Learn Something New Every Day –V7N's SEO Tip of the Day

[HTMLBasicTutor]

When you have written a great blog post you’d want to get the maximum audience for it, wouldn’t you? Naturally, you do some clever (or not so clever) promotion operations to get your post in front of as many readers as possible.

You can do some tweets on Twitter about it, and post it on your Facebook page for starters. Perhaps paste a link on your Google+ profile as well.

Some of the more advanced promotion mechanics include syndicating your posts to other websites and blogs. There are plenty of sites that offer you an option to feed your posts to them via your RSS feed. Or, you can share your posts via intelligent social sharing buttons. What I mean by ‘intelligent buttons’ is that they read additional information from you posts when you click the sharing button.

Sounds great doesn’t it? You can write an awesome article and it gets shares across multiple websites. How cool is that?

Not.

You think you are doing your blog a favour when you distribute your new posts to various other websites and social networks?

Think again!

Continued: Syndicating Your Own Content? Why don’t you just shoot yourself in the leg while doing it!

[HTMLBasicTutor]

(yes I know it isn't quite July 21 in some areas of the world but it must be somewhere).

Links, links, links. It’s pretty much at the top of any SEOs “must discuss” list of topics. For a long time, the prevailing thinking was links were the golden egg. They were what you needed to turn the tide and boost your rankings. And that was true.

Today, though, it might pay to broaden your thinking.

I am not saying links are dead or links have no value – let’s get that straight up front.

What I am saying, however, is that it can pay to keep the big picture in view and not get mired too deeply in the weeds. I mean, just watching comments on popular search industry sites from those who work in the industry is enough to convince anyone that link building and managing link campaigns is very much the current “tactic du jour”. But what if that time were better spent?

Continued: What if links aren’t as important as you think? - Bing's Webmaster Center Blog

[snakeair]

Today's SEO Tip is as follows.

Any good SEO campaign starts with proper keyword identification and categorization.

Clients often ask how many keywords they should try to rank for. There is no “right” answer to this question. Different companies have different markets, products, and budgets that affect the equation.

Here is a basic strategy for how you can approach keyword research.

Continued at: http://searchenginewatch.com/article...yword-Research

[snakeair]

Today's SEO tip is as follows:

Search engine optimizers and SEO clients alike tend to often fall into a daydream state coveting the attainment of the first place ranking for their industry’s top keyword(s). You should in fact wish for this, and no doubt work for it.

The problem is that many wear proverbial “blinders”, dead set on the single keyword obsession. Ultimately you find yourself many hours and resource dollars down the road albeit closer to your goal but still waiting for the money train of traffic that will undoubtedly take longer to attain.

While you plan and work toward long-term SEO goals, which is fine, you should take notice that you may have several low-hanging opportunities helping to drive short-term success as you plug away at those top terms. In short, these are the terms that can be found at bottom of the first page or the top of second page of search engine results. These rankings may simply need a little more focus to help nudge them a little higher.

Where to Go and What to Do

Start by logging into....

Continued at: http://searchenginewatch.com/article...g-Fruit-in-SEO

[snakeair]

Geez, that was a very loud thunder outside. (Sorry, a big thunderstorm is happening outside right now) I hope I don't lose power.

Here is Friday's SEO Tip of the Day.

Many website owners and marketing professionals are always on the lookout for the secret to great SEO. The real secret to a successful SEO campaign? Make sure everything you do is designed to serve and impact your target audience and not just the search engines.

How does serving your audience create great SEO?

1. Writing content for human readers.

Of course you want your website to do well in the search results, that’s kind of the point of SEO. But so many site owners get bogged down by trying to create the “perfect” SEO content that they forget who their...

Continued at: http://dailyseotip.com/great-seo-mea...audience/2592/

[snakeair]

Let's end July with this SEO Tip.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with SEO analysis. Knowing and using keyboard shortcuts can help create a real-time connection between your brain and the computer, making it easier to remember random, ADHD induced, yet relevant thoughts.

It's easy to think of keyboard shortcuts as having two different categories. System shortcuts exist as part of the operating system and are native to the computer. Program shortcuts are specific to a particular program or application.

System Shortcuts

Editing and Navigating Text

System shortcuts are basic and typically incredibly useful. The well-known..

Continued at: http://searchenginewatch.com/article...oard-Shortcuts

[mjtaylor]

RSS and SEO? Any connection? Does having a feed have any impact on search engines? We all know RSS is one more way to alert folks when we load new content – but when I published a guest blog post today on RSS feeds, I asked what SEO benefits it might have, if any.

A post on the SEO benefits of RSS on Bruce Clay's site pointed out that feed page itself accrues and redistributes PageRank:

Check these examples below (note: I’m loathed to use Google Toolbar PageRank [tbPR] as a unit of measurement, but like it or not, it is recognised and understood by many folks in the industry).

• http://blog.nikonians.org/index.xml (tbPR4)
• http://philmckinney.com/blog/podcast.xml (tbPR4)
• http://blog.tenablesecurity.com/atom.xml (tbPR5)
• http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/blog.xml (tbPR5)

Typically RSS feed pages display the 10 most recent posts you’ve made on your blog, or updates you’ve made to your website. Getting links from high PageRank pages to your fresh content is nice way of helping that content get indexed and ranking quicker. And as an added bonus, your RSS/Atom feed page probably isn’t full of templated regions like navigation and sidebars with links pointing out all over place – so there are less links over which to distribute PageRank. If you’re only updating you website on a semi-regular basis, links will sit on the RSS/Atom page longer and pass that value.

I checked those pages in SEOMoz’s Open Explorer and found them to have strong PageAuthority as well.

The Bruce Clay post also suggests that a feed like Atom, which can have additional SEO benefits. For example, if search engines are pinged when new content is added, your pages be may indexed more quickly. See: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2011/0...f-syndication/ for additional benefits.

For anyone who doesn’t understand the basics of RSS (which stands for RDF Site Summary, but known most familiarly as Really Simple Syndication) see: http://www.problogger.net/what-is-rss/.

[Tiggerito]

Interesting point about it being part of the PR structure. I've never seen a feed in search results so I guess it's like a noindex, follow type file. The latest articles shown in a feed may get a slight boost because of it.

Currently my most favourite use for RSS feeds is to aggregate popular articles into feeds that I can easily scan through via an RSS reader or even twitter. I use tools like paper.li, dlvr.it, ifttt.com and Google Reader Bundles to put them all together. @TiggeritoTimes and @QuestionsOnSEO are two twitter accounts that I've powered in this way. It saves me loads of time (or wastes more of it!).

ifttt.com can also be used to do your own controlled syndication of feeds. e.g. I have it send identified diigo bookmarks to other bookmarking/social accounts using the RSS feeds from diigo lists. I will bookmark this post under the "My SEO Contributions" list which will automatically cause a formatted post on my twitter account.

RSS has a lot of uses :-)

[Any additional discussion on RSS is welcome on this ongoing thread: http://www.v7n.com/forums/blogging-f...now-about.html.

[snakeair]

It's Friday!!

Today's SEO Tip is from the YouMoz blog.

This week for Whiteboard Friday we are taking a look at how to get a video to rank on YouTube. Each month YouTube receives over 800 million unique visitors who watch more than 3 billion hours of video, traffic we can't afford to ignore. So how do you get videos to rank for competitive terms on YouTube? By paying close attention to these 12 important ranking factors.

Continued at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/youtube-r...teboard-friday

[snakeair]

I'm trying to get todays SEO tip in before midnight for Monday. Got about 7 minutes left till Tuesday. lol

One of my favorite blogs I read everyday is where I got the SEO tip from.

The discussion of whether user experience optimization should take priority, or even in place of search engine optimization, is not necessarily a new one, but it is one of the most important conversations we could be engaging in right now. My goal here is to explain that both approaches—while they have crossover and tend to benefit one another—should be considered separately, as they serve their own purposes. That being said – as both are targeted in a strategic and beneficial manner, a website is likely to get far greater performance on both fronts than if you were to target just one.

So far the best post I’ve found discussing this topic is by Tom Schmitz. While I don’t hold as strong an opinion as him on the matter, I tend to agree that UX is not a means to an SEO end. While both can be married fairly easily, all UX efforts won’t necessarily translate to rankings for a website.

Value & Usability Take Priority….Kind Of

In a recent webinar and post of mine, I discussed the five most...

Continued at: http://www.seo.com/blog/search-engin...-optimization/

[mjtaylor]

Are you using infographics on your site? I’ve just started using them on my own blog and a client’s blog and I can see their usefulness for attracting traffic; they are eye candy and informational, and they are something of a fashion now – if not a fad. A great infographic can easily go viral; and even a good one can catch a wave of Tweets, bookmarks and Facebook shares. The value of Social sharing, post penguin, is clear.

Some thoughts about “best practices” to maximize their SEO value:

• You definitely want to have text with the infographic. It is not enough to put up a great picture – it might be worth a thousand words to the reader, but Google will need text to put the image in context. Standard minimum for text these days is about 500 words. Yes, you will be repeating some of what the infographic says. That’s okay, some people prefer text, too, so this is not just for the search engines.

• Make it easy to share – put social buttons close by, and the text to embed the infographic. See http://www.submitinfographics.com/Ma...aphics-101.pdf for tips on embedding the code for indepth tips on SEO optimization of your infographic.

If you don't have the budget to develop your own you'll find some excellent choices at MyBlogGuest.com.

[mjtaylor]

Did you think this tip would be about long tailed keywords or have you caught the Pinterest wave? Are you pinning willy nilly like me or have you figured out how to make it work for your marketing?

Pinning has the potential to offer a boost to your search profile as well as introduce your content to a wider audience than you are likely to reach on Facebook. We know that post-Panda, Google is giving more weight to social signals, but can Pinterest really make an impact? According to http://searchenginewatch.com/article...lude-Pinterest it sure can:

Our SEO team conducted a study recently to see the impact of Pinterest and the potential social link equity, one can generate from “Pinning” pictures. The results are quite interesting.
For the sample test we took a domain with very little equity (0 inbound links) and created a Pinterest account for it. Our team then pinned two recipes to share with people on Pinterest.
Within one week of pinning to the Pinterest wall, the site accumulated over 150 links.
The site previous only showed up for one keyword query. One week after pinning, the site was indexed for 25 queries (mostly long tail keywords, low competition terms), according to Google webmaster tools.
Pinterest pins for the two recipes were few and far between, however by merely pinning these two recipe pages to Pinterest, links from other sites such as WordPress blog sites, Tumblr, Google images, posted new backlinks. Thus, we were creating social buzz, and more visibility for the site overall.

Your Pinterest strategy might include:

• Boards for all your most relevant themes. If you’re a Realtor, for example, you’d have a board for each the neighborhoods where you take listings, a board for banking and mortgage issues, a board for your city – and of course a board for each listing. A board for household tips and interior design would also make sense.
• You might also want to create a board for any civic organizations, political causes or community issues you care about. Homelessness for instance, will yield some very powerful images.
• Your boards should reflect not only your own content, but images that complement and reflect your values and interests (and keywords, of course). Try doing image searches in Google to find photos you really like. Do be sure you are checking more than just the photo before pinning it. You are associating yourself with the views of the web site owner.
• Do use your keywords – naturally and without stuffing – in your profile and the board descriptions. Think more about this as you would your meta description tag; you want to impress the user and attract them to click onto your board more than you want to worry about the SEO impact, but you do want your most relevant term included.
• Think about Pinterest when you create your website content. Images are more important than ever.

Come share your thoughts about Pinterest and how you use it on this discussion thread: Winning At Pinning! Making Pinterest Work For You!

[snakeair]

Today's SEO Tip is a good read. Make sure you have a cup of coffee for this one. (Ok, I did but don't know about you)

My head is still spinning and my mind is still decompressing from everything I learned at the Blackhat and Defcon conferences last week. Blackhat and Defcon are what are professionally known as InfoSec (Information Security) conferences – or “hacking” conferences to the rest of us.

Why would an SEO need to attend a conference about security, exploitation and hacking? What would you hope to gain from that experience other than the feeling that tin foil hats are maybe not such an odd fashion accessory?

Well, maybe you’ve heard about “negative SEO”?

Negative SEO

I really dislike this set of words. “Negative SEO” sounds as serious as having a sick headache, when in reality it covers a much broader set of potentially harmful techniques.

The words “negative SEO” have been bantered about as...

Continued at: http://searchenginewatch.com/article...ulnerabilities

[snakeair]

SEOmoz's whiteboard Friday video is today's SEO Tip. Sit back with your bagel in hand and watch the video.

Howdy, SEOmoz fans! In today's video, we'll explore the nifty, nefarious world on Agile Marketing, which I talked about at MozCon a few weeks ago. We'll take a look at four key principles of Agile Marketing and talk about how you can use them to hack your organization to deliver more value to your customers more often by breaking down barriers and removing impediments to your progress.

The strengths of Agile are that it focuses on bringing customers into our marketing and development efforts; it focuses on interaction with your colleagues by building cross-functional teams; it pushes us to always stay in motion by prioritizing delivery to our users and customers above all other concerns; and it follows a strong, iterative "Build-Measure-Learn" cycle, just like Eric Ries talks about in The Lean Startup.

You know how fast things change in the world of SEO and inbound marketing - Google published 52 changes to their algorithm last April and another 39 changes in May. Agile methodologies can help you respond and react to those changes so that you can stay on top of new opportunities.

Continued at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/agile-mar...teboard-friday

[snakeair]

Good Monday afternoon (Ok, very late afternoon).

Here is your strange SEO Tip of the day for today.

25 Ways to Get Penalized in 2012

Have you seen a recent drop in your website’s traffic levels? Perhaps you’ve received a notification of unnatural SEO practices in your Google Webmaster Tools account?

Unfortunately, SEO penalties can happen to any website, at any time. While it is possible to repair the damage incurred by these negative effects, it’s ultimately much more effective to take a proactive stance on penalty prevention by avoiding the following known penalty causes:

Continued at: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/2...in-2012/47245/

If you want to post a comment about this blog post, create a thread in the SEO section and provide a linkback to the blog post.

Or just post a blog comment on the blog.

[snakeair]

Today's SEO Tip is on Matt Cutt's.

Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts was the headline attraction this morning as SES San Francisco 2012 Day 2 kicked off. Cutts joined Incisive Media Global VP Mike Grehan for a discussion on Panda, Penguin, social signals, duplicate content, transparency, and more.

Knowledge Graph Expansion

Cutts began by briefly recapping what’s new in Google search. Google is using the Knowledge Graph more and it has now has rolled out around the world. Google has also added Gmail messages to the search results, but noted it’s something people have to ask for. So far, Google has determined that users prefer to see the Knowledge Graph results in a consistent place (at the top or right) and Google is collecting more feedback.

Google’s goal is to make it possible for...

Continued at: http://searchenginewatch.com/article...tt-Cutts-SESSF

[snakeair]

Good Monday morning. Here is your SEO Tip of the day.

I’m seeing stars before my eyes. Right on the Google SERPs! Golden 5-star ratings on certain search results have me in a tizzy. You’d think I’d be content to know that those star ratings belong only on rating sites. Never. Why can’t my website be a rated site as well, I wonder? Voilà. My newest obsession with Google.

How did this happen? I used to have a normal life. At least, what I consider normal. Get up. Go to work. Go to sleep. Repeat.

Now, I can’t even sleep without worrying about how my SERPs will perform tomorrow. It seems that the more I look into SEO and tinker with what affects my ranking, the more I obsess about striving for perfection. Not that...

Continued at: http://www.sitepronews.com/2012/08/1...usive-article/

[snakeair]

I just got back from filling up the old coffee mug. Check out today's SEO Tip of the day.

When search engines begin making fundamental platform changes, a somewhat consistent causal chain ensues:

• The first phase: This is normally marked by experimentation and discourse as innovators and professionals with vested interest dabble in the space and discuss their findings (in places like Search Engine Watch).

• The second phase: The platform shift begins to diffuse throughout the market and early experimentation shifts to productization, allowing less-technical users to dabble more directly.

• The third phase: We see the second iteration of products and it’s at this point in time that there are some early commercial attempts, which will serve as the precursor to a new marketplace.

When it comes to semantic SEO, the industry currently resides somewhere between phase two and three: there is a lot of discourse, several beta products, and....

Continued at: http://searchenginewatch.com/article...h-Semantic-SEO

[snakeair]

Today's SEO Tip is brought to you by Mashable. See the blog post below.

The rules of search have changed. In fact, they change on a daily basis. But never so dramatically has rank been uprooted since the explosion of social media. Social media sites, especially the power houses of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, have become backlink central for affecting organic search results.

Social media’s influence on driving business via the web is expected to surpass search engine optimization (SEO) in 2013, according to eMarketer. Web marketers and PR professionals must pay attention to how social media affects search, and ultimately how it can....

Continued at: http://mashable.com/2012/08/22/searc...-social-media/

[snakeair]

Good Thursday evening. Here is the SEO tip of the day.

To be successful as a blogger, you need to have a good understanding of the basics of SEO. This will enable you to steer clear of the following SEO mistakes which can be detrimental to your blog.

1. Over-linking

Many people make the mistake of having excess links in their blogs. Links can be great tools for your readers when used properly. However, when they crowd your page, they can end up...

Continued at: http://dailyseotip.com/6-major-seo-m...to-avoid/2641/