SEO Services

“Search engine optimizers’ Backhat social media optimization tricks can hurt you without you doing it yourself? Yes, it’s true, and here’s why.”

Today’s search engine optimization or SEO is rapidly changing to meet the New World Wide Web order of things. SMM (social media marketing) SMO (social media optimizing) SSM (social search marketing) and ‘personalized search’ are not only the catch-all SEO phrases or marketing fads of the moment: Search and social marketing now go hand in hand. Both social media and search optimization can work beautifully in tandem when used properly as a combined marketing strategy. Social media is here to stay, but Web 2.0 is old. Personalized Active Semantic Grid 3.0 is going to be the next Big Thing.

All in all, while technically things are different, nothing has really changed for SEO. What’s different to the Web as it was a short while ago is that Blackhats, marketers and Whitehats alike now use social media as part of their daily routine. The core principles of optimization have maintained identical faces in both worlds. Good gets good results and bad gets bad results. So most likely SEO professionals will continue to develop their talents and meet a demand through to the next phase of the Internet.

Why ramble on about what we already know? For some reason no SEO has yet broached the subject of the real issues with Blackhat optimizers. Once, link farms and mass directory submissions were just about standard practice, and when a Blackhat got started on your site, all that would be left was a disreputable, hollow husk. Even then, using these shady methods would hurt your ranking far more than they would help, and the same is true today. But what so many online business owners don’t realize is that when you have a Blackhat inside your social circle operating in stealth mode, you will unknowingly be ruining you own social search rankings just by associating with them.

“HOW in the WORLD could that possibly EVER happen?”

If you’re a quietly-observant person who is active on the internet, you may have already asked yourself this question. It may also be that you have already noticed the very thing I am about to unveil.

To make my point I can give some simple examples any social media user would have seen recently.

Blogs: Have you ever heard of Akismet? How about these spine-chilling terms: comment spam, feed scrapers, hacked blogs, hidden links, pingback spam, trackback spam, XSS injection? These are Blackhat tools and blog-abusing tricks. Every single one of these can destroy a site’s authority, ranking and traffic.

Take Delicious: Once a quality indicator for websites across the internet, now the most overcrowded, insanely dense sea of innumerable tags, more an exercise in pointlessness than anything at this point. What does that mean for you? Your bookmarks may or may not get credited, listed or scanned. Why? Because of the flood of spam, Delicious is now filtered to protect the site itself. Poisoned links can seep into your pool, fed by mass shares, bot armies and forced homepage listings that only seem interesting at first glance.

Digg: Wow this one is Easy. Digg.com has virtually ground to a halt in the last few weeks. Reports of hundreds, if not over a thousand diggers banned for unwittingly aiding technical social Blackhats. It’s a story that has played out many times, but perhaps not on so large a scale.

As the redirected sites and obviously ad-fueled ADVERTISEMENT INCORPORATED sites flooded the Digg gates, scores of unwittingly complicit users then vanished. A new community of new and old faces replaced them. Now those users are mingling in a social site permeated with fear. Yes, it could and probably will happen again.

StumbleUpon: This is by far the most dangerous target for users. Blackhats can send you direct pages, often in a friendly way that will leave you unsuspecting. Yet according to the terms of StumbleUpon, no click should be asked for or suggested. Users guilty of asking for Stumbles can be banned, no questions asked. So next time you get a Stumble request, ” blah blah … stumble and review plz” read “make me money … get banned dummy”.

Twitter: Twitter oh our cruel mistress of dread. It’s addictive once you get started, yet staring you in the face is the Blackhat core from the dark depths of the Internet. Everything from adult and hijack redirects to mass-Google blacklisting has befallen Twitter users. Again as a Twitter user you may not be doing anything you would think could harm you, but you can get tagged as a spammer by association, and this can be visible to everyone and totally out of your control on ratings sites all over the Web. Talk about a reputation management nightmare.

As you now may see, the Internet as we know it has changed, in many ways for the better, but in some ways for the worse. Facets and faces of marketing will always be part of any product or consumer driven society, therefore greed or need will always drive some to choose the darker path.The bright side for all of us is that as technology changes, new and better is always just ahead. Test it, try it, explore the possibility of the Web. Go search and be thoughtful, be vigilant while you’re being social. Consider your actions and your associates carefully, and all will be well.

Another ridiculous yet interesting searchable socialized rant-ramble by: Mich D … yeah the very same dude [ @MichDdot 4D twest U pleepz N tweepz ]

It has been a hectic few days. However, I finally decided to go with the theme you now see. It’s called Optimism and it’s by–well they already have a link at the bottom!

I’ve also got my contact form up-and-running and I’ve written a cursory About page. For sure there is a lot left to do but I am functional.

I’m still working on importing the posts from my other blog so that I can setup the redirects. Haven’t had time to look into that properly yet. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Just in case anyone is wondering why work has slowed to a crawl again, at sundown today (September 29) we started celebrating the end of Ramadhan. That means I’ll only be online when I can snatch a few moments for the next few days.

I’d really, really appreciate some feedback on which template to use. I think the pink one is better as far as the search engines is concerned, so I may go with that one anyway. It’s also easier (much) to tweak.

OK, I’m off. More later.

Or, what I actually feel like is someone who is riding two horses at once. This is the point where I change my static SEO consulting website to a WordPress blog, and as if that wasn’t scary enough, amalgamate it with my Marketmou SEO blog. I’m hoping I won’t have database trouble and I’ll be able to import all my posts from the other blog. Some of them are pretty good, so if you’re new here, stick around I have some good stuff for you.

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/nmyvvuanc9″ rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

I researched this list to motivate myself as much as anything else. No matter how long you’ve been blogging there’s always room for improvement. To improve my own blogging skills I’ve looked to outstanding bloggers for inspiration. You’ll find a list at the bottom of this post.

1. Successful bloggers are truthful: you can be confident that a little research won’t turn up gaping holes in their testimony.
2. They passionately adore their subject. This is a must. Your passion must also ignite your reader’s passion. Never try and blog about something you don’t love.
3. They are ambitious. Building a popular blog takes a lot of work and determination. Long hours spent writing and long hours spent learning the craft of blogging.
4. Their writing is conversational and easy-to-read. While most readerships are forgiving of the odd typo, copy that is riddled with spelling mistakes and missing words is just as off-putting as writing that doesn’t speak to the reader. Spend a little time perfecting your writing style. Examine the writing style of bloggers you find most interesting to read. Your byword should be ‘proofread.’
5. They make their blog look nice.There’s no excuse not to do this. Now you can get literally hundreds of nice-looking templates if you use a platform like WordPress. It’s easy and free, so pick one that will appeal to your target niche. Also, don’t forget to dig out an interesting picture or photo to accompany your blog posts. It’s well known that pictures make your posts a lot more attractive to a lot more people.
6. They blog regularly. This is quite possibly the most difficult thing of all to achieve. Blogging is a long-term commitment, and when you have eager readers and sponsors (advertisers) depending on you, you can’t just take a holiday whenever it pleases you.
7. Their posts are of more-or-less uniform quality. Research and care leave traces. There’s a huge difference to the reader between an article that has been lovingly crafted and a few paragraphs hurriedly strung together. This is another difficult habit to nail down. Sometimes you just don’t feel like blogging. I’ve found that it’s better to just leave a gap in your blogs rather than post any old junk. A good trick is to always have three or four draft posts ready to be dusted off and posted if you’re pushed for time, or just plain don’t feel like it.
8. Bloggers are, almost without exception, nice people. Even if they thrive on controversy, they’re not mean or insulting. To take this point a little further, the most popular bloggers are the nicest ones, like Darren Rowse of Problogger, or Maki of DoshDosh.
9. They love to learn. Blogging is a craft that needs to be learned. It takes a great deal of experimentation and reading to get to the point where you’re gaining readers on a daily basis and making your way into people’s RSS readers. To get you started in the right direction, consume this list by Problogger.
10. Successful bloggers network. Having a circle of others who know their subject and who are prepared to give opinions and otherwise help out is an invaluable aid to the blogging process. Their favorite haunts are sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed and others.
11. They are heavily into social media and social networking for the potential extra exposure. See list in bullet above.
12. The more popular a blog becomes, the more you’ll notice that the blogger is frequently seen in SEO circles. There are even a number of notable bloggers whose opinions on SEO are widely respected. Search engine optimization is essential for your blogging success, and the most important part of optimizing your blog is getting inbound links. You can do this by having great content that others want to link to, and by commenting on other good blogs. Don’t forget linking between your blog posts for legitimate links too. Beyond that, here are some great tips for optimizing your blog from Search Engine Land, and another from Pronet Advertising.
13. Successful bloggers give their readers information that is not just interesting–it has to be useful too. If you can help your readers out in their daily work or lives they’ll be back again and again.
14. For the most part, successful blogs deal with a niche–a specific part of a subject. There are a few examples of blogs that deal with a wide range of subjects though. One I love is Lifehacker.
15. They are prepared to spend literally hours a day to post, network and improve their blog. I would say that two-three hours a day is the minimum you’ll get by on if you want a remarkably successful blog. Just being honest here, for all those who think they can get by on twenty minutes a day!
16. The most successful blogs are those that form a community. Good bloggers are good community leaders, and for many blogs this is key. Over to Guy Kawasaki for more on building a community.
17. Create dialog with other top bloggers. It’s no coincidence that all the top blogs regularly refer to posts on other blogs, and even engage in conversation with other bloggers through their posts. This takes the concept of community building to a higher level and provides readerships with further resources that will be useful to them.

Bloggers I find Outstanding

(In no particular order)

• Darren Rowse of Problogger
• Maki of DoshDosh
• Chiropractic of Planet Chiropractic
• Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz
• Dave Taylor of Ask Dave Taylor
• Brian Clark of Copyblogger
• Michael Gray of Wolf Howl
• Rae Hoffman of SugarRae
• Lyndon Antcliff of Cornwall SEO
• Chris Garrett of ChrisG.com
• Lee Odden of Top Rank Blog
• Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void
• Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz

Ever noticed how sometimes a few straggling birdies get left behind each year when all the others are migrating to better climates? Chances are those that get left behind end up not making it at all.

I hate to be a drama queen (not known for it), but if you are stubborn about not getting involved with twitter, you might just find yourself wishing you’d joined the rest of the flock, especially if you work online.

I know there are a number of online personalities who, like me in the beginning, see twitter as just one more social-media drain on our time, but I’m happy to admit that I was wrong on that score. I’m now a self-confessed twitter-holic.

The twitter world is fast developing into a hub for the various industries. All you need do to ensure permanent access to professional opinions, great company, and breaking news, is open an account and search for all the people in your industry you wish you had access to. You’ll probably be surprised how many are already on twitter. Join as many communities you want, and you’re all set.

Remember though, that if you want to use twitter for family and friends too, you’d be better off opening more than one account so that your professional associates can’t end up reading your family small talk.

Like many others in the SEO industry in particular, I’ve discovered that twitter is wonderful for keeping me in touch with what’s going on. We’re even privy to breaking news as it’s actually breaking, and I love hearing about stuff before anyone else does!

There are a number of twitter clients designed to help you get the most of your micro-blogging experience. Instead of exhausting (and boring) myself, I’m going to send you over to this brilliant list. That should be plenty to keep you going for a while. My favorite (and the only one I use) is Twhirl. It’s easy, non-intrusive, meaning I can work while I’m using it, and it seems to have few bugs. In the bargain, you can log onto multiple accounts and read them all from the same tiny window. Brilliant.

My one pet peeve with Twhirl, however, was that it opened links in IE instead of FireFox, which is my default browser. I tweeted about it a couple of times but no one answered my cries for help. Then yesterday Andy Beard encountered the same problem, so my eyes were glued to his tweets until he came up with an answer, which I knew he would. So it is with full credit going to Andy that I present to you the solution here! I’m so happy that now when I click on a link in a tweet, it comes up in FireFox. I HATE IE!

Just in case any twitter people get to read this, one thing both twitter and Twhirl are lacking is an efficient search mechanism. If you just know you saw a tweet about something important a few days ago, you can’t find it in search (well not reliably). You need to go back through all the tweets, which can be an extreme headache, particularly if you’re pushed for time which we all are.

But I love twitter, and even the attractions of FriendFeed can’t lure me away, well not for now anyway.

So what do I mean by ‘don’t miss the twitter migration?’ It seems to me that at some point they’ll probably have to change the rules for twitter, when it gets too big to manage in its present format. Maybe there will come a time when you can’t just decide to ‘follow’ any person of your choice. For me this is a totally valid reason to get in now before things do change (of course, then again they might not). And then there’s always the fact that some pretty impressive individuals are still willing to follow you back. Once they’ve got upwards of 10,000 followers that’s unlikely to be the case.

Oh, and if you love the little birdie with attitude featured in the twitter logo, you’ll be impressed to know that it’s the work of another twitter-holic, non other than cartoonist Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void.

If you want to start somewhere, follow me on twitter!

In a few weeks I will be traveling again, so coming across this post on securing your laptop for customs inspection
was pretty timely for me. A laptop is precious to anyone who owns one, but for those of us who conduct all our business from one, it becomes more than precious.

I have suffered extreme anxiety at times when my laptop has suffered an ‘incident.’ The last one was when the motherboard failed on my Toshiba Satellite back in September. I now have a Compaq Presario V6000 from the UK. I think there is an HP equivalent (same company now).

Anyway, I was recently thinking about things I can do to lessen the stress of taking my laptop abroad with me, given that so many things could possibly happen. It’s obvious that you want to back up your hard drive onto a thumb drive before you travel.

And while we’re on the subject of traveling with a laptop, remember that it’s not always safe to connect up to just any Wi-Fi connection you come across. NEVER send your private information anywhere while connected to an unfamiliar network. For more dos and dont’s, here’s an essential Wi-Fi list.

Are You Scared of Paying for SEO?

Increasingly I’m seeing companies who are new to the concept of having their website search engine-optimized, or SEOd, balking at the prices we charge. In most cases the problem is that they’re not convinced that SEO is a worthwhile expense for them. My advice to them invariably is, if you don’t want to pay for this service, then simply don’t. Wait it out and see what happens. Like so many others, you can wait and see if SEO is just going to ‘go away.’

In the meantime, all your most aggressive competitors will seek and find competent SEO people to do work for them. Maybe even me.

I no longer have the time to convince anyone that they need my help. They’ll find out for themselves when the time is right.

Don’t Let the SEO Boat Pass You By!

You know what that means? By the time they realize what’s going on, their competitors will have a huge head start on them. That doesn’t mean the situation will be hopeless: nothing in this life is ever hopeless. But it does mean that they are losing business to the competition unless and until they get some decent SEO work done. Yes, the competition is eating their lunch!

How Much Should SEOs Charge?

But still, exactly how much to charge is a matter of confusion for people buying SEO services, and a matter of significant dilemma for those like me who are selling it. We shouldn’t feel guilty for doing something that takes such an enormous amount of our time, and for which we’ve spent countless hours collecting the knowledge to be able to do well. But we are sometimes made to feel guilty, so it’s worth pointing out why we charge what we do.

Let me stress the point because it’s important: Good SEO is extremely time consuming. There are no short cuts. We might spend a couple of days analyzing a your website and your most successful competion before we’re ready to make changes that will count.

But naturally, that’s not to say that all SEO operatives are of equal ability.

Personally, I’ve sub-contracted for quite a few larger companies than my own, whose in-house staff are nowhere near as competent as I am. I frequently find myself explaining basic SEO concepts (while rolling my eyes). Usually they’re benefiting from my knowledge free of charge at this stage.

I’d like to draw some attention to what Rand Fishkin said on SEOmoz last summer regarding the vast discrepancy in the standards of services provided by SEO:

“Generally speaking, however, if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is (as folks like Internet Advancement continue to prove). SEO is a challenging practice that requires both technical proficiency and a great understanding of marketing on the Internet. The fact that very smart people at very big brands make decisions to pay $500-$1,000 an hour to spend time talking to the best and brightest (and, yes, most notable) from the field of search marketing is one of many great pieces of evidence of the value of SEO.”

It is vital that you check out the SEO company you’re planning to hire. Let them refer you to people they’ve done work for. But once you’ve made your decision, don’t be surprised if they want to charge you up-front. It’s only fair: a website audit, competitive analysis and proposal take a lot of time and contain the author’s intellectual property. They deserve to know that they won’t get ripped off once you have this valuable knowledge in your hands.

In 2006 Rand Fishkin wrote a superb article about pricing an SEO campaign.

For a further point of reference, I’m going to reproduce Rand’s very interesting table:

Most of the SEOs I know charge in the mid-range, as do I. But people like Rand Fishkin, Michael Martinez, Andy Beal, and Bill Hartzer charge higher prices because they are leaders in the industry. They have a right to charge more for being the best. I picked these out of the thousands of successful and highly-respected SEOs in the industry because these are the ones I personally like best.

Of course it isn’t necessarily so that the most expensive SEO firm will be the best, just as cheap ones are not always awful, but you can depend on the names I’ve just mentioned.

As a parting shot, I’m anticipating some naysayers questioning my choice of Rand Fishkin as a resource for so much information on SEO campaign pricing. Quite simply it’s that no one else has put themselves on the line and come up with resources like he has. Rand can be counted on to tackle subjects related to SEO that everyone else shys away from. He has my utmost respect for that.

Guide to Networking with twitter
There’s no shortage of social networking sites online. In fact, if you’re like me you sort of get a sinking feeling every time you see that another one has been launched. It’s getting overwhelming. And worse, most of them are a total waste of time; a short flash-in-the-pan that fades away to nothing.

I actually thought twitter was going to be like that. Boy was I in for a surprise. I never thought this tiny, simple micro-blogging application would soon be the one I use more than any other. In fact, twitter has a way of growing on you, and now I see it as my most useful networking tool: I can easily choose who I network with. I have even been getting backlinks from twitter, and a small amount of traffic (hey, traffic is never to be sneezed at, especially if it’s targeted).

It would be churlish of me to try and create a twitter resource without making reference to others who have done a far better job than I might have done:

Let’s start with this ‘how to’ guide from New Media Bytes. It tells you all you need to know to get twittering in the shortest amount of time. I should mention that it was intended for journalists, but bloggers and just about anyone else will find it very useful too.

Second up we have Lee Odden over at Top Rank Blog with a pretty comprehensive twitter guide.

This list of SEO twitterers is the work of MarketingPilgrim, and you’re going to love it if you’re at all interested in SEO.

That should be more than enough to get you started on twitter. Now tell me you don’t love it?

Stumbleupon: How to Get Tons of Traffic in One Easy Lesson

Stumbleupon quickly became my all-time favorite once I reinstalled it last year. I say reinstalled because I dabbled with it some years ago when it was new on the web, but couldn’t see a purpose for it at the time. Wrong again. When I began using it this time, I noticed a curious thing just a few days after I installed it: a huge spike in my web traffic. I couldn’t understand it–about a thousand visitors from nowhere. When I investigated, every single one of them had come from Stumbleupon. I was excited about this discovery–so much free traffic at absolutely no cost–it deserved to be investigated.

Oh, just one word of caution here: I actually had to change my hosting provider once I started using Stumbleupon because they closed me down a couple of times saying I had used up all my bandwidth. Don’t burn traffic by not being prepared for it when it comes with plenty of usable bandwidth.

You can be sure this nugget of information piqued my interest: The more active you are on Stumbleupon, the more traffic you get. So you can even control how much traffic you get. But you can’t just go in there and spam members. If you do you run the risk of getting buried, or worse. Be sure you’re doing it right: read these highly informative articles about using Stumbleupon before you even download the Stumbleupon toolbar. This one is for Firefox, but you’ll find the IE version there too.

Here’s an explanation of how to use Stumblupon like a Pro that should put you in a great place to start stumbling right away.

Tamar Weinberg wrote this Stumbleupon How-to guide for 10e2 a year ago, but it’s well worth a trip over to read it.

Andy Wibbels wrote this article about how to find great websites using Stumbleupon, and this is useful information too.

OK, so now you know why you should be using twitter and Stumbleupon. Don’t forget to follow me (I’ll reciprocate) on twitter, and be my friend on Stumbleupon. See you there.

Repeatedly we’re reading predictions that Google is going to be replaced as THE search engine pretty soon. Naturally, the runner-up search engines would have a hand in Google’s demise if they could. But I see it as indicative of Google’s true strength that despite the best efforts of their enemies, Google seems to be riding the waves so far.

Why would Google laugh at all the dire predictions that this behemoth is going to hit the runway? Well from their perspective things have probably never looked better. Let’s take a look at the facts.

• They rule the roost as far as search is concerned, and at the moment no other search engine looks even close to catching up with them (I get around ten times as much traffic from Google as I do from Yahoo or Windows Live and it’s probably a similar story for most websites out there).
• They are expanding in every direction and into different segments of the online market.
• They are the authority as far as achieving a high profile business online is concerned.

But, they’re losing something that’s vital to any business large or small, and that is customer satisfaction, particularly among customers who are more web-savvy. What are Google’s customers (including myself) starting to worry about or question?

• More than once it has been suggested that the Google apparatus is dangerously large and their databases retain information that could be used against us.
• They are beginning to sound arrogant when complaints are leveled against them: it’s as if they know they’re #1 so it doesn’t matter if a few complain.

It would be interesting to hear other points of view on this topic. Please comment.