blog use. In fact, last week I was conducting a webinar and got carried away preaching about the importance of company blogging. During the webinar I was asked again if having a blog was “essential” for a company. The questioner wanted to know specifically why I felt having a blog was important and wanted specific examples and ideas of good blogs so they had some direction in their blog planning. In other words - don’t just tell me to have a blog because its important, but tell me why it is important and give me specific examples and ideas of blogs who are doing things the right way. So, I gave my spill of answers. But then I got to thinking if the people who are following me on Twitter had the same or similar answers - and they did! (BTW, I appreciate all of you who answered me).
Here is the general summary of the Twitter answers above, and I will expand on each one.

1. A platform to be the expert - This is your industry, you have the opportunity to set the bar high. With a little research on places like Twitter, Yahoo Answers and other questions and answer websites, you can figure out what questions people are asking about your industry and provide them with (your) industry standard answers and insights. This is one of the best ways to add much needed content to your site, provide value, and become an expert online in your field. By the way, creating blog posts with this kind of information is one of the best ways to start blogging for those of you who are afraid to get your feet wet.
2. Give your company a personality - Be yourself. If you can come across as an individual who cares, rather then a corporation pushing a product or service it will serve you much better! Let potential customers get to know the person behind the company and trust will follow.
3. Search Engine Optimization - Think about how awesome it would be if you could create a piece of content, and have it indexed and ranking on Google (or other search engines) on the same day. If your website is providing enough value, and has enough trust, this is exactly what can happen. Having a blog gives you more of an opportunity to be found for additional keywords that you normally may not be going after. It is much easier to link to good content inside of blogs too, and we know how important people linking to us is. Blogs have many built in capabilities for sharing content too, which helps with the link building.
4. Help with staying relevant - Don’t just have a blog to have a blog because everyone else is doing it. The goal of your blog should be to help you company be more relevant from an information standpoint. Because, that is what people are looking for these days - news and information from individuals, companies, etc. Your blog is also one of the best facilitators for interacting with and embracing social networks, which in turn allow people to share your content. If you are using blogging platforms like Wordpress for example, there are many plugins that make sharing your content and information with others easy. That alone helps you stay relevant, people who use these platforms to find information understand that your blog is an up to date relevant source of information.

These 4 reasons in some form or another really do sum up my feelings as to why online businesses need blogs. Of course there could be more advanced additional answers that might include… push viral content , syndicate videos, etc. But we need to take baby steps, and for now you I think that if you can both understand and start to implement the above 4 things, you will be setting out on the right path!

How to Grow Your Google Authority

What is the real route to better Google rankings?

Many new Internet marketers obsess over Google pagerank believing it to be the route to rising in the search results, where in fact pagerank is just one of many factors involved in your search engine ranking and, most misleading, what you see in the Google Toolbar is very inaccurate anyway.

People look at Wikipedia and think they rank so highly and so often because of pagerank, or perhaps because they have a gajillion links, but there is another powerful element we can overlook if we are not careful.

Once relevance, links and keywords are taken into account, the true engines of search engine success are now believed to be “Trust” and “Authority”. But what do those phrases mean in this context, and how do you get more of the good stuff?

Read on!
Authority Leads to Google Authority
You know I am all about promoting authority in your blogging. Authority in general means that people trust you to supply expert insight. The good news is that authorities trusted by human beings are also trusted by Google.
Authority in a search context takes into account all the elements of a site then determines a grading on the spectrum from completely authoritative through to no authority at all. The more authoritative and trusted your site, the better you will rank.
There are many factors that directly influence your Google authority including the domain (a .gov is going to be more trusted than a much easier to gain .info), quantity and quality of links, plus traffic elements.
Dear Google … Who Do You Trust?

Perhaps the most important element is this factor of who is linking to you. It is believed that Google has a whitelist of trusted websites. While it is unlikely you will get onto this hallowed category yourself, inbound links from the websites that are already on the white list will give you a certain boost in the search engine rankings.
The problem is all of this is very unscientific, based on observation and guesswork, and the only people that really know what is going on work for Google, and unsurprisingly they are not talking.I should also point out that, while we often use “Authority” and “Trust” almost interchangeably, Google almost certainly sees the two factors as separate. We have way more influence over our authority than we do our “TrustRank“, in fact as far as trust is concerned the best we can do is improve our “degrees of separation” from those we suspect are on the search engine’s white list.

That all said we can still take some educated guesses as to which elements of your site and content will drive up the authority factor and in turn help you gain those all-important search results. Plus the more authority we accrue, the more likely we are to get linked to by the trusted few.

Let’s take a look at some of those now, starting with the negatives, then leading to the positives:

Increase Online Visibility for Sales and Links

The greater your company's visibility is online, the more links your site will get. People link to sites they know or have heard a lot about. The more a person is exposed to your company name, the more familiar it will be to them. That equals more links and more direct sales.

Here are some methods to build brand awareness and exposure online.

Contribute Articles

I'm not talking about submitting an article to 1,000 article directories. I'm talking about the more traditional marketing strategy of getting published. These articles could be how-to, advice, or opinion columns. Target all kinds of sites in your vertical and places your customers would frequent. These sites could range from nonprofit organization, to hobbyist, to newspapers.

Press Mentions

Want to get interviewed by the press? There's a great likelihood they'll contact you if your company has good online exposure. Just make sure it's easy for them to contact you by phone. Often the media is just looking for a comment to add into their piece. That goes to the first person who answers their phone call.

One way to speed up this process is to start networking with colleagues to get an introduction to people in the press who cover your industry. LinkedIn is an excellent tool for this.

Forums & Discussion Groups

Those signature links have little value in terms of search engines -- yet they can do wonders for building your company's reputations. Keep in mind many bloggers are in forums looking for topics to write about. Either answer questions or contribute to the discussion.

Comments

Put together a list of the most influential blogs for your industry and audience. Then have someone contribute to the discussion in the comments. Expand on the topic that was written about and even point out additional resources. Make sure the comments are insightful and non-promotional.

Answer Questions

Gather a list of sites where people commonly post questions about your industry or product. Then be the first or second person to provide the answer. Just don't be promotional.

Social Media

There's no need to worry about social media anymore because the rumor is Twitter is replacing all social media. Read one of the thousands of blog posts written in the past day about Twitter for more information. To quote the Borg from "Star Trek," "Resistance is futile."

If you don't believe the hype, then be brave and get involved in social media sites. You'll find that they're still vibrant and growing, and that there really is more to social media than Twitter. Many sites have groups dedicated to specific topics, such as travel, fashion, or careers. If there's no topic for your vertical, start one today! Even better, get creative and start a better group with a unique perspective.

The trick with any of these strategies is to have the people in place to handle the workload. It takes dedication because this isn't a one-time process.

An example would be having a person dedicate an hour each day to answering questions on forums. Another example would be to hire someone to handle your online public relations from social media, to getting your company published, to discussion forums. That really depends on your company's needs and budget.

The important thing is to set up a regular schedule. Remember, good link development is just good marketing.

6 Real Linkbait Examples and the Lessons Learned

Linkbait can be a very effective tool for search engine optimization. Social media is important for marketing your small or large business in 2009. The sky is blue. Women have secrets. Thanks for nothing, Dave. We’re actually dumber for having listened to you just now. You’re so very welcome, and do you know of a bank in the vicinity where I can cash your seminar check?

Preach vs. Practice
You learned absolutely nothing from that first paragraph which you didn’t already know. Simply telling someone to consider linkbait, link building or general social media as a means to drive both direct and eventually organic traffic to their site is like lending them your car and forgetting to give them the keys. A big heap of useless nothing. Don’t be that guy. The interwebnets are already flooded with them. And for God’s sake don’t pay them to tell you all those things. Ask for specific examples of their own linkbait work that can actually teach you something practical about applying the strategy to your own business. Don’t let them get away with simply talking about those damned blender videos again.

One of the reasons I am a fan of Montreal SEO maven Gab Goldenberg’s blog is that he provides real-world examples of work he has done for actual clients. As a result he is never even in the running on those days when I get so overwhelmed by my Google Reader backlog that I decide to start culling the RSS feed herd. I thought of possible ways in which I too could provide something particularly helpful today and dug out six of my previous linkbait project URLs. I’m not saying they’re ground-breaking or even especially good - but I did learn a lot from them and maybe you can too.

What is Linkbait?
Simply put, linkbaiting is the creation of something online which you feel has the potential to go viral. “Going viral” means a piece of content is so engaging, funny, helpful, life-saving, disturbing or a combination of all five that people feverishly pass it around amongst their friends via IM and email. Scores of bloggers link to it because they want to share it with their audience. It becomes bookmarked naturally in tons of social media sites. The benefits are twofold. In the short term the popular webpage gets tons of direct traffic and brand recognition. In the long term the domain encourages many one-way incoming links which is a crucial factor the major search engines take into account when deciding where to rank your site for specific keywords.

Here are some great articles regarding the construction of effective linkbait if you’d like to read more on the basics. I’d rather spend my bloggy time today showing you some real and original examples of linkbait I myself created - and then looking into the reasons they worked, didn’t work or could have been improved upon. I didn’t make these with enormous production budgets or teams of semi-conscious, hungover marketing interns at my disposal - but I did use my imagination with some degree of tangible success. Perhaps this article should be called Linkbait Ideas for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses. Perhaps this article should be skipped altogether.

Linkbait Best Practices
I tried to follow the golden (and vague) rules that I’d been reading about since the term “linkbait” was originally coined. Use media. Make it informative. Make it funny. Put it in a “top 10″ format. Include prominent social media submission buttons. Include an “email this to a friend” form. Make sharing easy. Consider paying off some prominent Diggers (did I say that out loud?). Put it in a subfolder on the client’s domain without any branding and then move it under the main template after it has been live for a few weeks to disguise its true marketing purpose. Sacrifice a chicken and pray. Read up on Chaos Theory.

Original Linkbait Examples
I’m going to link to these 6 examples using the specific keyword phrases they were designed to draw traffic for. This is partially because I’d like that strategy to be abundantly clear and partially because this is my blog and it’s my perogative to keep flogging these pieces even years after they were created should I want to. A good, timeless piece of bait can continue to draw relevant traffic indefinitely.

Online Marketing Services

Web marketing is the sole strategy which guarantees success to any website. We are a seo expert agency with a very imperative aptitude of organizing change and updating our marketing tools to match the client’s needs. We are an Indian internet marketing corporation that promises you online growth and advantages.

Nowadays, just performing seo for your website is not sufficient as the competition is so high. I want you to do search engine marketing (SEM) of your site which will attracts not only traffic to your site, but most importantly increase the conversion ratio to guarantee higher sales. For all type of eCommerce services based or product based online marketing blog can make it unbeaten on web. We have our proprietary internet marketing tools and tactics which supports in increasing online sales and profits.

What we do :

1) Affiliate Marketing Management

- Boost and authorize your affiliate marketing channel and do affiliate recruitment.

- Guarantee that your program artistic is updated to meet the affiliate requirement

- Work with you to design promotions for affiliates

2) Search Engine Optimization

-Guarantee top rankings on search engines (SERPs)

3) Online direct marketing and selling

- Do marketing, advertising, promotional and selling using latest techniques.

4) Online Public Relations (PR)

- Publish updates to inform the prospect regulars to boost the awareness and word of mouth amongst the prospect customers.

5) PPC

- Do PPC campaign management

- Build ad campaigns which will produce the highest return on your investment

- Work to SMO(social media optimization) on costs and check the scam clicks.

6) Viral marketing

- Help products being sell by other purchased product.

This is what a sales man does when you stopover a store, example: you go to a store and purchase a sofa, the sales man will then try to sell you matching chairs, then carpet, then even a decorative lamp. Or even when Hotmail users send e-mail, they innocently infect the receiver with the ads at the base of the mail. You will have to believe it, because this is the sole technique to increase your deals and also your earnings.

7) Email Marketing

We will use email marketing tool efficiently to boost your brand awareness, increase sales volume, raise conversion rate, maintain, brand building, enhance product knowledge, etc. Spamming is not a good way as it may lead to black hat listing your web site. We understand the outcomes of each feature of online marketing strategies and consequently we will use this most powerful online marketing tool to endorse your brand.

With all these services combined we give you a guarantee to increase your online business.

Although what those firms who affiance to “increase search engine results to your website” may acquaint you, there is no magical blueprint for online business success. Unbeaten online based business happens alone with accurate planning, appropriate execution, attentive monitoring, and advancing advance of the outcomes you attain. Contact the new age marketing OnlineMarketingBlog right away, may be you would have lost a few sales while you were thinking!

A Fresh Look At Local Search Ranking Factors

I admire the Trailblazers of Local Search Marketing…people like David Mihm, Michael Jensen, and Andrew Shotland who are offering interesting, perceptive insights into this most important aspect of SEO. Now, I’m not close enough to the topic to offer any groundbreaking new information about Local Search, but I have read and studied the area and I need to say that I have questions and concerns about what I’m reading. Are their conclusions actually correct, and if yes, are they offering the best possible advice to the reader to take advantage of their knowledge? So, I wanted to review some aspects of Local SEO and offer my thoughts about what I see:

1) Citation Is The New Link is David Mihm’s groundbreaking Local SEO article where he argues that the volume of “cites” of a local business that appear in the SERPS helps get it higher local search rankings even if the citations aren’t accompanied by a link to the website. Now, I agree with David’s premise…however, I think his advice at the end of the post as to how businesses can increase their citations (obscure directory submissions & mining competitor citations) is pretty ineffectual compared to the most obvious solution.

Remember the guestbook signing software that you probably haven’t used for 5 years (since it hasn’t been effective for that long)? Time to fire it up again since the easiest way to generate these local citations is to sign 10,000+ guestbooks with your complete business contact information. Now, since it’s a known fact that spammy links to your site will get it penalized in the SERPS, when you are “citing your site” in each guestbook, you are also linking to your competition, damaging their link profile at the same time you’re elevating your local SEO. I’m amazed that a smart guy like David didn’t think of this.

2) City Centroid Correlation to Local Search Rankings: In David’s comprehensive study of Local Search Ranking factors, one of the strongest factors that predicted local search ranking success was the proximity of the business to the “center” of the city. Smart people like Matt McGee and Gab Goldenberg chimed in with comments on this factor and on the surface, the evidence overwhelmingly supports this. However, I’d like to offer a slightly different take on the same information which allows the local business owner who isn’t located in the center of the city an opportunity to grab a top local search ranking:

“The Correlating Factor isn’t actually ‘City Centroid’ but the geo-targeted location of the person as he/she claimed the local business listing.”

In other words, how close to the center of the city was the person when they claimed and confirmed their local business with Google?” Most people are physically located at their business when they make their claim…and since they are already at the ‘City Centroid’, that’s why their businesses rank so well. However, this loophole here can be exploited to your advantage…

Get a map of the Top 10 local businesses for your targeted local query. Plot a point that seems to be in the center of those top 10 listings. Drive to that spot, fire up your laptop, and claim your Google local listing from there. Google will assign the location of your registration to your business (even if your business is actually located a long way away) and the chance of your getting a higher local search ranking for your targeted term will exponentially increase.

3) How to knock your competitor(s) off the top of the Local Search Listings and replace their listings with yours even if they’ve already claimed their listing.

Here’s a fun one. First, you go to Google’s Local Business Center and attempt to claim the listings of your competition. Google will let you go through the process but without confirmation, all your work is moot. At the end, you get the option of choosing whether to “confirm” your information via telephone or postcard. Choose postcard. When you input the information that’s used to generate the mailing label, make sure you get the label to say “Attn: xxxxxx” and use a name that people will most certainly remember.

You wait a few days and then send your spouse / significant other to each location with the following story:

“My husband was here a few days ago. He lost his wallet and he thinks this is where he lost it. Has anybody turned in a missing wallet?”
“I don’t think so. What was your husband’s name?”
“John Holmes.”
“Yeah, sure it is. Really?”
“Really. His name is John Holmes. You have a problem with that?”
“Well, nobody has turned in a missing wallet.”
“May I leave you my card and if you find his wallet, will you call me?”
“Sure thing.”

Now, you’ve spent $5 at VistaPrint to get a bunch of cards printed up with her name (Katie Holmes), address and phone number (best to use a disposable Google Voice number). She leaves her card and gets a card from the person at the business. It’s unlikely that she’ll get a call back…but leaving the card gets them to remember her for when she calls back in a few days…

“This is Katie Holmes and I’m calling to see if you’ve found my husband’s wallet.”
“Nobody’s turned in the wallet. But the darnedest happened. We got a postcard here addressed to him from Google?”
“Really. Can you read to me what it says?”
“Sure…”

Mind blowing Creative Ideas - 2009

These are some of the sensible ads picture which gained the attraction of the world people. I admire such kind of creativity and bookmark those stuffs for later reference. Since I had a good collection of them, I selectively chosen few best one and presented below. Do give your comment and express your suggestion on each of the ideas.
Child labour is a grave problem that threatens the future of our nation. Today underage labour deprives thousands of children in India of an education and these children are forced to work in hazardous and unhygienic work environments. To free them from the clutches of child labour is a challenge that they as citizens must take up. Each individual’s contribution can help after current situation; this was the essential message to be communicated in the ambient space. A life-sized statue of a child, dressed in rags carrying a box above his head was sculpted and placed against a wall backdrop. The box filled with some weights was tied to a rope running over a set of pulleys and attached to a donation box at the other end. The words, “Your contribution can end child labour” was painted over it. This installation was placed in several malls with high volume footballs across the city. The response received was overwhelming. As people contributed to the cause by donating over half a million rupees (and counting…), its gradually increasing weight resulted in the box on the Childs head to rise. People were held speechless, moved by the interactive imagery of this piece and driven to be a part of the change.
Fitness First: Bus stop

People who are happy with their weight are being mocked at for not giving in to this trend. So much so that a company has decided to make their weight public, literally! A health club chain called Fitness First, have actually converted a bus stop bench into a scale that will display the weight of people sitting on it. Quite embarrassing, this idea will definitely not go well with quite a few, especially those who hate to talk or even mention their weight in public.

There Is No Secret Sauce in SEO!

Sadly, many people have succumb to the snake oil that some shady SEOs are pushing. They say they have the secret to getting you top ranked in Google, Yahoo! and any other search engine in 7 days or less. They claim to have the bulletproof plan to solve all your SEO worries. All you have to do is pay 79.95 + tax and the nominal 19.95 shipping and handling charges. If you buy that, then do I have a deal for you!

The facts of SEO are not strange or mystical. They are clearly defined, well referenced and readily reproduced. Yes, it is quite possible to rank in 7 days, but don’t believe the hype and definitely don’t pay for an overnight cure all to solve your SEO woes. Instead, learn what is myth and what is fact. Learn where to begin your SEO journey, and where to continue it. Pick up the tools of the trade and begin to build a solid SEO campaign.
Common Myths of SEO Debunked… Sort of

Myth: There is some mystical secret formula that SEOs use to calculate, analyze and optimize a website and/or web page.

Fact: Oh, there are formulas alright and some people even treat them as a secret, but they are far from mystical. Actually, most methodologies for analyzing SEO factors both on and off-page are very scientific. They are based on factors that can be readily quantified and often are defined on specific rule sets. As changes occur in search engine algorithms, so do these formulas. Complicated, perhaps, but there is nothing mystical here. With enough research and time, anyone can learn the very same formulas used by even the best SEOs.

Even so, you don’t have to invest years of research to learn the basic formulas that many SEOs use. There are many sites around the give the average webmaster an interface to these formulas in the form of web based tools, browser toolbars and desktop applications. Such tools are only a starting point and are useful for basic optimization; they do not replace the experience of a skilled SEO.

Myth: There is some complicated scientific method used to optimize a website and/or web page.

Fact: The scientific method, in itself is not complicated. As CJ Jenkins recently pointed out, the scientific method is very straight-forward and is most certainly applicable to SEO. However, how the scientific method is applied to your SEO campaign will differ on a per campaign basis. The main idea is to use a structured approach to determining the needs of the client, develop an approach to solve the need, test the proposed solutions, repeat as necessary and report the results.

Whenever possible and practical, the scientific method should be used when defining and working on a SEO campaign. This will allow for much more useful results.

Myth: There are prerequisites on authority you have to achieve before you can reach page one on any search engine.

Fact: Let’s look at this myth with an analogy. Have you ever played “king of the hill”? It isn’t always the biggest kid on the block to ends up the king and no king stays there forever. Usually, the most creative and resourceful kid is the one that ends up being king. Well, in some ways, it’s the same in SEO.

Big name brands obviously have an advantage over smaller brands in that they are in demand and everyone knows their name, therefore, there has to be some degree of pressure on search engines to rank them higher. However, that does not mean that those big brands will always rank number one. While search engines may possibly give big brands a boost (or not), most engines have a higher emphasis on relevancy over brand. Therefore, it’s not at all out of the question that a brand as young as 3 months old can rank number one for a specific term or phrase if it is the most relevant result around. It’s actually quite common in long tail queries, but can be seen in some generic queries as well, though that is more rare.

12 Types of Content Strategies SEOs Should Know and Use

Its been said time and again, to search engines, “content is king”, but when it really comes down to it, many companies say they don’t have the time, patience, or budget for content creation. It begs the question; why then should they be ranked high in the search results? Maybe, just maybe, they’re not thinking about it logically and aren’t considering all the options at their disposal.

Here are 12 different types of content (not necessarily mutually exclusive) that when implemented properly, can drive tremendous volumes of visitors, links, and even business:

1. widgets/badges - for those unfamiliar with widgets, a widget is typically an interactive tool, that can be embedded in a web page. Since they’re interactive, often they can help potential clients find solutions quicker than they otherwise might have, making them a very powerful online marketing tool. Sometimes widgets are also made available for download to other websites, making them a powerful link acquisition tool too. Below is an example of one such widget.
2. videos - a good video is difficult to beat. People like to hear and see things for themselves, as opposed to reading about them, or being told about them. Video makes this possible, and accordingly is very popular. At the same time, video can be instructional, entertaining, and/or informational. When well done, videos will drive tremendous volumes of traffic, links, and/or potential clients to a site … and offers additional opportunities to appear in the search results

3. images - if a picture can say a 1000 words, then its also possible for images to generate 1000 visitors or links. We’ve seen many client sites, who’s images drive 20%+ of their overall website traffic volumes. In many cases, images are the reason people visit websites … they need to see what they’re buying! All that to say, do not underestimate the power of good quality images!

4. research - people often buy from websites they’ve heard about before, because familiarity breeds loyalty and trust. One means of breeding familiarity and trust is to perform and publish unique research that others in your industry or potential clients will find useful. When well thought out, timely, and topical, such research can generate thousands of links, visitors, and potential clients. Good research also helps to establish you as an authority in your space.

5. awards - everyone likes to receive cudos, or acknowledgement of a job well done! Now image that you as a site owner offer the ability for others to take those cudos, and post them on their site for all to see. Its a powerful tool, often generating thousands of visitors and/or links.

6. contests - while not for every business, contests can generate alot of relevant links, and accordingly help a site rank much better. The key is to ensure that the contest somehow relates to your business.

7. news - sites that are routinely first to publish industry news, are often visited more frequently, generate more links, and are viewed more as industry authorities. Alternatively, those running news stories after the fact, typically don’t experience all these benefits, unless they add some value or unique intepretation angle. Of course, one way to ensure the news is new and fresh is to make the news (aka a publicity stunt) … so get creative!

8. blog posts - perhaps one of the most popular techniques to create content, and one of the most poorly done! Most don’t understand the subtle nuances of creating blog content. I’ve posted about it previously (12 Common Blogging Mistakes to Avoid) as have many others, but the majority still continue to write blog content as if it were for another form of offline media.

Blog content generally consists of one of the four types listed below:

a. editorial/opinion based
b. entertaining
c. resource/educational
d. news (see #7 above)

The type you choose should be based on your objectives.

9. do something “remarkable” - if a company truly does something remarkable and unique, and publishes it on their site, the content will take on a life of its own. What does this mean? Well, if you’re a sausage manufacturer, manufacture the largest sausage on the planet. If you own a burger joint, offer a $2700 burger on the menu. Even if no one ever orders it, its something to mention on your website, and something interesting that others will notice and talk about (which results in links, visitors, and often clients). Consider this term alone “most expensive martini” … there are 1200 mentions on it in Google, and presumably a good number of those mentions link to it!

10. create an ebook - much easier said than done, but creating a ebook can result in perceived authority, visitors, links, and …. business!
11. make and distribute applications - if you can find a way to make potential clients lives easier (online or offline), it can have a profound impact. Creating an online application such as a WordPress plugin, a calculator, or industry software, and hosting it for download via your site, can increase awareness of your site, your perceived authority in the industry, attract large volumes of visitors, links, and yes, even business.


12. user generated content - content added by others, is content that you didn’t have to add yourself. With most business owner’s arguing they don’t have the time or budget for content, user generated content (UGC) would appear to be a logical solution. Although, most business owners then become concerned with their inability to control the content. Precautions can be taken however in most situations, making UGC a solution worth investigating.