February 29, 2008 on 5:08 pm
Filed Under:SEO, Web
Raindrops on kittens and plucking some chickens… or something like that.
The time is long overdue that I actually shoot some props out to those that have, quite honestly, made me better at what I do. Search Engine Optimisation, not the singing of the songs part.
In no particular order, simply by how I found them:
Online Marketing Blog - Lee Odden’s a bit of a stud, and throws around a bit of weight in the SEO World. Weight that he got from clout and such, not cheeseburgers.
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO - Think the name pretty much speaks for itself. I like it because occasionally he lets out Google secrets and paints his face like a cat.
SEOmoz Blog | Search Engine Marketing News & Tips - Rand Fishkin is somebody that I think I could have a serious drink with and talk all night about bidness and fun and how to mix the two.
He has help on the blog, of course, by too many talented folks for me to list. Heck, I’ve even contributed on the YouMoz part.
Graywolf’s SEO Blog - A quality blog from another respected name in the industry.
SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog - Michael Martinez gives me the in-depth and techie information with great insights.
Ramblings about SEO - I have to confess that I originally kept coming back to their site, and their blog, because their name is so damn cool. It’s like that great grunge band, but different. Eric Enge is a quality dude, and I’m always excited to see him either writing or posting elsewhere.
Internet Marketing News | Marketing Pilgrim - Ah, Marketing Pilgrim. So much to offer, so little time. Though I may usually scan through most of the articles and tend to focus on anything by my buddy, Andy Beal, I dig all their writers and will frequently click on something that interests me in my Google Alerts only to find out it’s from Marketing Pilgrim.
Plus, they gave me $500 in a contest and gave my kids a better Christmas. That’s the kind of thing that’ll make me love somebody for Life.
SEO Consulting that doesn’t suck - Stuntdubl - “Gettin’ hit by traffic…not cars.” - Affiliated with Marketing Ninjas, I do believe, and quite ninjatastic. To be blatantly honest though, doesn’t update enough. UPDATE MORE.
SEO by the SEA - Bill Slawski is a name that I kept seeing on various forums before I realised that it’s the same guy that writes here.
He gives more information than I can possibly comprehend on the techier side of Search Engines and their algorithms, crawling, and ranking systems.
Livin’ the dream — Tropical SEO - This guy is awesome because he call ‘em like he sees ‘em. Couldn’t have it any other way. Except the way where he UPDATES MORE.
Brian Chappell - Search / Social Marketer and Link Specialist - Has plenty of links to great tools and sites and such.
Web Analytics Blog | Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik - I LOVE this guy. Avinash not only has a highly unique and entertaining insight into everything from basic web design to business advice, but also works at Google and sometimes tells secrets about it.
Okay, he actually doesn’t tell any secrets, but it’s still really cool that he works at Google.
Vox Fortis Communications - One of my absolute favourites as far as an all-around business-minded, SEO-centric, witty and real writer. Susan is awesome, and I only wish that this blog got more readers simply so that I could share her with more folks.
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog - This one’s kind of a gimme, but there’s useful stuff on there every couple of weeks and worth keeping an eye on.
———————-
Thanks to all those above. You’re not all of everybody I’d credit for my knowledge, because that’s mostly me, but you’ve had a part in it, so thanks for that.
That’s it for now. I’ve got a whole ‘nother folder in my bookmarks though, that I’ll be sending the linky goodness out to sometime in the near future, so keep an eye out.
Blogging for Search Engine Optimisation
February 26, 2008 on 10:07 am
Filed Under:SEO
Mike Grehan has written yet another article over at ClickZ that I feel I must follow up on, appropriately titled, “Blogging for Search Engine Optimization“. Not necessarily the most unique title for my post, but it fit, and I swapped the “z” for “s” accordingly.
Back in the earlier days of SEO I learned some of my first real and lasting lessons simply by following my blog statistics. I’d been writing it for a very short time, on it’s free-hosted site, before I got a link from an insanely popular other blog. A guy who eventually became a very good friend of mine actually wrote one of those cultural icons, one of those emails that you get forwarded from a friend that just says “FUNNY!” which, in this case, is a profound understatement as this is the kind of thing that makes you laugh so hard you blow coffee out your nose.
I’d emailed him, he’d linked me, and I watched my statistics explode. Not just from visitors from his site, but now people landing on my site for terms that weren’t even necessarily on my site. Odd things, random things, phrases that had nothing to do with my site, yet Google seemed to like me for anyway. I’ll refrain from the exact wordings here, but most were not terribly appropriate to be searching on.
What it taught me though, was that the more I updated, the more the Googlebot came back, and the more I used certain terms on the site, the more likely I was to get hits from Google for them… sometimes within hours. My blog wasn’t written for Search Engine Optimisation, but I was watching it in action anyway.
As you do, I started experimenting, and then starting implementing things I’d learned on my company’s website. My fear of getting Dooced kept me from telling my superiors where I’d learned these tricks and tactics, but they were effective enough to keep anyone from asking.
By the time that I’d started my own company starting a blog was a no-brainer, but being a a professional SEO expert by this point meant that I would actually have to tone down my writing back to a human level. This is the hurdle that I imagine Mike Grehan is speaking to most, as it is typical in this fast-paced world for people to see something that brings positive results quickly and leap all over it.
The key, as it always seems to be, is to write for your users first, Search Engine’s second. Unless you want lots of hits for nerf dart guns or peanut butter parties, that is. Freaks.
Research the Client, Research their Market, Research their Keywords
February 18, 2008 on 2:59 pm
Filed Under:SEO, Web
Being an SEO is great because on any given day I can be involved in several different, and pretty cool, industries. When I’ve got my research hat on and I’m working on any number of clients’ sites during the day, I may be hiring a camper van bound for Broome or I may be sizing myself for a 13th Century metal breastplate that can withstand a direct hit from a knight’s lance.
It definitely keeps things interesting, especially when conducting research.
I’ll be the first to admit that the idea of research of almost any kind doesn’t exactly excite me. My eyelids instantly and involuntarily start to droop the minute my thoughts go anywhere near data collection and the like.
And yet, it’s a fairly big part of what I do. And I’m good at it. And, once I get going on it, I secretly really enjoy it. I suppose research really isn’t that boring then is it? Someday I’ll train that part of my brain on that as well.
The opportunity to work with a client that is already reasonably familiar with Search Engine Optimisation and Search Marketing is nice, because I don’t have to explain as much and also because I can get even more of a feel for my competition and how they’ve been handled before.
This is how I found that one of the major discrepancies I’ve found between myself and many other SEOs out there is the sheer amount of research I do. Some just take client-suggested keywords, plant them strategically on their site, and gather up some relatively useless links, giving the client only what they appear to have asked for… and nothing more.
Our focus is on more than just getting you optimised and getting you out the door with your keywords and a smile. We’re about getting your site to be all that it can be (just like those ads for the U.S. Army) and part of that is making sure that we’re not accepting your money for an incomplete job. Doesn’t matter who you are or what you are on the web, you’re looking for success.
Who are you to the Web World?
Our research is what sets us apart from our competition. We make sure we know you, the client, what you’re about, what you’re trying to sell and how. We get a solid idea of the ins-and-outs of your business before we go anywhere. Then, of our own accord, we research YOU. Nothing involving fingerprints or e-stalking, of course, but we see where your site is mentioned and in what context.
Where do you stand in it?
Next, we research the marketplace in your industry. If you sell Blue Shoes, we go out and see what kind of folks also sell Blue Shoes. We want to know how they sell them, for how much, and where. If they’re doing more with what they’ve got, and they’ve got about the same as you, then we figure you’d like to know where they’re experiencing success, and therefore where you can too.
How can they find you?
Part of the research into your web presence is more than just who’s talking about you, it’s about where you are showing up for searches that lead users to your competition. Where are you in the race? Even if it’s for a search term that you don’t even want to target, we think it’s important for you to know what’s out there and where certain possibilities lie.
Your keywords are basically the last step in our research. Once we know who you are, who your clients are, we can start to figure out how we’re going to help them find you. We can compile data on 75 keywords, but if we already know that 90% of them are going to be searching on the American spelling of a certain word, then we can effectively eliminate the need to further research certain other terms.
Research, Research, Research
Though I may initially be bored with the idea, nothing excites me more than delving headfirst into a whole pool’s worth of new information through research. I love finding out new things about places that I have never been and things that I have never experienced before. I love having a diverse array of clients that offer a chance to break away from some of the tedium.
I even love the tedium, though I rarely admit it.
Good SEO Companies Diversify.
January 15, 2008 on 9:57 am
Filed Under:SEO, Web
Mike Grehan recently wrote a column titled, “The Diminishing Value of the SEO Shop” which, as doomsday-ish as it may sound, is actually pretty accurate in it’s foretelling of where the industry will probably head.
When I started doing SEO, back in they day, it wasn’t even called that. In fact, I don’t recall it even having a name other than “our static pages”, meaning link-heavy directory-style pages whose content didn’t tend to change.
While our ideas, tactics, and their implementation were ever-changing, the bulk of the SEO that we did was a fire-and-forget missile (lock onto the target, launch and then wait for the “BOOM”). Monitoring and analysis was ongoing, but the SEO efforts were really only changed in minor ways every 6 months or so.
Finding myself in an industry where I was referring to myself as an “SEO” more and more, I also found that I was doing more and more to enhance what I was offering in terms of SEO. At times, it went beyond optimising for search engines and into the usability and functionality aspects of a site, though the line item on the invoices was still “Search Engine Optimisation”.
Our company now finds itself unique among our competitors as we’ve broken out that secondary step of optimising a website into something that we call, for now, Web Analytics, with a tagline that should be something along the lines of, “Optimising for Search Engines is only the first part, you’ve got to have a web site that people like too.”
Jex Analytics has a focus on the bigger picture in a time when there just doesn’t seem to be a name for it yet other than Web Consultants, and even that can lend itself to ambiguity.
The point is, regardless of what you call it, it all comes down to making a site as successful as possible (making the most money really). Grehan may sound as if he’s bagging on the purely SEO firms, but he’s not. What he’s actually saying is that, much like our SEO tactics of, “Experiment, Analyse, Adjust” we, as businesses, need to do the same.
When it’s time to optimise a site web consultants, SEO experts, web analytics experts or whatever you wish to call them, need to think more about the bigger picture and less about the nuts and bolts of how to get a site’s rankings to improve.
Rankings, Traffic, and PageRank are all important things (well, the latter may depend on who you talk to) but the fundamental tenet that anyone interested in success should cling to is simple:
Have a Good Website.
The unspoken thought following this is, of course, ‘and then hire us to make it better‘.
Dear Google Claus…
January 3, 2008 on 9:16 am
Filed Under:SEO
I honestly and sincerely thought that I had been an extra good boy this year. I played by all the rules, was patient and kind, and was rewarded accordingly.
That is, until Christmas Day.
As you well know there’s a certain key phrase that’s been quite good to us over this past year, bringing in folks looking for a good quality service, Search Engine Optimisation in Perth, Western Australia.
For some reason, instead of a shiny new bike or even the gift of continuing Goodwill and Good Fortune, I got a great big ol’ lump of coal. Our ranking for two of our most important phrases dropped from Page Numbering ONE way down to Page of the Number THREE.
That’s not particularly in keeping with the Christmas Spirit now is it?
What is it that I can do? Should I blog more? Should I get more inbound links? Give more to charity?
I suppose I’ll just do my best, and continue plugging along and following the rules and just hope that you were trying to teach me some sort of lesson about not taking something so good for granted.
Lesson Learned. And it’s a Brand New Year! Let’s start it off with a bang, eh?
Please?
Sincerely Yours,
Jex Analytics
John Wayne Says it Best.
November 13, 2007 on 10:12 am
Filed Under:Web
One of my favourite Old West SEOs, Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim is currently teasing me with a contest of some variation, and this is my effort at entering…
For starters, I open up about 10 SEO blogs every day, religiously, and sometimes even extend that into another 12-15.
- Online Marketing Blog
- Matt Cutts
- SEOmoz
- Graywolf
- SEO Theory
- Stone Temple
- Marketing Pilgrim
- Stunt Dubl
- SEO by the SEA
- Tropical SEO
These folks seem to get it right most days and always seem to offer some sort of insight into a realm that I either A) hadn’t quite thought of yet or B) HAD thought of but hadn’t documented my thoughts about.
This is a fantastic opportunity for networking as I can now comment on the uniqueness and brilliance of the things I previously hadn’t thought of or at my own brilliance for agreeing with the things I had thought about (but hadn’t written about yet).
Win-win, I do believe. Either way I get to sound brilliant. My comments, as any of the folks above can attest to, aren’t always brilliant, I accept this, but when brilliance is less than graspable, reach for funny.
So, Why do I read Marketing Pilgrim Every Day?
Simple, it’s a quick and easy way to either expand my mind in a new direction or expand it in an established direction, all while dropping my name in the mix and making some new friends.
That, and the immortal words of The Duke:
Good Bloggers Know.
November 12, 2007 on 12:14 pm
Filed Under:SEO
Bill Hartzer wrote a great column titled, “Corporate America Can Learn a Lot from Bloggers” in a recently received email newsletter from SearchDay (from Search Engine Watch) and I thought I’d use his insights and advice to further my own stance on blogging.
From an SEO standpoint, blogging is great, but not the be-all/end-all that many think it is. I recommend it for my clients as a way to boost their SEO absolutely, but that isn’t the sole reason I do it.
As you can probably tell from this blog, I’m a firm proponent in using a blog as a way to reach more users in a much more informal manner than the rest of my site. Search Engine Optimisation will get a site to #1 in Google if done correctly, but without a few different ways to engage that user, they’ll never convert to customers.
One quick look at my user traffic and I can tell you which folks came through because of some markety-type text on one site and some informally-written braindump ranting on another.
The point is, and Bill’s point as well, is that blogging is about networking, rubbing e-elbows with each other, and getting our name out there. Without networking, most small businesses would never make it, and of course… there wouldn’t be much of an Internet then would there?
An example of a Jex Analytics blog for SEO purposes.
The Google Dance
October 26, 2007 on 4:13 pm
Filed Under:SEO
It’s no secret that everyone in the Search Engine Optimisation line of work would love to get their hands on perhaps the industry’s Biggest Secret, the Google Algorithm.
The Google Algorithm is, in simple terms, how they decide who to put at the top of YOUR search and why.
Clients are constantly asking me why certain sites are above them for certain searches or better yet, why their site’s position in the results pages shifts somewhat randomly and sometimes drastically.
While I am not privy to this vaunted algorithm, 99% of the time there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Our own site’s ranking has fluctuated wildly lately and I have traced this back to the exact day after our site redesign was launched:
As you can see from the graph above, we had secured the #1 position in Google for quite a considerable time (this graph covers about 3 months) and then dropped out of the Top 100 altogether.
This wasn’t a time to hit the Panic Button though, for experience has taught us that this is only a part of the Google Dance, where a site can relaunch and then see wide fluctuations in rankings over the course of the next few weeks, or even months.
Despite the fact that only the aesthetics have changed while the content (and even most of the code) remained the same, Google was still unsure of our site enough that they dropped us for a brief bit. They just needed some time to ensure that we remained an authority on Web Analytics, Web Consulting and Search Engine Optimisation before they’d let us regain our spot at the top.
All part of the Google Dance.
I’m happy to say that we have since stabilised at the #1 position again and will definitely hold it for the foreseeable future.
Personal Productivity.
August 29, 2007 on 10:20 am
Filed Under:Articles
As I sit and look at the SEO forums I belong to as well as some of the groups that I’m in, I notice that a fair amount of the posts are created during “working hours” and are not necessarily of a work-related nature. I hear about Facebook becoming an issue in offices to the point that access has to be restricted.
Productivity. That’s always what we’re on about in today’s work environment. How to raise it, how to keep it optimal, how to keep us all in the black. When I think back to my office days, whether they were spent sitting in an actual office or in a cube, I used to pride myself on my productivity when I knew that others were sluffing off.
I still wasn’t this pinnacle of purity though, I would check my personal emails and I kept track of the visitor traffic on my blog(s), I would even occasionally visit sites that didn’t have anything to do with my work.
It seems to be a relatively accepted part of our lives these days, that our workers will take a certain amount of time to spend on personal endeavours, and that we’ll let them in order to keep their sanity. I was never told this though, quite the contrary, and I felt constantly guilty about it.
The truth is, is that even if I’m spending all my time on client projects and work-related exploits, the bottom line is really about whether or not I’m making the company any money. It isn’t really about my sanity, or my high level of loyalty or expertise, and it isn’t about whether or not I’m willing work hard. My worth to the company really boiled down to what I was worth in the “profit” column.
With one notable exception, my entire career has been this way, and now that I’m working from home, on my company, I am beginning to fully realise the benefit of some personal time. Sure, when its your small business, the lines between work hours and personal hours are frequently blurred enough to the point that your taking the laptop to bed at night a bit too often (and on a Saturday… for shame).
But, the benefits are immeasurable. I get to pick my kids up from school and not sweat what time it is or how long we have when they ask me if we can play at the park on the walk back home. I get to spend almost an entire day looking after the baby and looking after my wife when she’s had a particularly involved trip to the dentist. These are things that I would have to “take a day off” for normally. Time spent that I wouldn’t be paid for.
I got so sick of the message being sent that I was really only valuable to “the company” if my butt was in a chair in that office. It was, and still is, so illogical to me to think that I am of any more value at a “company” desk where I am not necessarily working, than if I am wherever I choose to be. Be that at home, at my home desk, or in my bed or at the park.
I can truthfully say that even though I’m not at my desk, working, working, working, for the duration of set Working Hours, I have never been more productive in my life.
There’s not a day that goes by that I am not truly grateful for the chance to be “productive” on my own terms. For I am a good worker and I have a high level of expertise and I am productive.
But my life is much better now.
Practicing what I preach
August 20, 2007 on 12:39 pm
Filed Under:SEO, Web
I’m on several popular SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) forums, and on several my signature is something along the lines of, “Optimising for Search Engine’s is only the first part, you’ve got to have a site People like too.”
Like most people I know, I am famous for giving fantastic advice while following very little of it myself.
It’s the same pitfall just about any web design firm runs into, in that they are so busy making everyone else’s sites look great, they forget about theirs. I’m well into optimising this site for Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs) but have fallen a bit short on making it a quality place for those referrals to go.
Well, I’m waving the white flag on this design, and am enlisting the aid of the hardcore professional designers. Contact me if you’re interested and we’ll talk turkey.
I’m thinking I should continue focusing my energies on what I am best at, optimising a site. Though that can actually include design, or at least design advice, it is also writing, writing, writing.
Oh, and off-site optimisation is important too, as I have just noticed that I have helped propel a pseudo-partner/competitor to #1 in Google for a highly sought-after phrase.
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