Thanks to the value of the inbound link, the internet has become a massive information resource. Industry figures are actually competing to share their opinion, to offer up their expertise for free as they claw their way to higher rankings.
Because of this, valuable knowledge has become free – a fantastic situation for a new SEO professional or a marketer keen to grasp the basics.
Of course, those new to the sector have to be careful – there are hundreds of thousands of blogs and sites filled with nothing more than regurgitated information from other pages which is sometimes years out of date.
However, for the discerning reader - or someone using a tool such as Digg or Sphinn - the web is awash with fresh advice and information from experienced and dedicated professionals.
If you look to the right of our blog, you can see the top ten most popular articles. Although they cover a wide range of subjects and skill sets, there is a common theme. They are pieces of relevant information which has not yet dated, which are still relevant. Ten ways to achieve X, How to do Y, The Real Secret to Z.
A major part of the sector’s voracious blogging community is enthusiastically sharing interesting news and sector gossip with other professionals. They are debating and discussing the latest events and building on relationships developed at conferences and online. However, it is vital to remember that a massive amount of the online audience is simply silently searching for information and advice.
Most people who work in search engine optimisation are also avid internet users. We are the early adopters, the relentless bloggers and the people who conduct 90 per cent of our shopping online. We are – or am I about to be buried under a tirade of denial? – geeks.
So when we work to optimise a website’s content, we know what it is consumers want because we are those consumers. I have listed just a few of the qualities I enjoy seeing in a website’s content, what others do you think matter?
Value
When marketers slip adverts in around TV programmes or into daily newspapers, the consumer is rewarded by the valuable content they have sought out and the adverts are something on the side. This means consumers have very little time for online marketing messages which deliver nothing else. People need a hook to snag their interest – offer a discount, a piece of industry news or an amusing article. Just do not expect them to patiently swallow your marketing messages with no sweetener.
Passion
It is not necessary for all content to feel passionate but when someone writes a blog, it is important to feel they care about the subject. There should be a person behind the text with whom the reader can feel engaged, even if they disagree with the opinion or assertion being put forward.
Relevancy
It can be fun to visit a firm’s blog and see an odd quirky article like their wine of the month. Such posts can show the person behind the product and help develop consumer loyalty and industry recognition. However, the majority of news or opinion should be related to the website’s purpose. With a world of web content available on almost every aspect of every subject, if a blog offers nothing but quirky articles it can be a real turn-off for the reader. A corporate publication which only offers information on the owner’s ‘humorous’ love life and the company team-building trip to Devon starts to smack of desperation and is unlikely to receive many repeat visits.
Almost 70 per cent of consumers who use the web to shop spend at least 30 per cent of their online time researching products, new research has revealed.
The study, conducted by Krillion and the e-tailing group highlighted that regular online shoppers are searching the internet for useful assessments such as consumer reviews in order to make informed choices.
Here is an important aspect of changing consumer behaviour. It is no longer possible for a marketer to claim “toothpaste X is the greatest” as the online world is filled with people (Continue Reading…)
As I’ve said many times, frequent, timely posts that prompt conversation can propel your site into the limelight. At the root of it all is posting. You have to do it, and (as with all things in life) if you dedicate both time and an effective system toward that process, you’ll be a success.
Finding the time to blog can be a challenge, and even many of the high-visibility bloggers find it tough to squeeze in several posts a day. Many say that if you religiously schedule an hour or two daily toward research and posting, you’ll be able to achieve the momentum required. Many find that early mornings or late nights provide for quality blogging time. Whatever your schedule permits, a focused set of minutes, or hours, each day dedicated toward monitoring, reflection, and writing will serve you well.
(Continue Reading…)
Having had a website hacked in the last few weeks and knowing a few other people who had sites hacked this issue has been playing on my mind.
Countless blogs and personal sites are being edited my malicious hackers every day to include hidden links to unscrupulous websites. The aim of adding these hidden links is that the sites they link to will end up ranking highly on the search engines and sometimes it works very well.
The consequences are that often the hacked site gets a penalty or malware warning on Google and sometimes the owner doesn’t ever figure it out.
My worry is that the people doing the hacking are often classed as SEO’s because they are engaged in the practice of moving their websites up the search engines rankings. To me this tactic is nothing to do with SEO in the form that most people practice the strategy but as hacking becomes more widespread the issue is only going to get worse.
Building links is hard work but there are a few tips you can use to make it a bit easier.
My favourite is to try and become a personality in your niche and encourage people to link to your site when they mention your name. For example if I was to speak at a conference people would probably link to me and say “Patrick Altoft” said xyz. Most e-commerce sites don’t have this advantage and they lose out because of it. (Continue Reading…)
Feed subscribers
Google now owns the single most accurate metric for measuring the size of blogs. Feedburner feed subscribers count has become a hard currency in valuing blogs and determining how reputable they are. I’ve been guilty in the past of subscribing to a blog on the basis that if thousands of other people do the content must be worth it.
Use the graph in your Feedburner dashboard as well as tools such as this one to examine your stats more deeply. Is there an upward trend? Are you happy with the rate you are attracting new readers?
Page views per visitor
User engagement and the number of pages viewed per visitor are extremely important statistics. If all your readers are leaving within 30 seconds and only viewing 1 or 2 pages per visit it shows that your content could do with expanding. Some blogs naturally have longer visitor sessions than others s try to take a look at the stats of some other blogs in your niche to see how yours compares.
Unique visitors per day
My favourite statistic is the number of unique visitors per day a site is getting, usually this is fairly static for normal sites but for blogs it can vary from 500 one day to 50,000 the next. Look at the stats for days without big peaks from social media and try to spot any underlying trends to the data. Ideally you should see growth every month, excluding large social media spikes.
Referrals from Google per day
Looking at the number of people finding your site through Google each day is the best way to track your SEO efforts. Check to see how the trend changes over time and drill down to specific keywords whenever you see a spike or drop in traffic. Any significant decline is probably due to Google losing trust in your site and is a sure sign that you should make sure you are adhering to the webmaster guidelines and building high quality trusted links.
Backlinks according to Yahoo
All sites should see a steady increase in the number of people linking to them as they age and their reach grows. Watch how the number of links shoots up whenever you carry out some aggressive marketing and check that your link profile contains as many high quality editorially granted links as possible.
Technorati authority and ranking
Technorati is the most accurate method of tracking which blogs have been writing about you in the last 6 months. Make sure your ranking is always getting better and that your recent reactions page is full of real blogs making real comments about you.
Average number of comments per blog post
Some low quality blogs get lots of comments whereas others of exceptional quality get very few so this is somewhat of a difficult area. However, in general, if you are getting more comments on your recent posts compared to a few months ago that is a good thing. Plot a graph of the number of comments your posts have got and see what it looks like, be careful of the data as some old posts with good search engine rankings might have a lot of comments to skew the data.
This week every single gadget blogger is writing about CES 2008 and 90% of them are using the words CES 2008 at the start of the page title. That’s fine because your readers want to see it and the term is a “hot” search term so it will help you in things like Google News.
The problem is that all the thousands of blog posts will be left high and dry next month when people stop searching for CES 2008. The posts will have become stale because the event they were optimised for has finished. What these blogs should be doing is editing every post after the event to focus on the products they were talking about, rather than the event.
Next time you publish a news story on your website make sure is optimised for the first 48 hours searches initially but don’t be afraid to go back and change it in the future.
A number of blog aggregators exist including the popular Techmeme but none have the ability to get your content showcased on multiple pages of the New York Times website like BlogRunner does.
Just like all the most exclusive clubs bloggers can’t apply to join BlogRunner, the FAQ’s state that 12,000 blogs are already included and that New York Times editors can add their own picks to this list.
Sources are selected by a process that takes into account their influence on the web. This process is also automated: new sources, whether blogs or media sources, are added as they appear on the web and are linked to or cited by other publishers..
In general, Blogrunner strives to include all sources that are frequently cited on the web.
Webmasters wanting to be included should try to offer original articles that are cited by high profile blogs that are already a source for BlogRunner content, hopefully an editor will decide your story is interesting enough for inclusion on the New York Times.
Some of my content was showcased yesterday and attracted over 300 unique visitors. Not a huge amount but more than most blogs will send.
Some of you may have noticed this blog was unavailable for a large part of yesterday, this is because we have moved the SEOptimise domain over to a new server. During this change we have also integrated the blog web design so that this is now consistent with the main site and it’s also now converted over to use WordPress from Blogger.
While converting the website from Blogger to Wordpress sounded quite difficult at first, it was actually a reasonably simple process thanks to some great blog posts from people who have already experienced similar problems.
Here’s a quick guide to getting switched over from Blogger to WordPress:
1) Create your theme
Once installing WordPress I needed to create a theme using the SEOptimise web design. While there’s still a few style issues which need fixing, by following the instructions from Andrew Strojny I had a design which was basically what I was looking for.
2 ) Convert URL’s to Blogger format
The last thing I wanted was a large duplicate content issue, Justinsomnia’s plugin made sure this won’t be a problem with a simple fix to keep all URL permalinks in the old Blogger format.
3) Update FeedBurner RSS Feed
Simply switching FeedBurner over to use the new Wordpress RSS feed.
Subdomain vs Subdirectories?
There was also the subdomain vs sub directory debate to consider, would it be worthwhile transferring the blog over to www.seoptimise.com/blog? Following Matt Cutts’ comments I’m less concerned about Google viewing the blog as a completely different website now, plus using a consistent web design and navigation system should hopefully highlight this as part of the main website. I’m confident 301 redirects would maintain the current search rankings for terms such as SEO blog but it doesn’t seem worth unnecessarily risking this. The other issue to consider was the loss of Technorati ranking, not a major ranking factor but when you see many SEO blog lists ordered by Technorati scores it’s always nice to be included and get a link back! 
