Rockin’ SEO Blog - SEO Tools

1. Top Content Strategies that You Should Use in SEO

As SEO practitioners, most of us know that content is really the most important component when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. You probably heard a lot of tips and advice on how to make your content work for you. In this article, the top 12 content strategies are highlighted. These include: embedding widgets in your webpages, inputting videos, uploading good images, having content that is well-researched, giving out awards, launching contests, updating blog posts, doing something remarkable, publishing an ebook, making and distributing applications and incorporating user generated content.

2. Supertweets

A Supertweet is a maximized Twitter, which means that it fully uses all allowable 250 characters. But in actuality, the absolute maximum is 255 if you include spaces and ellipsis. In order to make a Supertweet using the existing Twitter web interface, you need to have Java enabled to make sure that you can bypass the 140 character limit. If you are sending Supetweets you need to make sure that the persons that you are sending it to will be able to see it, that is they don’t have the text limit of 140 characters. You can now use Supertweets in optimizing your Twitter account to promote your SEO site.

3. The importance of design in SEO

Overall website design is also important to SEO, but this is one part that is often neglected by the webmasters. This article sheds light on 5 reasons why SEO also relies on design. Search engines also take a look at the website design when it comes to quality indicators which are the indicators they use in determining if you have a good website or not. Good design also makes marketing easier because people are attracted to it visually. When it comes to branding, a good website design can also help you out. Good design can also help you get noticed by other web designers and lastly, it lowers your bounce rate.

4. Free SEO and SEM ebooks

One main advantage of SEO and SEM is that you don’t have to go to a school or undergo a training course to master it. You can just rely on the online resources that are available such as blogs and websites. But when it comes to in-depth research and learning, ebooks are the way to go. This article showcases different downloadable SEO and SEM ebooks that you can avail of free of charge. Examples of these ebooks are: Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Conversation Agent: Marketing in 2009 and The Social Pulpit Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit

5. The Orion update

This insightful article provides Google updates, specifically the Google Orion update which takes into effect two separate changes. One, for longer queries, Google will now show a longer snippet and two, Google will now introduce a new section called the related search section. For the SEO industry, these changes will make the practitioners be more specific about their keywords since there is a change in Google’s algorithms.

6. SEO is a journey…

This article written by Patricio Robles highlights that contrary to popular belief; SEO is a journey and not a destination. Most people are holding on to a common misconception that SEO is easy and it can be done in a short span of time. But in reality, it is a long process that needs to be tackled by those who are well-equipped with SEO knowledge and strategies. This article also highlights other common misconceptions like the content should be written for SEO, building a list of links will boost your SERPs and adding a blog to your site will do great things for your ranking.

7. Online retailers and SEO

Online retailers are now turning to SEO to increase traffic to their site. In line with this, 50 tips were given that could work for online retailers. Some of these tips are: choosing your provider well, increasing crawl rates, enforcing good image optimization, having quality content and do maintenance on a regular basis.

8. Measuring a link’s marketing value

This article provides ways on how you can personally measure a link’s marketing value. The measures include: checking if the link prospect page ranks top 20 in SERPs, considering the page rank of domain pages, social media distribution and checking if the sites are publishing in Google News.

9. Getting a link from CNN: A success story

This success story by interactive voices chronicles the different steps that he had to undertake to get that link from CNN. He offers tips like making your network work for you, staying on top of mind, offering an insider’s view on an issue, make yourself known as an industry expert and always be accessible.

10. Guy Kawasaki, social media and Twitter

In Search Engines Strategies New York, Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan went on a live chat to discuss Twitter and social media. Some insights from this chat include: monitoring what other Twitter users are saying about you, building a following in Twitter, doing the best practices and using Twitter tools to make the most out of the Twitter.

1. PPC Cannibalization, defined
What is PPC cannibalization? As defined by Francis Vallieries, it refers to the instance where you have both an organic search engine campaign and a PPC campaign. This is the figure that you get when you compare the percentage of the organic clicks that were supposed to be working for you but instead, you end up paying because of the PPC clicks. This is actually a good thing, because it increases your site traffic, but what should have been free is getting paid for because of the clicks in your PPC campaign. So how do you measure PPC cannibalization? There are many options that you can do, but the most probable thing is to stop your PPC campaign for a week and then measure the performance of your organic ads. The difference is cannibalization.

2. What are the indicators of quality SEO?
This piece written by Ryan Caldwell summarizes what must be present to in an SEO campaign so that it can be regarded as high quality. Here is a quick rundown on the top qualities that will make your SEO campaign of high quality: A physical address in your website and a toll free number so that your visitors have proof of your authenticity. Good web content, making sure that your content comprises of 1/3 of your html page, tag usage, quality incoming and outgoing links, incoming link breadth and depth and internal linking.

3. How to get that 2nd golden link
Getting that golden link is an integral any SEO campaign, but you might have a hard time getting that link. Here’s a great tip on getting some of the same benefit of that link. If you can’t get that link, you can instead concentrate on finding other links on that page that it links to and requesting links from those sites. This is a great way for you to get some juice from that golden link.

4. Using Flickr to get links and content
Flickr is a photo-sharing site which also works as a social networking site. SEO practitioners can use this site if they want to get excellent content and links to great pages. How? By uploading pictures to the site, you can get links to your site, you can also leave comments in Flickr to increase traffic and build links. Another great tip here is by using great pictures from Flickr, and then reaching out to the photographers (using the Pro account), you can easily get links from those photographers (since they want to promote their own work). This article written by Lisa Barone also presented case studies on how a website can take full advantage of Flickr.

5. ToysRUs goes down SEO rankings
Reports went out this week that ToysRUs decreased their SEO rankings with a new acquisition of a domain name. The company reportedly bought the domain name Toys.com for $5.1 million but instead of transferring their previous domain name to the new one they forwarded it which led Google to re-index their site. This move led ToysRUs to lose their top ranking whenever someone googles the word ‘toys’.
Great case study on how to ruin your SEO assets.

6. Amazon + product reviews = $2.7Bn in bottomline
This case study written by Graham Charlton showcases how Amazon capitalized on product reviews as a main driver of sales which later on translated to $2.7 Billion. Product reviews in Amazon are sorted out and maximized in usability, making the product more appealing and marketable. This was done by as simple as adding one little phrase in the product reviews section which is ‘was this review helpful to you?’ This question enables Amazon to find out the exact percentage of people who found the review useful and helps in ranking which reviews will make the product more appealing to the customers.

7. Ways on how to lose your online friends and followers
We always spend time concentrating on what should be done in order to keep the people and traffic coming. On hind sight, this article written by Brett Borders highlight what should not be done in any SEO campaign. Specific examples are banality, narcissism, excessive self-promotion, over-pushing an agenda, too much negativity, lack of reciprocity, talking too much politics and religion, recycling content, bragging and direct attack to other persons or websites.

8. Wordpress resources that you can use
Wordpress is the premiere blogging site that is used by many bloggers worldwide. There are many tools that you can use for Wordpress to enable it to work better for you. Examples are as follows: wordpress.org showcase, WP Count and Wordpress Garden to name a few. Wordpress.org showcase shows the best of the best Wordpress blogs. WP count is similar to wordpress.org showcase but it is an online directory where you can submit links to it and have your site entered in its database. Lastly, Wordpress garden is a gallery of Wordpress sites which you can submit your site to also.

9. Adobe, SEO and Flash
For sites running on Flash, there is a big problem back then because search engines don’t usually detect and categorize these sites. To solve this problem, Adobe lent their Flash technology to Google and Yahoo in order to help these search engines categorize and track flash websites. Just this week, Adobe created a new site which is named SEO Technology Center for Flash with the primary aim of helping professionals and website developers on building websites in a more user-friendly way.

10. Gold or rotten? How to tell if a link is either
Written by Lori Baker, this blog entry gives 5 ways on how you will know if the blog link that you are eyeing is gold or rotten. These qualifications include: topic irrelevance, dropped domains, buy a sponsored post button, sexual links and generic Wordpress defaults.

1.  Jumping from SME SEO to Corporate SEO

Ben McKay compares and contrasts life as a freelance SEO to working at a large agencies. He notes that the major differences as an SEO in a large agency was the (1) level of integration between SEO and other marketing activities, (2) the opportunity to leverage a broader network to spot opportunities, (3) the need to build organization alignment at large clients, (4) SEO is truly scalable and large agencies are able to provide economies of scale, (5) market traction is a lot easier at because many clients already have an established brand.

2. Kim Krause Berg interview

Kim Krause Berg is considered the mother of site builders, SEO experts and usability people. In this interview, Kim shares her insights on how to approach and present SEO. Highlights of this interview include Kim using her background in usability and SEO to act as a consultant for firms who want to develop their sites. Kim shared her experiences as a Usability Software Engineer QA for a company and the projects that she handled. Kim also stresses the importance of Requirements Gathering which can be done through Target Market Analysis, which would help determine which tools they need to develop to cater to the needs of their target market.

3.  SEO is more popular than PPC

These two terms are always interchanged and people usually have trouble differentiating these two marketing methods from each other. In a study conducted and released by Google Trends, it shows that SEO is now being more used compared to PPC. In the graph shown alongside the article, it shows the data between 2004 and 2008 where PPC peaked during the first few years, but SEO eventually took over starting from 2008. The reason behind is the global economic crisis. After all, SEO is cheaper than PPC.

4.  IM Spring Break and SEO

IM Spring Break is a three-day event filled with speakers, barbecue, SEO and fun. Different tips are given in this blog entry to make sure that all attendees will make the most out of the event. The attendees are encouraged to use the power of their network and Twitter, have fun while networking, stay as long as possible and to not schedule their return flights until the whole event is finished. After all, you will never know what you’ll be missing if you don’t complete the whole event.

5.  Employment opportunities in SEM/SEO

With the country’s unemployment rate highest than we have ever seen and many industries laying off their workers, how does the whole SEM industry fare in the global recession? The good thing about it is that people are now turning to SEO for advertising and marketing purposes because it is very cheap. Both employers and job seekers will both benefit from this. For employers, you have a lot of access to a talented pool of SEO experts at a cheaper rate. For job seekers, you can capitalize on taking advantage of this opportunity to earn more money. So, the industry will probably brave the whole storm, slowly but surely.

6.  Pubcom South Summary

Detailed summary of Day 1 in Pubcom South held in Austin, Texas. In the social media session, an engaging media presentation was given by Guillaume Bouchard. The brand and reputation management session tackles on how important it is for you to have a plan and have a point person who will be responsible for physical, financial and ethical disasters, as well as false rumors. In the conversion rate testing and optimization session, Taylor Pratt said that having a promo code box in your website is a mistake that can negatively affect your conversion rate.

7.  SEO extensions and Firefox

There are a lot of SEO extensions that you can use in Firefox, but here’s the list of the top extensions that you should definitely have: Firebug, YSlow, GreaseMonkey and Google Global Firefox Extension were among the ones mentioned. Firebug is a web development tool that you can use to see your HTML, CSS and Javascript. YSlow can detect which pages are slow so you can fix it. Greasemonkey uses Javascript to customize your webpage. Google Global Firefox Extension enables you to switch from Google’s TLDs.

8.  Underlining links, is it important in Google?

In essence, Google doesn’t care if you highlight your links or not. But if you think it will improve your website’s usability, then go ahead and use it. A word of caution though, don’t ever use spam links or hidden links.

9.  Cleaning up your site

It is important to check your site for broken links, duplicate content and errors. If you want to do this, there are many tools that you can use like Xenu’s Link Sleuth and Virante Duplicate Control. Link Sleuth will search your site similar to what a search engine does and will furnish you a report on broken links, duplicate content, broken files like images and multimedia content, identifying images and files which are slowing down your site and pinpoints images which do not have alt attributes.

10.  The downside of guaranteed SEO

Gives out different tips on what to guarantee when it comes to SEO. The list includes targeting traffic in order to increase it, adhering to ethical standards, guarantee on performance improvement and sticking to the time schedule set. Once you guarantee all of these, an SEO firm will have a more established relationship with their clients.

Top 10 Articles in SEO and Search Marketing for Week of March 8th 2009

1. Choosing a domain name that you can optimize

It’s critical to choose the right domain name for your website. Naming your website after your company name is not enough. You also need to think of a domain name that is also SEO-sensitive. For example, including target keywords in your domain name is an excellent way to boost your SEO.

2. Common mistakes and errors in SEO

14 common mistakes and errors that newcomers in SEO are usually guilty of. Some highlights: Keyword Stuffing, Reciprocal Linking, Not Having a Sitemap, Blocking Bots Rather than No-Follow, Lack of Internal Linking.

3. Importance of link building

SEO relies so much on link building because this is where you will gain more conversions. Once you know how to do link building efficiently, you will achieve more conversions. Links are the currency of the internet, especially for Google.

4. Social Bookmarking, Youtube and SEO

These three all come into play when it comes to Search Engine Marketing. The bustling business of Youtube can now be used in SEO and Social Bookmarking enabling internet marketers to reach a wider audience.

5. Small Business and SEO Tools

Small businesses can use SEO tools to help their business especially when it comes to marketing and advertising their new businesses. Simple SEO tools can help you in choosing a domain name and finding the right keywords to use in your site.

6. How to know if your PPC sucks

A humorous take on how to know if your PPC sucks. A straight-forward and no-nonsense site that will tell you if your PPC does suck. Different articles are uploaded on a daily basis so you have to keep an eye out on daily updates.

7. Getting rid of SEO paralysis

SEO paralysis can be brought about by technology barriers, the whole approval process and ownership issues. This article tackles different ways on how you can combat SEO paralysis.

8. Using trust building graphics that you can use to increase your conversion rates

Examples of trust building sites and graphics that you can use in your website are McAfee Secure, VeriSign Secure, BizRate and Secure Checkout to name a few. Studies show that using these signs and placing them in your website can increase your traffic and conversion rates. Once the people see these signs, they will be assured that your website is secure and dependable.

9. SEO on the Front Page of LA Times

We can’t stress the importance of SEO enough, but this definitely will. SEO landed in the first page of Los Angeles Times. This just exemplifies how important SEO is in the internet world. A short piece on SEO can be seen in the front page of Los Angeles Times, stressing how important SEO really is in today’s day and age.

10. Aaron Greenspan’s Wins Against Google

This news article summarizes Aaron Greenspan’s case against Google, which he eventually won. Certainly an eye-opener for all the SEO practitioners who use Google Adsense.