Yes, in this case the hype is true, search engine optimization (SEO) is the advertising bargain of the century. SEO is the process of tweaking and positioning websites so that they rank well in the search engines. And as most website owners know, if their website does not appear on the first two or three pages of search engine results pages (SERPS), then their website is not being found by prospective clients searching for their products and services. SEO is such a great bargain for a number of reasons.

SEO, the gift that keeps on giving.

The benefits of SEO continue long after SEO services have been commissioned. Traditional advertising is like buying a plane ticket: once you ve gone on your trip, the benefits have been used up. SEO, on the other hand, is like buying a car: it will keep on transporting you long after it has been paid for. That said, for most markets, once the initial SEO campaign has been implemented, good SEO requires a certain amount of upkeep. In this way, of course, SEO also resembles owning a car.

I want it now!

Unlike traditional advertising, which builds brand awareness and may eventually lead to more sales, SEO targets prospective customers who are actively searching for your products and services. They are using the search engines to find you! But is your website ready to be found?

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.

John Wanamaker s adage is still true, but it s not true about SEO. Why? Because the results of SEO can be quantified and tracked. This is why in a recent article the Economist notes that Thanks to the power of the internet, advertising is becoming less wasteful and its value more measurable. In terms of efficiency, if not size, the advertising industry is only now starting to grow out of its century-long infancy, which might be called the Wanamaker era. ( The Ultimate Marketing Machine, The Economist, 6 July 2006).

Andrew Middleton is Marketing and Client Services Manager for Web Management Group, a comprehensive and reliable website development and support company.

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In just over a week I will be making my speaking debut at an industry conference. I’ll be speaking at the a4u Expo in London, which is aimed at affiliate marketers, but is also twinning with SES to cover search. My particular session is on social media/networks and how they are being used by brands to drive sales (my co-speaker will be looking at it from the affiliate point of view).

Now I’m a pretty organised chap, and so think that I’ve probably got my presentation pretty much wrapped up. However, following in the footsteps of Catherine at Sticky Content, who invited peer contributions for her presentation at the Online Marketing Show this summer, I’d like to invite the wonderful Mozzers to suggest any examples they can think of where brands have used social media/networks (in all their forms - it doesn’t just need to be MySpace & Digg) to promote themselves, and hopefully drive sales.

Hopefully there will be some great suggestions, forcing me to re-write my presentation. However, I do have to have the final version over to the organisers by October 19th, so you don’t have long. Even if I don’t get to use any or all of them, this will hopefully provide a good forum to discuss real-world uses of social media. I’ll also aim to share my presentation here after the event, for all of you who can’t make it over to London. 

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Source: www.seomoz.org

To Sphinn or Not to Sphinn - That is the Question!

Posted by GeoffreyF67

A while back I removed all of the social media bookmark links from my blog.  At the time, my reasoning was that it was simply cluttering up the page and really added no value.  It also looked rather silly to have 15 icons at the bottom of each post so that someone might bookmark it.

I’d actually add it back in if:

A) I thought there were some value in doing so.

B) Readers didn’t find it a nuisance.

C) It didn’t slow the page load time down any.

Comments?

Along the same lines of thinking, I was considering just adding Sphinn to my blog because many of the topics I write about are SEO-related in some form or fashion and Sphinn seems to target that market.

However, having said that, I’ve yet to see any reviews of Sphinn and whether it drives any decent traffic or not.  Do the visitors stick around?  What are their demographics?  Anyone have any comments on this?

G-Man

P.S.  My blog recently got a facelift.  Check it out and let me know what you think.  Don’t worry - I’ve got my flame retardant suit on!  

P.P.S. My health is improving, although I’m still in the hospital and working on being able to walk again.  Cancer is finally in remission too  

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Source: www.seomoz.org

Why Can’t You Just Use Dreamweaver Like Everyone Else?!?

Posted by buybigtires

Six months ago, I was a very different person. SEO was something I knew little about (I still do not claim to have above a beginner’s understanding), and I was running an OS that I did not care for.

Then one day, after struggling with a lousy driver install and a Lexmark printer (Die!! Lexmark…DIE!!!), I said some rather foul words and went to the Ubuntu website, intending to dual boot. I didn’t pay any attention to what I was doing, and promptly wiped my hard drive (because I can be a stubborn know-it-all, not because Ubuntu is difficult to install).

Oh well, that’s what backups are for… 

Yeah, so I converted to Linux, and while I am not sold on the whole "Everyone should run Linux" mantra, I do recommend it for people who are generally technically savvy (e.g. SEOmoz readers).

The question then becomes "What do I use to replace my old apps, and how is Linux a good tool for SEO?"

I will list these below, and tell you my experience with each. (Note: my current web page is under redesign, so don’t think that I used these tools for the current version of my site. My current site is UGLY - and you will probably think it is worse. The new version using these tools will be markedly better… promise!)  

With most search engines, if not all, being run on a LAMP server, it would probably behoove us to to learn the ways of Linux.

An excellent article on these methods has been written here.  

Maybe you don’t prefer to learn a command line, but those of you who are in love with analytics should find plenty of minutiae to keep you occupied. In addition, the command line is quite powerful, and should you find the need to edit a large amount of static content, it will be quite useful to you.

Fortunately, most SEO tools are platform independent and browser-based, and are available on this very site. Design software is so much more expensive, and besides, you need those two 30" LCDs to improve your productivity.

To that end, I have compiled the following list:

Browsers:

• Windows: IE, Firefox, Opera, Lynx

• Linux: IEs4 Linux, Firefox, Opera, Lynx, Galleon, Konqueror, Gecko….ad infinitum

Testing for every browser under the sun improves your code, and the understanding of what you are actually doing. Not that any of these esoteric browsers will ever catch on, but in the off chance you end up optimizing for a Linux website (think Slashdot, Ubuntu, Linux foundation), you may at least want to be familiar with them. 

Web Design and Development:

• Windows: Dreamweaver

• Linux: Kompozer, Quanta, Screem (Based on Quanta), Scite

Kompozer is a great WYSIWYG option, with an easy to use CSS styling tab. One of its current faults (and this may be fixable via the Preferences) is that the CSS tab opens in a separate window, and you have to move it around to see what is happening to your page beneath.

Quanta is excellent, as it allows you to collapse your <div>s and see only the one you are working on. It also allows for testing in a ton of different browsers, and many other features that I haven’t even explored yet. It’s pretty vast. An excellent development environment. 

Screem: I prefer Quanta, but Screem has a more user-friendly interface.

Scite: Supports Ruby, Perl, and <insert language of choice here>. 

Graphics:

• Windows: Photoshop, Fireworks

Linux: GIMP, Inkscape

The new GIMP is now available, powerful, and way better looking.  It has been a real joy editing creating graphics for the new site. If you prefer the familiarity of Photoshop, you can get GIMPshop, which gives you a Photshop UI over the GIMP engine. Nice. 

I have used Inkscape once or twice, and found it to be an excellent SVG editor.  The downside is that .ai files are supported. This should be fixed in an upcoming release. 

Multimedia: 

• Too many to mention, but here are a few : Kaffeine, FFmpeg, Audacity, Kdenlive

There is a good reason why Linux has been known to attract software pirates: Somebody has written a plugin for every known type of media on the planet. If it’s an obscure, inane, and overall useless file format, chances are you can turn it into something usable in Linux.

Audacity has been one of my favorites for a couple years now, and I believe it is now available in both MAC and Windows. 

The programs mentioned above have a relatively low learning curve, with the exception of the command-line based FFmpeg. There are tons of UIs that are made specifically for that library. Yes, there is support for .flv

What if I still want to keep Windows? 

Well, you could always dual-boot and/or install WINE . That way, you can keep your Adobe CS3 Suite and only use those other tools when necessary. 

Look, I know we all want to think about our OS as little as possible, but it’s time we started thinking. We should know how our OS works, why it works, and why we choose it. Does Linux have the most robust suite of tools right now?

The answer is no. There are a ton of niche tools that allow you to do whatever you feel is necessary to get your job done. If there isn’t a tool, you can request an add-on, and someone may build it for you.

Hopefully, this has helped you. If you have any other suggestions, please leave them in the comments. I’m new to this whole FOSS thing, and there are plenty of great tools that I’m sure are still undiscovered.

Signing off for now…

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Source: www.seomoz.org

SEO can be automated!
… partially Loren Baker has asked a thought-provoking question: “Can SEO be automated?” Coincidentally he asks the question just a day after we released a product at TechCrunch40 with just such a goal. It seems that the folks at Commerce360 are working to build a product similar to our RankSense. There is a fundamental difference in […]
Source: feeds.hamletbatista.com

The Smartest Sphinn It! FeedFlare Now with comments counter
I was looking at my search engine referrals for this blog and I noticed some people looking for the Sphinn FeedFlare. I am glad I checked the page again, because I realized that I had forgotten to move it to the new server. After the move, I finally found the time to add a comment […]
Source: feeds.hamletbatista.com

Much Ado about Anchor Text
As SEOs, I feel like we often focus too much on specific ranking factors to the detriment of other factors that might be equally important. One particular case I want to point out is the obsession with incoming link texts, also known as anchor text. Thanks to some very successful Google bombings, it is almost general […]
Source: feeds.hamletbatista.com

Brent Csutoras Dispenses Social Media Wisdom
I watched all the vids from Webpronews.com covering Search Marketing Expo, New York City and this one was my favourite. Brent Csutoras
Source: www.cornwallseo.com

Why Nofollow and Sculpting PageRank Defeat the Point of PageRank (or Why Click Here Anchors Are Good SEO)

Posted by bookworm-seo

PageRank is not about voting for websites or vouching for them. An incorrect metaphor is being propagated to the point where Google’s own employees are confused as to what PageRank is supposed to be about, as per Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s Anatomy of a Search Engine paper.

Google’s founders conceived of PageRank as the likelihood that a user will visit a particular page on the Internet. The more likely you are to visit, the greater the PageRank. Yahoo.com is the most popular site on the web. Its PageRank? 10 Points of Green Fairy Dust out of 10.   

As the Is Link Juice Limited post and comments show, PageRank is calculated by considering the number (probably since modified to also consider the quality and relevancy) of incoming links to a page with some consideration for the number of outgoing links. Now, it is only logical that if there is a link somewhere on a page to another page, there is a certain likelihood that someone will visit that page. That page now has a certain PageRank.

When you put nofollow on a link to prevent it "passing PageRank" you’re misunderstanding what PageRank is. The very fact of having created the link means you’ve increased the likelihood, or PageRank, that a certain page will be visited. The idea of a nofollow is a non sequitur. If you don’t want people to follow a path from your page to another page, don’t create that path. Don’t give a link.

(On a related note, I read somewhere that mentions of a site, even without there being a link to it, will be counted in its favour as per a recent Google algorithm. If the webmaster didn’t link to the site, you’re probably missing the point by calculating the mention as a plus. The flip side is that any mention increases awareness and curiosity, so some determined people may still try to find the site. It’s a factor that can cut both ways and you should give it careful consideration before integrating it into your algorithms.)

Finally, I recall there being a whole debate about whether Click Here anchor text was good. Considering Marketing Sherpa found that it increased CTR, wouldn’t you agree that it’s good anchor text and should pass even more PageRank than less action-oriented links? 

(Some further reading: my friend Ben Yoskovitch of Standout Jobs has a great post on the 5 types of links.  And I’m going to repeat my above link to Brin and Page’s paper: click here to understand PageRank. Third, if you like my writing on technical stuff like this, then click here to read some SEO FAQ.

P.S. By the way, if I am wrong on any material points above (Perhaps I’m the one who’s misunderstood PR? Certainly could be! Wouldn’t that be ironic? hehe…), share your comments below.

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Source: www.seomoz.org