Today, search engines are getting smarter and distinguish different kinds of links and their relative value. So the low hanging fruit like link exchange or second-tier directories will not help you much in terms of ranking. You need high-quality links from relevant pages. And here, you need your writing skills again. The best link building methods are all about writing.
via SEO Is a Writer’s Profession Now | Search Engine Journal.
Absolutely spot on.
No hidden secret ‘method’ is going to bring sterling results in SEO and online marketing these days except sitting your behind in the chair and writing and communicating with your audience.
Sure, there are ways of ‘leveraging’ your time and efforts, and a good keyword focus is always a good idea. But keeping a blog, writing articles, answering questions, being active in your market—all these are the ‘secrets’ of online marketing success.
This beauty of a post by Ian Lurie is so true, it hurts:
Internet marketing in under 300 words.
Show up. Communicate. Connect.
No tricks. It’s true. And most people simply don’t do this.
What exactly you put into your title ultimately depends on what you decide is best — not what I personally think is best, not what John Gruber personally thinks is best. No one will know your site and your visitors better than you (assuming you’re a diligent publisher). Advice can be good, but advice from afar can also lack specific insight.
via Writing HTML Title Tags For Humans, Google & Bing.
Most websites could improve their search engine rankings and traffic a fair bit just by improving their title tags across the site. Not only will a well-written title tag increase the chances of ranking well for a given keyword, but search engine users will be more likely to click through to your site too.
I haven’t seen a more thorough examination of what makes a good title tag than this article over at searchengineland.com. Well worth a read.
Cracking list of SEO tactics to avoid from SEOMoz here.
We get asked about this sort of thing all the time – whether it’s ok to do this or that, or frowned upon to do something or other. While this list of shame is pretty much common sense, you’d be very surprised at how many times we see people doing these things again, and again, and again…
Gareth and I are really looking forward to talking at the Hull Digital Developer Group tonight:
http://www.meetup.com/Hull-Digital-Hull-Open-Coffee/calendar/15797272/
Rather than the usual couple of speakers talking for 40 minutes or so each, this one’s a little more novel. There’s an open invitation to anyone to come and talk for 10 minutes each (maximum) about what’s exciting them about the coming year and what they’re working on right now that’s pushing the envelope (for them at least).
While we’re not developers, we’ve so dramatically changed our approach to online marketing these last few months that we eagerly snapped up the invitation to talk about where we’re going, why we’ve changed things around so much, and how our methods can be carried out by anyone (including all you developers rolling out new apps that need promoting!).
Sure we can cram all that into 10 minutes…
If you’re hopping along, see you there! Fudge Cafe, Princes Avenue, Hull, 6:30pm, 26th January 2011.
Anchor-text rich links are attention markers indicating to search engine spiders what website is best for a user’s search. As a website is linked to more and more, it gains ranking in the SERPs. These links are essentially votes. The incorporation of Social Media into ranking means that anchor-text links are just one way to vote. Now people are able to vote with Facebook likes, tweets, retweets, etc.
via Social Networking and SEO: Why Engaging Boosts Rankings | Search Engine Journal.
Market leadership and engagement with potential customers is absolutely becoming vital to SEO success. It’s good marketing practice anyway (don’t ever rely simply on traditional SEO to drive business) but it’s turning out to be a major factor in ranking too.
We’ve significantly altered and adapted our processes here at Woof to take account of this.
We hadn’t heard of Google Refine until A.J. Kohn‘s recent post, but I’m very glad we did.
Google Refine is a new downloadable app that makes managing messy data really easy.
Here’s why it’s useful: let’s say you have a long list of potential keywords. You know which of the higher traffic keywords you want to target, but also want to easily spot natural ‘long tail’ versions of these keywords, and quickly see groupings that would lend themselves to being promoted together at the same time.
Google Refine makes it so easy. Check out the post over at Blind Five Year Old for details.
Hi folks. We’d like to warmly wish all our friends, clients and colleagues a very happy and healthy new year! It’s fair to say we’re very much looking forward to the coming year.
It’s been a rollercoaster time for Woof so far. It was just 18 months ago that Gareth and I first dabbled with running our own private online marketing projects and since then things have gone from strength to strength. Heck, I look back now and shake my head in disbelief at how much we’ve learnt and how far we’ve come.
The end of 2010 also marked a major milestone for us in that Woof officially became a partnership. While myself and Gareth have been working together on Woof projects for a good long while, it’s only very recently he made the brave move to leave his rather cushy job as MD of a new media agency and go full time Woof. No more 70-80 hour weeks for Mr Hanson anymore!
Working with my good friend Gareth is nothing new for me, of course, but ‘officially’ working closely together is very very exciting indeed. So excuse me while I give us both a congratulatory slap on the back and wish us both well for the future. We can’t wait to get started.
See you in 2011!
We should all check our sites for errors and be focused on SEO and Social Media all year long but not everyone has the time or knowledge to do everything they should. If you are one of the offenders, now is the time to make it up to your neglected website. Go through the checklist below and make sure you have everything in place to start 2011 off right.
We’re suckers for checklists…
2011 SEO and Social Media Checklist.
