Brian Clark highlights various levels of reading, and how many bloggers fail to go beyond scratching the surface.

Improved data visualization technologies are making it easier to transfer knowledge.

I few posts back I mentioned that Amazon’s Mechanical Turk would be good for some SEO processes. It looks like people are already using it to spam social media. As sock puppets rise up many of the broad/general social media sites will get polluted by increasing amounts of spam.

My latest column on SEL was about how you have to give your SEO as much information as possible if you want them to solve your problems in an efficient manner, equating a broken website to a sick patient.

Site maintenance may well be made easier by using relative URLS and indeed transferring the domain is easier than if you absolute URLS too. Whilst the absolute URL method may take more time in terms of updating links on each page the reasons for its usage are strong.
Google for one may well miss some relative […]

I recently worked with the fine folks at Wordtracker to create an ebook titled 50 Kick-Ass Keyword Strategies. Coming up with 50 unique and creative keyword research ideas was a bit more work than I thought it would be, but it was great fun to work with the Wordtracker crew - the feedback they gave to improve the content and the formatting they did were phenomenal.

So far the guide has been getting pretty good feedback

They quietly announced the launch to some of their newsletter subscribers, and I have been getting bombarded with emails asking about the ebook. If you are interested in buying it, the $12 off discount is here, but you have to get it by August 31st, because after that date the price goes from $27 to $39.

Sorry, I forgot to Blog this the other day. Our Dutch geek Wordpress collegue Joost once again pushes the realms of Wordpress possibilities with the improved Wordpress Breadcrumbs Plugin. As usual Joost responds directly to feedback from previous versions with improvements to the plugin allowing breadcrumbs to be added to the theme.
<?php if ( function_exists(’yoast_breadcrumb’) […]

DaveN is based in Ripon, North Yorkshire. While London is not that far away by train it’s not always an option to return home the same day. Sometimes too you do get fed up of the large Hotels and need a place to stay that’s more like home, being executive style, unique and offering […]

So after coming back from SES I had some interesting conversations, looked at some interesting things and came up with a few ideas. One of the things I’d like to try but have never seen is a recently updated function/plugin. How would a recently updated plugin differ from a recently published function … well I’m […]

I added Joost’s upcoming plugin that uses the upcoming system to let everybody know where I’m going to be. If you attend or speak at a decent amount of conferences, shows or events, IMHO it’s a pretty neat tool.
Related PostsSuggestion for Yahoo Shortcuts Wordpress PluginHey Yahoo Shortcuts Wordpress Plugin People, here’s a suggestion for improving […]

So back in the beginning of August I mentioned two plugins that I felt needed to be developed. Joost DeValk stepped up to the plate and wrote one, the Amazon Auto Linker, so he gets the free link love. In caser you missed it the plugin goes thru and auto appends your amazon aff id […]

Recently a SEO working for a lead generation network sent me a letter in the mail alerting me that I could improve my website by linking to their site. They mention some of the large brands they send leads to and state that the link to their site from my site would improve my site’s credibility, user experience, and offer our site visitors security since their lead generation form was secure.

Where this letter went astray was

• recommending a really aggressive and spammy long anchor text (they should have just gave me an easy short option and perhaps a link to a page on their site with linking FAQs and banners)
• for the most part their site is just a lead generation form (so they give me little real reason to link at it)
• in the tip where they tell me the transaction is secure they tell me the third party provider (so if I was going to link I might link to the 3rd party provider rather than through their thin affiliate site)
• they included a business card for their SEO firm in their letter (if I didn’t know what SEO is, then that might make me research it)
• they sent it to me (if you know the field of SEO well, you probably have heard my name once or twice, and would not want me shadowing your new site’s link building efforts on my older and more authoritative directly competing website)

As a result of the letter they sent out a few weeks ago it looks like the strategy yielded 0 organic links, but I found a couple easy link sources that I have not thought of in the past. I will spend some time further researching that SEO to see what other easy link sources he can find for me.

Hidden Risks of Promoting Your Marketing as “SEO”

If you call something marketing or promotion then it is seen as clean and above board. But as soon as you attach the SEO label then eyebrows raise, someone talks about it, and it gets nuked. It gets nuked because if the search engine does not do so then people assume it is a fair strategy, and the search engines have Google has to make examples out of the sites or many people will start doing it.

And it doesn’t have to be that way, as big brands benefit from semantic differences which should be used in their everyday marketing. Smaller brands can also enjoy the same benefits by avoiding the SEO discussion.

Findlaw recently came under scrutiny for trying to sell links to local law firms. Make the pitch to a few thousand lawyers and only one of them has to say no and out you (as a public relations and link building strategy). That discussion works its way into the SEO field and trouble happens. They may only get an aesthetic toolbar PageRank reduction. But they could have simply avoided the risks by talking about boosting exposure rather than SEO.

If you missed it unlucky, if you want more insight into that day .. Jen Slegg wrote pretty much up to the minute before the session, SEO mfg, joeduck both covered the session, Lisa Barone did the best write up I have found by far  and Kevin Ryan did a follow up, so all in […]

Every conference I speak at I tend to get a site clinic, but it still surprises me how many times I see the same old mistakes,
Title Tags: Greg Boser calls it the wish list I call it the 1 out of 3 rule. Basically it’s when you stick all the keywords you would like to […]

Google announced that over the next week they are going to implement their Google Suggest search suggestion feature on Google.com. This change will help searchers find popular keywords that other searchers recently searched for.

Short Term Influence on Search

When this search suggest change is coupled with the recent launch of automatic matching and the new quality score update it may consolidate PPC competition against a smaller set of core industry keywords. Some outlier keywords, like misspelled terms, are going to be much harder to build a traffic stream from.

This will also likely have the effect of focusing organic search attention on a smaller set of well defined queries. And the extra competition in the PPC space will drive yet more competitors to adopt SEO practices. But as an SEO smarter than 99.9% of other web publishers, you have some profitable drafting opportunities you can use to build a profitable search traffic stream.

SEO Drafting Tips

1. Search Query Drafting: If you can create a brand that starts with and industry keyword and drive search volume on it then your brand can show up for some people looking for the broader topic. For example, a webmaster may not have enough PageRank/link authority to rank for seo, but if they can create enough hype around their brand then maybe people search for it and their brand related search query shows up as a suggestion around the broader search queries. This is something that should also be taken into consideration when coming up with official names and page titles for leading resource oriented linkbaits.
2. Brand Drafting: If SEO Book is a decently strong brand and a fairly generic keyword, and SEO Books is the second most popular term suggested right below it then you might be able to pick up some of that search volume by ranking at or near the top for that alternate version. An April Hitwise blog post showed that in the US nearly 15% of brand related queries were intercepted by third part websites, and that was *before* Google launched search suggest directly on Google.com.
3. Brand Coupon/Discount Drafting: This is an extension of the above type of drafting, but rather than creating a compilation of sorts you focus on getting an affiliate commission for offering consumers a discount on the core brand. Many consumers will be reminded that there are coupons, discounts, promo codes, and reviews to find and read through when reviewing popular brands.
4. Media Drafting: This technology is already live on Youtube, so Youtube presents 4 ways to draft popular media.
• create a video optimized for a phrase that is already popular on YouTube
• create a video optimized for a phrase where you think the video has a good chance of ranking high in Google results
• create a video that has a title similar to other popular YouTube content that is watched by hundreds of thousands or millions of people
• create a relevant video that is a video reply to a video that is already well received

Long Term Influence on Search

• For websites and businesses that have no intent of building a real brand and intend to run primarily as an organic search arbitrage player the significance of domain name may be lowered significantly.
• As people get more acclimated with using search to navigate the web (as many people already do) then some brands and domain names that seemed too long and not viable may become viable marketing platforms.
• Conversely, short acronyms may lose some of their value as people become acclimated to having the search engine help complete their search queries.

Your Turn

How do you see search suggestion influencing how we search and how we write?

A lot of wealth consultants and self help snake oil hucksters, the type who publish books and movies like Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, would like you to believe that if you believe something it will come true. This Amazon.com review sums up The Secret book/DVD nicely:

Byrne’s book is problematic on many levels. On it’s face, it’s a manipulative marketing tool meant to flatter, confuse and deceive. It’s also pseudoscience at its best, the last thing we need to encourage in an increasingly technological world which requires healthy skepticism and critical thought. Most damaging, though, is how the book perverts reality by encouraging people to equate a positive outlook on life with a childish, idiotic narcissism.

Negative thoughts can be a roadblock to growth. And positive thoughts do bring positive influences into your life, but material wealth is hollow, and it never makes you happy if you judge yourself based on it. Unless you print and control the money supply, someone else is richer than you are, and they will systematically eat your wealth via inflation.

In the last 20 years people in the UK became twice as rich but are no happier. Why?

• Destructive marketing selling to the ignorant by exploiting their emotions and irrational behaviors
• short term opportunism, greed, and a financial system that requires exponential growth to prevent itself from going bankrupt - while requiring most people to live under unnecessary debt & financial stress
• social norms that put the economy first - believing in no limits, pushing us until we melt down, and valuing possessions more than social relationships, happiness and life…which leads to your possessions possessing you.

Many of the pyramid scheme marketers will teach that you simply need to visualize yourself owning something and you will get whatever you wish for. They do so because if you have enough intellectual sloth and/or greed to believe that, they know they can keep selling you more worthless crap at higher price points. I only find it fitting that the people who created The Secret, selling the garbage story of limitless wealth, are stuck in legal turmoil. Hey, they must have wanted to waste 5% or 10% or 20% of their earnings on legal fees. They simply closed their eyes, thought of spending lots of money on lawyers, and the lawsuits magically manifested. :)

The Secret is drivel, The Secret is slimy, and The Secret is a scam. If The Secret teaches you anything, it should be that if you work with greedy people willing to lie to make a dollar, they will eventually show you that they are sleazy and morally deplorable on other fronts as well. Just give them time to manifest that experience for you.

Almost everyone I have known who has become successful online has worked 12+ hour days, learned for years, took big risks, and had a few lucky breaks. By networking, learning your market, investing, and being around for a while, you put yourself in position to have a big lucky break…that lucky opportunity doesn’t manifest itself when you close your eyes and think of sports cars. It is hard to daydream your way to happiness and success.

Planet Earth - like the Cosmos - is beautiful, rich, deep, and diverse. But our little planet is not an infinite resource and is not infinite garbage can.

Google has been changing the code used to display their search results a number of times over the past couple days. We recently updated SEO for Firefox and Rank Checker. Both should work as of now, and if any more SERP changes happen we will try to update the extensions as soon as possible.

If you need to update these tools you can do so within the Firefox browser by clicking on Tools in the top Firefox menu, then from the Tools menu click on Add-ons. This will pop up the Add-ons / extensions window. At the bottom of this window there is a Find Updates button you can click. That will bring in the new updates and then when you re-start the browser the extensions should be fully functional again.

Seth Godin has an article today called ads are the new tip jar, where he advocates clicking on webmaster welfare Google adsense or other contextual ads to help bloggers get paid for their work. He of course completely ignores that advertisers will be paying for clicks from people who had absolutely no intention of using […]

ShareThis

It’s not always that easy to manage a clients portfolio of sites. Especially if there are many people chopping and changing the collection of sites at the same time. I’m wondering just how much “Google Juice” is lost through temporary redirects or simply not directing old site pages to the new site ?
Keep a watchful […]

I love writing, especially when compared to speaking. If I make a spelling error or need to pause and think…no problem, but with video I notice my awkward pauses and voice inflections and cringe, and then I worry about sounding like the Fox weatherman with tourette syndrome

I recently came across Chris Martenson’s Crash Course and appreciated the clarity of the message and presentation, which got me to thinking I should try to get better with video stuff.

I saw Brian Clark mention Web Video University. Andy Jenkins is quite good with video stuff too. Have you done much audio and video recording? What are some of your favorite tips, and what courses/books/products/etc. would you recommend?

Most the attempts at political SEO I have seen this year have been grassroots GoogleBombing or half-thought out campaigns asking fans to comment online (and the occasional robotic sounding request for viral content creation).

Obama was estimated to have spent over $2 million on Google ads, and Google political ad man Peter Greenberger claims that limited and inconsistent search ad spend hurt Hillary Clinton, going so far as saying

The McCain campaign was the savviest among the Republican presidential primary campaigns. We think it’s not a coincidence that the two savviest primary campaigns with Google are the winning ones.

How well rounded was their search engine marketing? How savvy were they with Google? Were they doing organic search optimization as well? Does anyone know a SEO working for one of their teams? Are any SEOs working for other political candidates like the Senators or members of the House of Representatives?

Seth Godin recently published a post about the dead zone between being real and being polished: “It’s the banal stuff in the middle that people don’t read. And yet, 95% of what I see is precisely in the dead spot of the middle zone. “

I firmly try to stay in the “real” category (largely because I can’t tolerate the polished up fake stuff), though someone sent me an anonymous email today telling me I need to polish it up

You know a lot, but

• it needs to be made far simpler for laymen
• cut back on the jargon
• skip the rare profanity. It’s is a real turn off for traditional people
• you could take a more professional picture

If I tried to take their advice I would end up with a watered down brand in the dead zone. Years ago one of my mentors gave me this advice

I think the best brands, the best sites have a large portion of their founders personality in them. Never be afraid to be yourself, after all there are 1/2 billion people on the www, not all of them have to agree with you. Concentrate on the ones that share your views, concentrate on making their experience the very best it can be, the rest forget them.

Or to put it another way, the best sites say - this is what we do, this is how we do it, if you don’t like it go somewhere else.

A truly effective online marketing strategy can only be realised by having clear focus and direction. Build into the mix internal politics that many companies have with budgets and decision making and direction can soon be lost, leaving some in a marketing conundrum. The search marketing consultant may need to anticipate time delays […]