Jobs in Digital Marketing

Introductory video:

Video vs. Copy & Infographics

Since users only read an average of 28% of words on web pages, we can conclude that copy just isn’t a great conveyer of information online for human users (although I’ve had to use it along with videos in this post – I hope you read it all!). Copy’s weakness is one of the reasons for the infographic boom, yet video can go further than infographics at conveying information quickly. Consequently, I’m surprised videos aren’t used more widely in SEO. They are probably the most distributable form of content online – this video of a talking dog has 85million views!

The Next Video Boom

Another reason to start caring about video is that things are going to get a whole lot bigger. Since the birth of YouTube back in 2005, it might have seemed like we’ve already undergone a video boom online – YouTube even became the world’s 2nd largest search engine back in 2008. A few things are going to make it even bigger:

• HTML5 <video> element will make it easier to embed video
• Live streaming from mobiles will become commonplace
• Smartphone traffic will overtake desktop traffic by 2014 (smart handsets become ubiquitous)

Check out the projected growth in mobile traffic from Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends 2011. 69% of mobile traffic (in a time when mobile traffic will surpass desktop traffic) accounted for by video consumption:

All of this points to one thing – massive growth in video consumption. If your content strategy doesn’t include video, then now is probably a good time to do something about it.

Let’s Get Started

The sooner you get video into your content strategy, it will probably be for the better. But before this you should make yourself aware of the common excuses for not doing video vs the actual reality:

Common reasons for not doing video are as follows:

Excuse	Reality
Video production is too expensive	You can get a flip camera for under £100 and you don’t need to pay for any editing software
We don’t have the in-house skills to produce video	You don’t actually need any specialist skills to execute a video strategy
Our content / products aren’t suitable for video	All products and services are suitable for video demonstration
YouTube is just full of cat videos, it is a silly place	Even if it is, you can gain huge earned media value from it
We’ve done video before, but got no views	You probably need to work on a distribution strategy

It will be best to consider all of these in three categories – production, creativity and distribution.

Video Production Values

It is common thinking the way into online video is polished production values that are equal to TV. But this is a totally different genre. The first ever video on YouTube is testament to the crappy production values that are forgiven in online video. Think about this quote from Gary Vaynerchuck:

“Your content has nothing to do with the mic, the camera, the lighting or the set.”

To give you an example, check out this video from one of the Bauer accounts – Practical Fishkeeping:

Dull huh? And bad production values.But with 1.5 million views, we’re pretty happy with it. The reason for its popularity is because it serves up content that isn’t readily available, to a niche yet global audience who demand it. It would appear that lots of people want to know what Arowana, Flowerhorns and Parrot cichlids look like when they’re swimming around in a tank, so they search for it. We come up top of search as one of the only videos including these fish – 1.5 million times. It didn’t need production values to be succesful.

Motorcycle News is another of our Youtube channels that is a great example for this point. Visit the channel and consider the production values – there aren’t really that many in the top performing videos. It proves you don’t have to have polished creative to use it as a business tool.

Of course, sometimes it does help to have good production values, particularly for product videos. However, they don’t have to be of ITN quality. Zappos.com have 50,000 videos on their site – the picture quality, sound and music is well cut, and looks professional, but you could easily make similarly slick content with a half decent camera (£300+), Final Cut Pro or iMovie. YouTube now has an editing suite built in that you can use without the need for software.

The level for entry is low, but if skills are lacking and you see the demand (and you live in London), then there are short courses at University of the Arts London (Central Saint Martins) in Final Cut Pro. You’ll be a pro by the end of it.

Is it all About the Creative?

So you’ve got that you don’t need slick production, but sometimes it helps. What if your products are totally boring – like steam carpet cleaners? Recently I considered hiring a steam carpet cleaner to clean our grubby carpet (it was getting bad). I came across the below:

Boring Alert – this is not entertaining! However, this is a well-polished and well narrated instructional video on how to use the product. It absolutely serves its purpose, while not being particularly creative.

Inanimate Products

Some businesses sell inanimate products that just sit there – like audio speakers, desk tidies and ornaments. You’ll need a slightly more creative approach for these, because video demands stuff actually happens. You can’t just have a video of a speaker sitting there – you need to make the product come alive. I think this video from Ideas by Net makes a great point:

It illustrates its many functions in a manner that gives movement, with an appropriate soundtrack. It’s a great video of an inanimate object – and it got 50,000 views.

Make Me a Viral

So far we have low production videos you can just ‘put out there’ and test, along with better produced videos such as product demonstrations – the caveat of these are that they’re not going to significantly improve your reach, and give you earned media value. That’s what virals do.

But what is a viral really? I like Ciarán Norris’ definition of a viral, they are simply:

“Cool shit that people like to share.”

It’s a sound definition, but it doesn’t explain a formula. Fortunately I’ve come across a number of elements that create virality in online video (I’m sure there is more science to it than this, but let’s just talk content elements). Take a look at Time’s 50 Best YouTube Videos. All of these videos are ‘virals’ with huge numbers of shares and views. But what is it about them? It’s not just pot luck, most of these videos fulfil one or more of these criteria:

• Cute
• Funny
• Musical
• Technology focus

Animal (particularly cats) and baby videos are often viral gold because they are cute and funny. Keyboard cat (number 8 in the Time list) is cute, funny and musical. Let’s take this one step further, and film a cat playing a piano app on an iPad (which fulfills all of the criteria).

Lo and behold, 9,000,000 views.

Extraordinary Resolutions of Mundane Events

There is one element of virality missing from the list above, and we can consider this a ‘silver bullet’. Successful virals usually occur in familiar surroundings or with familiar products – mundane and every day. If you then take the mundane and every day, then give it an ‘extraordinary resolution’, then you have a potential viral silver bullet.

Take a mundane object or event, and then do something truly extraordinary with it, something that it would never be used for – the more elaborate the better. An example of this is Blendtech’s zany Will it Blend? series which earned Blendtech a vast amount of earned media value. They used their mundane product – a blender – to blend a number of normally inappropriate objects. This was both funny and had a silver bullet, but they took it further when they began to blend the latest Apple products. Here it is:

Content is King, but Outreach is Queen, and She Runs the Household

Virals are well known for their rapid natural distribution through email and social sharing, but it would be a mistake to think that people will do it all for you.

Consider these words from Steffan Aquarone for Econsultancy:

“Create something so compelling, so interesting, funny or insightful that people genuinely enjoy your content, and you’ll find that people might even recommend it around.”

So they might but there’s no guarantee. Video normally needs a distribution strategy. Thankfully, SEO skills are perfectly aligned to solid video distribution strategies. Basically you need to have a quality video, optimise your meta data and then consider outreach – it’s very similar to standard SEO.

Distribution Basics: Ranking on Search

Just like onpage SEO optimisation, video needs meta data optimisation too. Titles are vitally important for YouTube optimisation, but make sure you fill out the obvious forms such as video description and tags – as always, every little helps.

If you have a video on your site, then make sure the page it sits on has strong onpage optimisation. It will never hurt to build a few links to it either. User engagement is also a strong ranking factor on YouTube. If large numbers of viewers switch off after five seconds, then you will find yourself taking a nosedive. It means that the quality of the video itself is interlinked with the ranking of the video. For more on YouTube ranking factors, and a comprehensive guide to YouTube publishing, I recommend reading the YouTube Content Creators playbook.

Distribution Advanced: Finding the Tipping Point

The next part of getting your video found is more like link building, and it’s also wise to include link building in your distribution strategy. In a nutshell, you find relevant blogs and websites who would be interested in the video and hustle them into posting it.

However, having a far and wide distribution strategy isn’t really necessary when it comes to virality; basically you don’t need to please that many people to get ideas to tip. I’d suggest reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point to get a good understanding of how ideas spread, but one third of his theory is that ideas tip due to ‘the law of the few’. Ideas spread because a few extraordinary people spread them. From syphilis to Hush Puppies, Gladwell argues that it’s early adopting well connected individuals that make ideas tip – it is not a reliance on pleasing the everyman.

We can take this theory into video distribution by pin pointing major websites. You want to go well out of normal link building comfort zones and think the sky is the limit if your idea is good enough. Think about the big guys – if you make it onto just a few mainstream media sites, then you stand a high chance of getting your idea to tip. At Bauer, this occurred for our best ever performing YouTube video without us even realising it:

This will almost certainly be the raunchiest video to ever appear on SEO Gadget. I can think of two reasons why it’s been so successful!

Basically this video was a strong performer for a long time, but nothing particularly special. Our sites are quite highly trafficked, but the video got squirrelled away, and it gathered about 300,000 views in its first year. Then a large Dutch website picked it up and put it on its homepage. Thousands of amused Dutch people shared it and the idea tipped – after that it went viral, garnering millions of views a month. It was the law of the few in action.

Building Links through Distribution

While you don’t necessarily need to reach out to many people to get your idea to tip, you can also meld your distribution strategy with link building pretty easily – in a similar manner to distribution strategy for infographics.

Here you’ll want to target as many quality sites as possible, build a relationship and then send them the HTML of the video embed with link back to the page where you originally published the video. Make sure you have the video published on your site so you can link back to it – you won’t get much value out of linking back to your YouTube channel.

There’s a neat example of how to do this on the Distilled blog. In my experience, barely anyone bothers removing the embedded link when they place the video.

For more on distribution, I really like this video from Gary Vaynerchuck. Watch Chapter 6 – Hustle and the Work community – for what is the best explanation of the importance of distribution I’ve seen.

Conclusion: Start Doing Video!

It’s never too late to start, but the sooner you move, the stronger position you’ll be in when video gets even bigger. Just when you embark on a strategy, make sure you consider the following:

• Are you allowing low production values so you can create more?
• Are you ensuring product videos are of good quality?
• Are you regularly trying and testing new stuff?
• Have you tried a viral with the formulas mentioned?
• Have you optimised your video meta data?
• Have you got a distribution plan?

And here’s me again, thanks for reading (and watching)!

Why You Should Supercharge Your Video Strategy & How to Do It is one of our latest posts from: SEOgadget.co.uk.

When it comes to linkbuilding, I rationalise any tactic with “Is it future-proof?” – understanding where search is heading and trying at least to balance what is most effective now with what is likely to deliver stability and longevity.

Guest blogging or guest posting is one of my favoured forms of linkbuilding because it’s natural, offers exposure and brand awareness opportunities. I also favour it because there are possibilities to can build scale into campaigns. It also offers win-win-win opportunities – the reader gets some decent content from a new voice/perspective, the blogger gets a day off as well as some content to enrich their own work and you get access to an audience as well as a good quality link.

Kelvin Newman developed some thoughts around the pillar principles of linkbuilding which he dubbed VAVA (Link Volume, Link Authority, Link Velocity and Anchor Text). Guest blogging touches on three of these by providing a good volume of authoritative links with desirable anchor text.

Guest blogging as a practice has two ‘tiers’ –

• Contributing to high-quality, high-authority sites – let’s call these tier 1
• Contributing to good quality but perhaps less authoritative niche sites – let’s call these tier 2

Some would argue there is perhaps a third tier but my sentiment is that if a site doesn’t fit into one of the above two buckets (from a guest blogging perspective) it probably isn’t worth contributing to with a guest post.

You are likely looking at a blog network or article directory. Both of which have their place in certain industries, but these aren’t what I’ll be talking about in this guide, and I find understanding the link opportunity helps to better tailor content creation in order to maintain an ROI – you don’t want to be submitting your finest work to a blog network property when you could have ‘got away with’ something far more mediocre.

This post looks at the process we use for guest posting and how I’ve tried to add a degree of scale so that we can generate good amounts of links whilst maintaining quality standards.

Goals & Strategy

A good guest blogging campaign, like any other linkbuilding campaign, should start with a goal in mind and an overview strategy.

A few questions we ask ourselves when it comes to planning guest blogging projects:

1)      Which keywords are being targeted?

Since we are using guest blogging as a linkbuilding tactic we need to understand the terms we will be looking to improve visibility on.

2)      What does a buyer look like?

We need to understand fundamentally the types of customers the keyword terms being focused on tend to attract so we have a better idea of our target audience (helping us to generate content ideas and select the right blogs to guest post on later down the line).

3)      What are we trying to do here?

Is this campaign mainly about links or mainly about building awareness – knowing this right off the bat helps to tailor campaign methods.

It is all too easy to forget that SEO is about marketing, we get caught up in the Google guidelines, tactics and technicalities when ultimately we are trying to get more people to buy whatever it is we are or the client is selling.  As a consequence of my marketing degree, I often look for ways traditional models and frameworks can be translated to the world of SEO.

STP (segmentation, targeting, positioning)

We often work collaboratively with the client in these early stages to understand what their perfect client looks like because ultimately this translates into a more effective SEO campaign that delivers results beyond just increased search engine visibility.

A useful model to do this is STP (segmentation, targeting and positioning).

• Segment your market – divide up your client’s market
• Identify a segment to target – look for a segment that offer opportunities from a search and business perspective
• Position your offering/content – identify key questions that this segment might have, look at the types of blogs they read, gain a better understanding of the type of content they like to share.

I often link STP to the keyword research stage of a project as it encourages deeper analysis and understanding of keywords from a human perspective rather than just the pure SEO metrics like competition, traffic etc.  We often find it provides a framework to identify keywords which resonate more effectively with the segment of the market your client actually wants to target.

This kind of deep analysis may not be necessary for the project you are working on as sometimes you or the client has a solid understanding of what converts in which case you can just skip this STP stuff.

Prospecting & Analysing

Without a shadow of a doubt, this is by far the most laborious part of the guest blogging process. I’ve got a couple of shortcuts for you though and some sources which I use to find guest posting opportunities.

First and foremost – think laterally, don’t just guest post within your own bubble. Look for new connections that can be drawn with content, perhaps exploring new markets and sourcing completely fresh links.

Google Searches

Use my Guest Post Opportunity tool built in Google Docs. It’s a very basic little tool I built using importXML that combines some common search queries that bring up guest post opportunities such as “write for us” with the keyword of your choice. All you have to do is plug in the keyword and let it do its thing. It was built to save us the hassle of manually querying Google. It’s a real time-saver, obviously the results aren’t perfect and my best advice is to go broad with the keyword. Any suggestions for improvements are welcomed.

The opportunities it brings up may not all be of a high-standard but at least this way you can spend time sifting rather than prospecting then sifting.

Google search queries are an excellent way to find places to guest post! It shouldn’t be the only method you use because these blogs are open for others to contribute (including your competitors) so the aim of the game is to find blogs to guest post on that your competitors can’t get at.

PS. Please make your own copy of the spreadsheet!

Use blog rolls

Bloggers read other blogs and many will list them in their blog roll. This is one of the quickest ways we turn 1 opportunity into perhaps dozens. I find it is also one of the quickest ways to understand the niche dynamic as you build up a picture of the bloggers in the space, who reads who etc.

Granted, blog rolls aren’t how they used to be but they still bring up opportunities that you may not find through other means.

Open Site Explorer

OSE in this case can be applied most effectively in B2B markets. Remember when I said about understanding the buyer? Well at this stage we take it a step further and determine 5-10 URLs of potential buyers, plug these into Open Site Explorer and filter for no-follow links only.

By and large you’ll have a smaller list that you can comb through and identify links which are comments. People read industry blogs and add their thoughts, this tactic helps you zero in on industry websites, find blogs which your target customers actually read. If you can spot patterns it offers an indication that the blog would be a decent traffic and conversion opportunity rather than just a strong link since multiple potential customers visit and comment on that blog.

Guest posting communities

My favourite community for this is MyBlogGuest. There are usually plenty of opportunities, sometimes really strong opportunities you just need to do a bit of wading.

If you can deal with the “warrior-forum-esque” individuals MBG seems to attract there are some smart people with great websites you can partner with.

Always worthwhile throwing up a forum post saying you are looking for places to guest post, it’s so quick and easy to do you’d be crazy to miss out since more often than not we always find at least one relevant guest blogging opportunity via this method.

Topsy.com search

Topsy usually returns some useful opportunities or at least inspiration when it comes to guest posting. Often we find lists of blogs relevant to the niche in a top 20, top 50 or top 200 format – that’s gold dust to a guest post prospector.

Ask for guest posts

Self-explanatory one, write a post on your blog stating that you are looking for guest posting opportunities and is anybody interested. You’ll probably find you attract a few good opportunities this way.

Utilise your client’s connections

Often a good source of guest blogging opportunities as they already know the client which gives you a foot in the door and these may be opportunities that can’t be found through any online source (read: competitive advantage).

Time to analyse and evaluate the opportunity

Here are the questions we try to answer at this stage…

• How likely are they to accept?
• What’s the SEO value of the link?
• What’s the traffic & conversion potential?
• OR What’s the brand equity/awareness potential of this post?

If the chance of acceptance is low then it might be worth considering other opportunities first. By acceptance, I don’t mean are they going to turn away the piece (you should commit to quality) I am referring to whether they accept guest posts of any kind.

Understanding the SEO value (or evaluating the link opportunity) is very much a matter of opinion and you know the metrics that matter to you.

My particular favourites are mozRank, AC Rank, Domain Authority and a little quality score of my own (out of 5) which is essentially an unscientific judgement that I make for my own reference about the general quality of a site. (NB. Not always recommended if you require a scaled campaign)

I look at 5 factors and the site gets a point if it passes each, the closer to 5 it gets, the better the link opportunity is in my opinion, here are the 5 things I look at:

1)      Outbound links (too many or a number of spurious/irrelevant links)

2)      Frequency of guest posts (can be a negative if the website consists entirely of guest posts).

3)      More ads than content

4)      Social factors (subscribers, followers, fans)

5)      Design of the site

Quite frequently we find a guest blog opportunity might provide a solid link but trips up when it comes to conversion potential, it depends on your campaign goals but I don’t believe these should be dismissed as many can be brand building platforms and still worthwhile opportunities in terms of the social proof that they offer your client in the grand scheme of things. A typical example of this might be posting to a website read by peers rather than target customers – it still raises the client’s profile which overall may make the opportunity worthwhile.

Pitching

A very challenging aspect of guest blogging is how to pitch your content to prospective blogs. There are few industries now where the individual you are contacting doesn’t know what you are up to – rightly or wrongly, they will have some preconceptions about you based on the fact that you are asking them to be able to guest post.

You should play these things by ear but some tier 2 blogs you may be able to go straight in with the pitch. For upper level tier 2 and tier 1 blogs, you’ll need to get the pitch right.

I find you get the best response when:

• You have a foot in the door & you’ve warmed them up a bit
• You’ve got a couple of solid topic/content ideas
• You use Jedi-mind tricks some NLP principles
• Ultimately you’ve pitched them well – demonstrating effort and readership understanding in a subtle way.

A foot in the door and some gentle warming

Any hook you have that ensures you’re not just a cold caller pitching content. You’ll massively increase your chances of a positive outcome if you can get an introduction or even just highlight similar interests and perhaps a common contact.

I also find it very effective to warm them up a bit by ego-baiting – perhaps include a mention of their work in your latest blog post and then tell them about it.

Some guest blogging ‘experts’ offer the advice of adding comments to get their attention. I think that’s a pretty average strategy these days and much prefer to get their attention through direct mentions. It fuels their ego and helps them out which works superbly when it comes round to asking them about writing for their site.

Topic/content ideas for pitching

I ALWAYS pitch guest posts with an idea of what is going to be written about. You’d probably struggle to get a client to agree to SEO if you weren’t going to tell them what you offer until after they’ve signed the contract. I own a couple of blogs and get quite a few guest post requests but almost never invite the individual if they fail to provide at least an indication of the topic they’d like to write about.

Since I discovered the SEOgadget content idea tool I always use this as a starting point, make some notes, pad out some ideas and cross reference with Open Site Explorer’s Top Pages function, which enables you to see the pages/posts on the prospect’s site which have performed the best, this gives you an indication of the type or theme of content that is popular with that site’s audience.

For extra points, take a look at the top performing blog posts on competing websites to help even more with reverse engineering the creation of popular content.

Being mindful of how your topic ideas tie back in with the types of keywords you are targeting and the types of customers you are looking to engage with is essential.

Use some NLP techniques

NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) is a discipline that can strengthen your ability to connect with others, it is a pretty big subject and well worth diving into if you have even a passing interest in applied behavioural psychology. At its simplest, NLP consists of 4 pillars, 3 of which can be applied directly to improve pitching your guest post:

Pillar 1 – Outcomes – being outcome focused is important when it comes to linkbuilding but understanding the true goal is vital. When it comes to guest blogging, you’re not looking for a link, you’re goal is to be given the opportunity to contribute great content in return for exposure and a link back to your website. This subtle difference will serve to shift your mindset which will influence the way you actually pitch.

Pillar 2 – Sensory acuity – the capacity to detect and observe even the tiniest of details. I found that once I began consciously taking note of my surroundings and the finer details of whatever it is I am looking at e.g. a website, I was able to craft emails and guest pitches that were better attuned to the individual I was pitching to. Subtle but more effective references to their work rather than overt mentions of “I was reading your blog and liked that post you made yesterday”.

Pillar 3 – Rapport – building relationships. Building links is about building relationships. Developing a rapport via the internet is a challenge but it’s vital if you want to A) get the chance to guest post and B) Establish a longer term arrangement whereby you contribute again or to another blog the individual owns. I find it doubly important when it comes to guest posting because if you can establish some glue that bonds you with the host blog then you might just stop competitors from ever getting a link from that site as you become their resident expert on topic X or Y.

Writing

Once a topic has been agreed, it’s time to get the content written. How I get content produced depends upon the tier 1 and tier 2 type classifications that we made earlier in this process.

Content creation for tier 1 blogs is difficult to scale as my advice is to ensure any content produced for these types of blogs is produced in-house (if you are promoting your own business) or by the client themselves. This is because I have found that tier 1 blogs are usually accepting you based on your reputation (or the reputation of the client) therefore they want thought leadership, insights from you or specific working practices of your business.

Tier 2 blogs on the other hand are looking for good quality content and whilst they would prefer if it was written by someone senior within the business it is promoting, in reality, this just isn’t scalable and more importantly can be harmful to the ROI of your campaign since it depends heavily on a resource that is likely to be expensive and may not even be available (your clients time).

In this case we recruit an experienced industry writer or several (if necessary) who ghost write blog posts according to our specifications. I feel it is essential that we recruit a writer with knowledge for the market as this always comes across in their work. There are plenty of places you can find freelance content writers online, some are better than others, but if you want to know where we recruit our writers from just drop me an email and I can point you in the right direction depending on what you are looking for.

Add further scale by hiring a freelance project manager to oversee the process (communicating with writers, following up host blogs, liaising with you) because you will quickly find if you are running guest blogging campaigns for even a small number of clients that you soon become overwhelmed with administration and logistical headaches – having someone organised and trustworthy that can take care of business is very useful indeed. If you have the resources in-house to manage this then clearly that’s an option, I favour the outsourced approach since this allows our already squeezed in-house resources to be utilised elsewhere.

I run a small SEO agency but even so scale just wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t hire industry writers and a project manager. Furthermore, I’ve found you can’t beat the flexibility that the freelance model offers since it just wouldn’t be practical to have writers in all the industries we work in, sitting on our books.

We don’t just tailor content according to the tier of the blog but also the profile of the audience. This I believe is one of the reasons our guest blogging campaigns prove so successful because we try to ensure it resonates with the target audience rather than simply offering content that is industry themed.

I endeavour to ensure the very best content is submitted but I always keep in mind our own goals, budget restrictions and timeframes.  Ultimately, guest blogging is for us, part of a larger link development campaign for clients so performance is monitored, if it’s not having the desired impact then we switch the strategy or explore alternative tactics.

Formatting

This will be the shortest section of this tutorial but I think it is a real linchpin. Formatting, in my experience is the biggest bug bear for any blogger that accepts guest posts.

As soon as a guest post is agreed, it is wise to get any editorial guidelines or tips from the blogger themselves. They may prefer a word document or alternatively they may want to give you a login to go and upload the post yourself ready for approval.

Use guest blogging as an opportunity to build not only homepage links but in most cases deeplinks. This serves two purposes; 1) It ensures your client’s link profile is more natural as links are developing across the site and 2) It will improve conversion potential of any resulting visitors as you can send them to the most relevant page on your website according to the topic of the content.

You really should go easy on anchor text not only from a link profile safety point of view but also because attempting to shoe-horn the anchor text link you think is essential can sometimes serve to detract from the piece itself. You’ll need to be the judge of that however as there’s no hard and fast rule.

Essentially your aim is to make it as easy as possible for the site owner to get your piece online.

Publishing

So the post is published, job done right? Wrong!

If you want to increase the effectiveness of your guest blogging then it is vital you generate and maintain some momentum and the best way of doing this is with some leverage and after-publication-actions.

First and foremost, I always invest some time in responding to comments – this helps to foster a relationship rather than giving the blogger a “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am” kind of impression i.e. it’s published, thanks for the link, you’re no longer of use to me.

Building relationships, particularly if you are doing guest blogging for multiple clients, is the biggest productivity win ever. Cultivate your relationship with them, follow up at a convenient point in the future to see if there is anything else you might be able to help with or just do for them in return.

I also use Topsy.com to see who shared a link to the article – powerful information to be armed with if you are looking for further guest posts. You can get in touch with the individual and reference your recent piece which you know they’ve seen and because they shared it, clearly they like your work so the chances of an acceptance from prospects found this way (in my experience) is very high indeed.

I always share with the client’s current social media following and their newsletter email list because it provides additional social proof which is important to convey even with existing clients and followers. It also ensures your client remains visible and stokes the home fires a little – furthermore it is a real efficiency win (engaging two different audiences with one piece of content).

Written by: James Agate, founder of Skyrocket SEO. Image Credit: Swisscan

Guest Blogging as a Future-Proof Marketing and Linkbuilding Strategy is one of our latest posts from: SEOgadget.co.uk.

Having a local presence within the search engines has become essential over the last year. More and more businesses are realising the importance of ranking well for local searches but a large number don’t exactly know what to do about it.

Most know bits and pieces and have set up the odd profile here and there but not a lot know exactly what should be done.

It’s not enough just having a half completed, unverified Google Places profile, there is a lot more than needs to be done and like all online optimisation work, it’s ongoing.

In this article I will be going through the main areas that you should be working on to maximise your chances of gaining better local rankings.

Work through these areas and you will be ranking in no time.

On page elements

Before you start any off site activities you need to make sure that you have the basics in place on your actual site. Optimising your site for local terms is just as important as any other work you carry out.

So many companies fail at the first hurdle by not including simple information that will help highlight exactly where they are to the search engines. Just because you are based in a specific location doesn’t mean that Google automatically know.

Basic areas you should review:

Title Tags: Including your location is important. If you are the owner of a cake shop then you want to target local custom. An example as to how this could look: “Smiths Cake Shop of London”.

Description Tags: You have your location in your Title tag; now include it in your description tag. You also have a bit more freedom so you could include other areas you may cover.

Include Your Address: An ideal place to include your address is in your footer. This helps to highlight to the search engines of your physical location.

Phone Number: Some companies have business numbers like 0845. If possible include your local number as this adds additional relevance.

Content: Just like any other optimisation exercise your content should be relevant. Including local information in your content will help.

Other pages such as your Contact Us page and even your Directions page can also help provide some valuable content.

Setting up a Google Places profile

The next step should be making sure you have a Google Places profile set up and verified. First, you need to be logged into your Google account.

Go to: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps and click on “Put your business on Google Maps”.

Before creating a profile, Google will check that an existing one isn’t already in place. So, on the next screen you need to enter the country that your location is situated and the phone number.

Click on: “Find Business Information”.

If this information matches up with any existing profiles they will be listed and you are given the opportunity to edit them. If yours isn’t there, click on “Add a new listing”. The next screen is where you enter all your information.

Country: You will have already chosen the correct option on the opening screen.

Company/Organisation: This should be your exact Company name. Its sounds obvious but some believe that you should also try and include targeted terms. You shouldn’t.

Address: This should be the physical address of the venue you are looking to include. So if you have more than one location, don’t include the Head Office address on all of them.

The following boxes are self explanatory: City, County, Postcode, Phone Number and Email Address.

Website: This is missed off far too many times. Be sure to include your site’s URL.

Description: You have 200 characters to include a brief description, but this needs to be kept to the point. Don’t include irrelevant information, this space is precious. Include key terms and key services, but don’t just list terms.

Category: A very important area. You are allowed to include up to five categories, so make sure you do. At least one has to be a Google suggested category. Google will suggest as you type in an attempt to lead you to the most relevant.

If you feel that a relevant category isn’t available you can add one of your own.

Giving Google as much information as possible is beneficial to your profile. So be sure to also fill in the remaining sections as much as possible:

- Service Areas and Location Settings
- Hours of Operation
- Payment Options
- Photos
- Videos
- Additional Details

Once you are done – Submit.

You are then asked to validate your listing. This is done by Google sending you a postcard that includes a code which you will need adding to the profile to complete the whole process.

Validating your profile is highly important. It gives you complete control of your listing and also stops the profile from becoming hacked. It is notoriously hard to gain back the control of a profile that has been hacked and this can be detrimental to your local online presence.

So you have your Google Places profile, what next?

How to gain reviews

As you may have seen, ranking sites and profiles tend to have star reviews displayed next to them in the SERPs. Ratings have become more and more of a ranking factor with the evolution of local search.

A recent change to the Google Places layout has placed more emphasis behind reviews being left on your actual Google Places profile. Before this update Google would pull in reviews from a number of review sites such as Yelp, Qype, ReviewCentre and BView.

For example, carry out a search for “Hotels in London”. You will now see that the number of reviews displayed with each profile, within the famous Google seven pack, are now only Google reviews.

But how do you actually work towards gaining these reviews?

It’s not easy getting customers to review your products or services, so you have to be a bit pro-active about it.

In the majority of cases, customers will have included their email address during an online purchase. Email them once they have received their products asking if they would be able to write up a review.

Google now provide a Short URL to your Google Places profile. Include this in your email making it easier for people to get to your page and to review it.

If you are the owner of a Hotel you can achieve plenty of reviews from your guests. If you have a PC in reception logged into your profile page, ask people to leave their thoughts on their stay while they check out. This could also lead to you building up your review count.

Citations
A Citation is a reference to your business and/or your address without a physical link in place.

These used to be seen as big part of Local Search however the recent design change in Google Places has left many questioning if they are still important.

Are citations important?

The easy answer is Yes.

Google still creates profiles from the information they grab from sites known as Internet Yellow Page sites, for example Yell. If you go back to when we mentioned about creating your Google Places profile for the first time, I explained that you may find a profile already in place. Google will have built this from information taken from sites well known for providing citations.

These are sites such as:

- Yell
- Scoot
- SmileLocal
- TouchLocal

I am also of the opinion that regardless of whether Google still grabs information from these sites or not, they are still strong places of reference that people use. So not including your business in them means you are missing out on potential traffic from these sources regardless of any further benefit they may add.

So citations still work then?

As mentioned above, they still help Google create profiles for businesses that haven’t set up their own one. We also continue to see evidence of this within the SERPs. Look at a Google seven pack and as we pointed out earlier, you will see the number of Google reviews that a profile has.

Search for an actual company and we can see that reviews are included from other sites.

Our example below shows a listing for a hotel in Winchester. As you can see, included are lists of reviews the hotel has received from other sites:

If this type of information was no longer relevant then it wouldn’t be included.

In my opinion what we are seeing from Google is a move to try and push people into using their Google profiles more as opposed to completely ignoring the information provided by other sites.

Setting up Relevant Profiles

If Google are still picking up 3rd party reviews where should I set up profiles? Here are five review sites to get you started:

• Yelp
• Qype
• Bview
• WeLoveLocal
• Tipped

In much the same way as Google Places is set up, these sites allow you to include a decent amount of relevant information and claim your listing.

You will need a login for each one of these sites. Once logged in there is usually an “Add Your Business” option.

As with Google Places you may find that there is already a profile set up. If this is the case, claim it. You will then have full control and you can change and update.

Again fill in all fields as best you can and give as much information as you can. But don’t spam.
Some sites also allow you to include coupons or online offers. These sites have their own communities so you may find it beneficial to take part in this as a way of attracting some new customers.

Fake Reviews

With all the basics in place and profiles set up, gaining reviews is a big area to concentrate on. So the name of the game has to be gaining as many as you can. This can take time leading to one obvious option to speed things up a bit: creating fake reviews.

Should you? No.

No matter how much you think you can cover your tracks, it’s not worth it. If you get caught you will feel the full wrath of Google and you don’t want that. Fake reviews are becoming that much of a problem, so much so that Google are now starting to look into this more and more.

Trip Advisor was recently investigated for including fake reviews on their site and they labelled all hotels they suspected of having fake reviews with a large warning sticker.

The more this happens the stricter these types of sites will become. Don’t get caught in the middle of it.

Negative Reviews

Unless you provide the most flawless of services you are open to receiving negative reviews. If you are out there in the public domain someone will always find something to complain about. If you keep yourself prepared for this, this isn’t something you should worry about.

A lot of companies are wary of putting themselves out there in case they receive negative feedback but actually you can turn this around to your advantage.

Negative reviews give you the chance to show that you are customer facing and more than happy to interact with your audience. Just don’t break the biggest golden rule – Never ignore a bad review.

If you leave it unattended, sat on either your site or a profile you have created somewhere, then it can seriously start to affect how you are perceived.

So how should you respond?

First of all you want to be seen to be acting on the complaint so reply to the review, a majority of review sites allow you the right to reply. Address the problem. If it was your fault there is no harm in admitting this and expressing how you will learn from this.
If it wasn’t your fault, sympathise with the customer but give them the facts.

There may be times when you feel compelled to offer the customer something to compensate. Unless this is related to a faulty product then you should resist. Sure you don’t want disgruntled customers but at the same time you don’t want to be handing out freebies left, right and centre. Doing this could lead to copycat complaints from people just looking for handouts.

Above all – Never get personal.

No matter what is said, no matter what you are accused of, don’t make it personal. That is easier said than done, after all this is your business they are talking about, but always remain professional. You represent your company and future customers will be reading.

You’re now ready to rule local search

If you follow these pointers you will now be better equipped to work towards better local rankings.

As with any online project your work should be on-going. Don’t rest on your laurels thinking you have done enough. These are the areas to look into but all should be reviewed and updated so that you remain on top.

Andy Williams is a Digital Marketing Executive at Koozai a UK SEO Agency with offices in London and Southampton. He can be found on Twitter as @Koozai_Andy.

Image credit: Mary Firth

How to Maximise Your Chances of a Better Local Ranking is one of our latest posts from: SEOgadget.co.uk.

Ah, +1. You’ve got to love it. Just as we are getting used to the impact of Facebook Likes and Retweets, Google goes and throws its weighty hat in the ring, leaving digital marketers to fumble around in the dark once more, trying to find the light switch and work out how each social button contributes to the marketing mix.

Google +1 and Rank

Over the past few weeks lots has been written in support of both sides of the argument as to whether the Big G is already factoring in these sharing buttons into its ranking algorithm.

Indeed keen followers of SEO news would have read the Wired Scoop suggesting that Google had indeed begun to ‘study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results.’

The result is a raft of websites already offering to sell +1s by the bucket load, undoubtedly leading to some site owners buying them by the truckload in the vain hope that it ‘might’ bring ranking nirvana.

Thankfully sanity has continued to reign within the digital marketing fraternity and the good people at Search Engine Watch posted this level headed piece on Google +1 that has captured the sentiment around +1 abuse and why the mass buying of such signals will hold very little sway in the real world.

This has had most reputable SEOs scratching their heads somewhat, especially as Google is clearly extremely focused on its promotion of +1 and its use as a rank factor. The really BIG news though comes from elsewhere in Google’s vast and ever churning PR machine…

Author Mark-up

Those of you not completely distracted by the fanfare unveiling of Google+ may have noticed this small announcement about Authorship Markup.

On the face of it, this blog post seemed like a fairly insignificant muse that could easily be lost in the raft of recent updates to Google’s products and services. For me though, it offers a truly eye opening insight into G’s plans for the future. Let me explain.

AuthorRank – The Core Rank Algorithm of the Future

We all know that QUALITY is the defining factor in great ranking. It’s not about 10,000 cheaply purchased +1s or thousands of directory links. Instead it’s about the data or ‘trust’ behind each of those recommendation signals.

Its why anybody studying the +1 debate will already tell you that a +1 from a Google+ account with LOTS of followers and an active profile will be worth more to your site, in the same way that a PR6 link stokes the SEO engine. I talk about it more on our SEO blog and it’s potential has also been captured beautifully by SEO by The Sea’s Bill Slawski here, who I will paraphrase for a moment:

On the potential of Google’s Agent Rank: ‘Imagine a system that instead of ranking content on a page level, breaks those pages down and looks at smaller content items on those pages, which it associates with digital signatures. Content creators could be given reputation scores, which could influence the rankings of pages where their content appears, or which they own, edit, or endorse.’

The benefits of such an approach are easy to see. By having such a granular understanding of the content presented by sites the page can become less important and it means that search engines COULD create much richer, relevant search results.

The patent application for doing this was actually granted back in 2007 and combined with the recent announcement that authorship is to become a standard piece in the rich snippet toolset, it is indisputable that Google is now heading for a richer algorithm; one where Authorship or TrustRank play a significant part in the ranking process.

It’s clever in many ways as it reduces reliance (perhaps altogether?!) on the abused Link Trust model we have currently and also ensures that it is the experts (those adding the most value) that are surfaced in any particular vertical.

Here’s a simplified diagram showing how the content ranking algorithm could work:

Clearly the diagram above is extremely simplified and doesn’t include a plethora of other factors that will play a part but it serves as a simple way of understanding the general process of how the new data, now being collected and organized by Google’s data centers, could be used.

In many ways it’s the next big step in search, and a great way for Google to supplement abused Link Trust data with a more solid foundation.

It is not implausible in fact that it may, one day, replace the algorithm that made its name altogether (although this is less likely), to one based on promoting content and, with it, whole sites based purely on the authority of the writers it employs. Or, even further than that, a semantic web that ‘packages’ content by author first rather than by platform or page!

So What Can you do?

In simple terms, and to quote the Cub Scout motto all you can do is ‘Be Prepared’.

By understanding the importance of +1 and other social media integration and the adoption of Author Markup it means you can ensure that your own site/s and those of your clients begin prioritizing quality content and its promotion as highly as obtaining links.

+1 Integration

For those that don’t know how to integrate the +1 button into a site follow this link to Google’s guide and to back it up make sure you have a Google Plus account and that you are actively posting and sharing content. If you want the code cut and paste from here.

Rel=Author

Integrating Rel=author markup is actually pretty straightforward and in a nutshell here’s what you need to do.

In order for the tag to work correctly you must complete three stages:

1. You need to create a page on the domain you are writing for all about you. Let’s call this /simonpenson.
2. This page then needs linking to your GooglePlus profile page
3. Finally link that profile page back to the /simonpenson page for verification.

Sounds simple enough and in practice it really is. If you have lots of authors you have to rinse and repeat of course, but the process is exactly the same.

For specifics on how to add the markup Google has it’s own implementation guide.

Get it right, however, and the impact on clickthrough rates alone makes the effort worthwhile. The screenshot below shows you just how much standout it gives you:

And the result of all of this? It means that as site owners and SEOs we need to start putting great content creators at the centre of everything we do again because the internet is no longer about the platform but the content that it delivers – and Google is leading that charge.

Simon Penson is the owner of Zazzle Media, a specialist UK SEO and Social Media management agency.

Image credit: yui.kubo

Google’s Heading for Life after Link Trust – Here’s How to Prepare is one of our latest posts from: SEOgadget.co.uk.

One of the key principles in our approach to promoting our clients is finding new and original ways to add value to communities and partner publishers. Much of this work involves guest authoring in high quality, authoritative blogs and publications.

Work with SEOgadget as a Freelance Content Writer

We’re looking for talented writers from all backgrounds, areas of expertise and walks of life. If you’d like us to contact you with a view to working on guest authoring projects, complete the form below as fully as possible. We’ll choose the best responses and get in touch with you!

What happens next?

If you’re successful, we’ll contact you by email. Thanks very much!

Work With Us: Calling All Content Writers is one of our latest posts from: SEOgadget.co.uk.

In May 2010, I attended SMX London, a search marketing conference that all SEO industry folk are familiar with. Many, if not most of our UK industry peers attend these conferences, amongst them Jaamit Durrani, UK SEO SEO Director at OMD and close friend to so many in the UK SEO industry. I was lucky to have had the chance to sit next to Jaamit for a few sessions and discuss the conference on the day and by follow up email afterwards.

The outcome of one of our email conversations was that Jaamit would send me some tips to cover on the State of Search radio show a few days later. Jaamit’s tips arrived ever-so-slightly too late for the show, meaning those tips were never covered and were never published, and then forgotten.

I’m so delighted to have found them in my email account after his tragic loss almost 7 months later.

SMX London – Top 10 Tips

1. Links higher up the page pass more weight than those lower down, according to tests Rand Fishkin has carried out

2. Since January Google has devalued the link juice passed via cross site 301 redirects and seems to be favouring cross domain canonical
tags instead – Rob Kerry

3. The long tail ranking drops from the ‘MayDay update’ seem to be due to the fact that Google has devalued deeper pages which get all their
power from internal links and domain authority alone – “”Deep pages need to justify their existence by having external links to them” – Rob Kerry

4. Get SEO value and link juice from affiliate links by using a session ID-style URL parameter for them, and then using rel=canonical from these to your ‘money pages’ – Rob Kerry

5. The most important dynamic in search is asking and answering questions. So always identify common questions and use your site content to answer them – Rob Sheppard, Ask Jeeves

6. There are loads of ways of getting links from highly authoritative university and government sites. You just need to put some work into it – look at Kelvin Newman’s 17 tips – some are easier than others!

7. New link analysis tool Influence Finder looks like an awesome way of sourcing influential bloggers out of a backlink profile.

8. You can actually get an XML feed of Google Suggest related keywords. Use this combined with Mozenda to trawl through your keyword list and pull out long tail keyword opportunities – Sam Crocker

9. If you have a particularly Social Media Unfriendly domain (eg heavily commercial, won’t wash with the digg/reddit etc crowds), consider a Guest Viral – one step beyond guest blogging, eg making an
infographic, offering it to an authority blog and put your link in the embed code – Chris Bennett

10. “If you can’t figure out an action after looking at an analytics report, don’t use it, it’s crap.” – Pere Rovira

Thanks mate

Jaamit kept his word and sent in those tips even though he knew he’d missed the show deadline. I like people who do what they say they’ll do, a lot. The SEO industry will miss Jaamit a lot – it’s so very sad when good people are lost. Our industry (and our Twitter streams) will never be the same again.

SMX London – Top 10 Tips – By Jaamit Durrani is one of our latest posts from: SEOgadget.co.uk, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.

This morning, we have a guest post from our friend Jeff Orloff who’s been contributing to SEOgadget on subjects such as “What Google’s Chrome OS Means for the Future of Computing“, and using “Ubuntu in the Office“. Today, he’s looking at the dark art of SQL Link Injection, how to test to see if your [...]

View the full post: Link Injections [Wordpress Security] or read more at SEOgadget.co.uk

Today, we have an excellent guest post from Paddy Moogan. Paddy has worked online for about 5 years now, the last 2 have been as an Online Campaign Manager for Pin Digital, an Agency who are based in Warwickshire.  He manages and runs SEO and PPC campaigns for a number of large Ecommerce clients as well as B2B websites in the UK. Paddy often talks about his experiences in SEO on his blog as well as talking about his other passion in life, travelling. Over to you, Paddy!

Photo by stevendepolo

It’s around this time of year that we see plenty of blog posts containing predictions for the future of our ever growing industry.  Amongst posts that can be common are articles claiming SEO, or specific SEO techniques, are dead or dying.  These posts usually pop up around New Year, or when there is a new Google product release or some kind of tweak to their algorithm.

The most popular case of this recently was the introduction of personalised search for all of Google’s users, signed in or not.  The theory goes that if Google is showing different results to everyone based on their search history, then SEO’s can no longer rely on keyword rankings to show they are doing their job.  I respectfully disagree – no SEO should be using keyword rankings as a basis to show they are doing their job.  To me, it is our job as SEO’s to increase the amount of traffic to a website along with improving the number of conversions and overall conversion rate.

One consistently blogged topic I see are posts claiming various link building techniques are dead.  Funny thing is that every time I see a blog post saying that “old school” link building techniques are dead, I smile to myself as I’m sure some other SEOs are doing who know they still work.  The reason they are said to be dead in general, is that there are more buzz-worthy things that SEO bloggers want to write about to make them look like they are on the cutting edge of SEO.  The fact is that ANY link building technique can be argued as being dead, if you do them wrong then they will seem like they are dead. If you take the time and put some effort into doing them right – most still work.

The following techniques have been pretty much written off by bloggers at some point over the past few years so I wanted to review why and suggest why I think they will work – and how to make them work.

You need to bear in mind good link building practice – does not rely on any single technique to get links.  You need a variation on the type of links you require and where you get them from.  Personally I have a brain storm sketch on my office wall of every link building technique I can think of, I then pick out which ones are most applicable and practical for the client and dedicate time to each one accordingly.

Reciprocal linking is dead – long live reciprocal linking

Why they say reciprocal linking is dead – It’s very, very easy for the search engines to spot reciprocal linking and devalue those links accordingly, why do they devalue them?  Because the implication is that the link has been given not because of merit, but because of getting something in return – the reciprocal link.  Therefore the link isn’t as valuable.  Some say it means nothing.

Why they are wrong – If you linked to a news item related to your industry on the BBC website, then a few months later you strike some kind of partnership with one of their departments and they linked to you from the same website, would you tell them no thanks?  No? But it’s a reciprocal link and they say reciprocal links are dead!  The fact is, you have both linked to each other’s pages for legitimate reasons and not with the sole intention of getting a link back. Often a reciprocal link can indicate a relationship that is perfectly acceptable. Think sister companies, overseas domains, partnerships and new products launched on separate domains.

The correct way to handle a reciprocal link

The correct way to do reciprocal linking – if you are going to exchange links with another website, take some time to take a look around their website to assess the quality of it.  Don’t just take a look at the homepage and think it looks ok.  Do a quick analysis of the site using some of your SEO toolbar tools to see if the site is indexed, cached recently, has unique content and doesn’t freely link out to tons of other websites as well as yours from one single page imaginatively named “links.html”. Perhaps use the mozMetric “mozTrust” and “domain mozTrust” to get an indicator of the quality of outbound citations the domain makes and therefore the overall trustworthiness of the site.

When you do link to them, don’t just put a single link with a word or two next to it.  Write a brief review of the website and why you have decided to link to it.  Explain why it is a useful resource for your visitors; you can include an image or a screen-shot too.

You can even write a dedicated page for the link so that you don’t end up with one single page full of external links which is very easy for the search engines to spot and recognise a reciprocal linking scheme and devalue the links accordingly.

Practical Tip – Reciprocal links can help get a new domain crawled, indexed and trusted a little more quickly, especially if you can put the reciprocal links in place to a temporary holding website before the “big” site goes live.

Directory links are dead – long live directory links

Why they say it is dead – There are a ton of bad quality directories out there which only link to websites in return for payment or a reciprocal link.  Therefore these links are not given on merit either, they are given in return for something.  Google doesn’t like this and even took the step of altering their webmaster guidelines to show it.  So when Google sees a link from a directory to your website then that link passes little or no value.

Why they are wrong – Because directory links can pass value.  Google are not 100% anti-directory.  After all why would they have their own and feed from the most famous of them all.

The Correct Way to get Directory Links

Firstly you need to think about the type of links you need to get, anchor text passing links or PageRank passing links.

Submitting your website to a few select, high quality directories does have value in being able to pass PageRank, get your website crawled more and pass anchor text – although a high quality directory will insist on linking using your official website name or company name.  So it’s good for getting some branded links which as we know, are very important.

You can also get anchor text value by submitting to a large number of lower quality directories who are not so fussy about you having to use your official website name in the link.  Instead you can use a nice targeted keyword.  Word of warning – this is a slightly risky strategy to use with a new website which hasn’t accrued trust yet from Google.  So you need to assess your own website and see if you are able to fire a few lower quality links at it and not incur a penalty.  Also be sure to check the directories you submit to are of a good enough quality to submit to and are not banned or penalised by Google.

Article links are dead – long live article links

Why they say it is dead – As with directories, I’ve found the search engines seem to have discounted links from some article sites over the past few years.  Many website owners submit low quality, poorly written articles to directories that do not have very high standards and will accept anything.  Also, Google are getting good at running analysis on what part of the page websites get their links from.  Traditionally article links come from the footer of the page, so if Google sees a load of links from the same place, they can spot this and possibly devalue them.

Why they are wrong – Google still value and crawl new content, as long as it’s good quality, unique and published on a trusted medium.  This seems to be a problem for a lot of SEOs.  It is still possible for good quality articles to acquire incoming links which build into PageRank over time, I’ve seen this many times.  Just take a look at the number of incoming links to deep pages of Ezinearticles to see examples.  Another criticism of article distribution is the amount of duplicate content often generated as a result, despite this not being ideal, Google can still pass value from duplicated links from this content.

The Correct Way to get Article Links

I still believe it’s worth investing time in article marketing and have good quality content written with the view of submitting it to an article directory for a link.  If we go back to a previous question of what type of links you require, article directories are ideal for getting anchor text links.  So look at your resources and see how many short, quality articles you can get written and formulate a strategy to target some of your keywords over time.

Find some well known article directories which have high PR and get their other articles indexed and cached regularly.  You can also do some Advanced Queries on Google to find niche directories specifically related to your industry.

Also – who ever said that article marketing has to take place on external sites that you don’t control?

Asking for a Link is Dead – Long Live Asking for a Link

Why they say it is dead – no one just gives you a link anymore; every webmaster out there is SEO-savvy and will always be protective of giving links out.  They will always ignore your emails/phone calls as they don’t want to be sending traffic away from their hand-built, personal website to your nice shiny website so don’t bother asking.

Why they are wrong – because not everyone online sees things in the narrow minded ways as some SEOs do.  These are the same SEOs who are sold on the belief that you should never link out to other useful, informative websites from your own website as they may lose traffic or even worse lose PageRank!  Website owners do link out if you give them a good enough reason to do so and approach them in the correct way.

The Correct Way to Ask for a Link

To be honest this is an entire new blog post in its own right but I’ll try and cover a few key points here.  The bottom line is that your target webmaster didn’t intend to give you a link, they may never have even heard of your website.  So you are onto a loser from the start, you need to win them around on a personal level to get the link you want.

Building links is as much about building relationships and I’m seeing more and more instances of SEO’s acting more like public relations people when dealing with external webmasters.  Try to approach them in a good, courteous manner and make it hard for them NOT to link to you.  I find that sitting down and making a list of link targets, along with a brain storm of what will provoke them into giving us a link helps a lot.  It also helps to make a list of the resources you have at your disposal to get a link.

Conclusion

SEO is by no means dead; it is in my opinion a growing industry that is only going to get bigger.  Sure our parameters and our responsibilities are changing to reflect changes in users and the internet, but we will always be required by companies looking to use the internet as a marketing channel.  A few years ago it could have been argued that it wasn’t an SEO’s job to get the conversion, simply the traffic, who would say that now?

Link Building is by no means dead.  Old techniques can still work but the way you use them needs to adapt to change.  New techniques and ideas are emerging all the time which require testing and experimentation.  But a back to basics approach can and does work – if you do it correctly!Similar Posts:

• Dave Naylor’s SEO Strategies To Make A Splash
• Using The X-Robots-Tag in Server Headers on Wordpress
• Wordpress SEO plugins – Optimise your blog
• Outbound links in blog articles increase engagement metrics
• How to Count Your Outbound Click Stats with Onclick in Google Analytics

SEOgadget is an SEO Agency specialising in helping people and organisations succeed in search.

SEO is Dead – Long Live SEO

I’d like to take the opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year and good fortune for 2010, and introduce Jeff Orloff back to SEOgadget who’s looking at how Google’s Chrome OS could impact the future of computing. Over to you, Jeff!

Google has hit the headlines recently with its announcement that netbooks running their browser based operating system, Chrome, will be on the market in the latter half of 2010. If Chrome OS lives up to expectations, it could have a huge effect on the future of computing. Below are a few things I think the Chrome OS can do:

Make the average computer user comfortable with GNU/Linux

Ubuntu made great strides introducing GNU/Linux to the average user. Providing a clean GUI that didn’t stray too far from the Windows or Mac operating systems they were used to helped establish that comfort level. The animal adjectives (Karmic Koala, Dapper Drake, Hardy Heron, etc.) gave Ubuntu just enough hipness to pique the consumer’s curiosity without scaring them away because it’s Linux. Of course, trumping all of this is the fact that Ubuntu is a great OS so once people made the leap, they generally found themselves happy with their choice.

Even with all of this in its corner, Ubuntu still wasn’t able to make a dent in the desktop market. While it continues to chip away, it will take someone with a big name to really attack the Microsoft hold. That’s where Chrome OS steps in. Google has become such a large name that people no longer use Google, they Google something. The trust they have established with the computer consumer may be just enough to get people to jump on board the open source bandwagon.

An Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Installation

Of course, the recent success of Android won’t hurt these efforts. Being that Chrome is a souped up version of the smartphone OS, consumers will already be familiar enough with the product on a lighter scale.

Make programmers take security more seriously

I have written before that I find it ironic that good programmers often have no idea how cross-site scripting or SQL injections actually work. Without an understanding of how these exploits work, there is little chance that much is done to prevent them. Not knocking the hard work of these professionals, but when WhiteHat Security makes the claim that 83 percent of all websites have had at least one security flaw, it’s enough to take notice.

Chrome OS being a browser based operating system will be susceptible to all of these vulnerabilities since the applications it runs will be web based as well. While some independent programmers and developers may be oblivious to certain vulnerabilities, you can be assured the folks at Google are not. The last thing they need is report after report telling people how insecure their computers are if they are running Chrome. I would certainly expect to see something along the lines of the Apple App store where applications go through a review process. Being open source, I don’t expect Google to restrict applications, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they recommended certain apps over others. To get noticed, those creating these applications are going to have to step up security or be passed over.

Change the way the communications industry works

Smartphones are popular because with the consistent Internet connection, we can do so much with them. Netbooks never took off as a smartphone replacement because to pay $60 dollars a month for a smartphone, and then another $60 a month for mobile Internet seems like a waste. However, netbooks running Chrome have no other option than to make use of a constant Internet connection. At the same time as promises of a Chrome netbook hitting the market made headlines, AT&T also made news of their own stating that certain users of their smartphones are using too much bandwidth. If Internet traffic is enough to scare away the communication giants, and pricing plans are too high for most consumers, something’s got to give.

The release of netbooks running Chrome may just be enough to prompt the communications industry to upgrade wireless technology to handle the growing use of bandwidth. To stay competitive, it seems to be a no-brainer. For the customer, the ability to tether a smartphone so that it acts as a modem may be the compromise they need to keep their iPhone/Blackberry/Android smartphone as well as a netbook.

Introduce Green Computing to the average household

IBM has made huge strides to bring green computing into the enterprise. With support from hosting companies that run off solar and wind power and GNU/Linux’s tickles kernel, businesses have multiple options for reducing their carbon footprint when it comes to IT.

The choices presented to the consumer market are not as pronounced. Limited to things like turning off their monitor at night, or enabling power save to kick in after 10 minutes of idle time are pretty much the extent of what the home user can do.

Running off the cloud, Chrome will be able to tout itself as a truly green operating system. With much less processing power needed, less energy is expended to run the computer and to cool the computer. The lack of a traditional hard disk drive means less waste. Of course, the push for Chrome to be used in netbooks means a smaller computer altogether, again less power used to cool the computer and less computer that winds up in landfills.

Make a dent in malware

Despite the security industries warnings, people still run their computers without adequate anti-virus protection. Even less update this software to run the latest virus definitions. While most people find it easier to click “Remind me later” when alerted to a file update, few realize that this eventually makes their anti-virus program useless.

Breaking from the traditional desktop model is the fact that Chrome OS will auto-update as a result of the verified boot feature. If the boot process recognizes that there are patches available, these will be installed prior to the boot sequence completing – thus the computer is always up to date.

Another interesting feature that fights malware is the fact that should malware be detected on the computer, the OS can easily reimage itself to remove it. Since data is stored on the cloud, and all the apps run from it as well, there is nothing that needs to be recovered or reinstalled after reimaging.

Google OS promises quite a bit, and if it delivers it could have a huge impact on computing in the upcoming decade.

Jeff Orloff wrote this for Tophost.gr, a web host in Greece offering both shared hosting and dedicated servers.Similar Posts:

• How to Install Google’s Chrome OS in a Windows Virtual Machine
• Ubuntu in the Office
• Link Injections [Wordpress Security]
• The Advantages of Ubunu Linux, By Bob Smiley
• Updated: The Ubuntu Installation Guide

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What Google’s Chrome OS Means for the Future of Computing

Note from Richard: From time to time, we love to look beyond the world of pure SEO and focus a little more on interesting topics like the Ubuntu operating system and related technologies. On that note, I’d like to introduce Jeff Orloff,  a technology coordinator with the School District of Palm Beach County. He also works as a consultant for Sequoia Media Services Inc., specializing in companies that are implementing social media into their businesses for collaboration and information-sharing. He is currently writing a book titled MediaWiki: A Beginner’s Guide. Today, Jeff will be talking about Ubuntu in the Office. Over to you, Jeff!

Since its inception, Ubuntu has based its operating system on the theme that “it just works.” While many home computer users have made the jump to working with Ubuntu, the corporate world has avoided this operating system despite the fact that from the time of installation, it can save hundreds of dollars per computer in software costs alone.

Photo by: Svv

But I get why the business world is hesitant to jump aboard the Ubuntu bandwagon? The misconception that Ubuntu (and other GNU/Linux distributions) is not built for a corporate desktop environment is perpetuated by those who feel that there is a lack of business applications for the OS. Eerily, this sounds all too familiar to the prejudice against the Macintosh in the early nineties.

Unlike Apple, Ubuntu hasn’t taken the same strategy. Instead of promoting itself as the hip, cool computing platform, Ubuntu makes sure that people know that when it comes to productivity, their OS is can provide results.

Software

Home and small offices are limited in what they need their computers for. Generally, the business machine needs to have:

• Internet and email
• An office suite to create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets
• PDF software
• Industry specific software

Fortunately, Ubuntu has an answer for each.

Internet and Email

Included in each installation of Ubuntu Desktop is Mozilla’s Firefox for web browsing and Evolution as an email, address book, and calendar application. Firefox works with no modifications necessary. Evolution requires you to set up your email box(es) before you can get started. Both offer better security and protection against threats than their Microsoft counterparts.

Office Suite

OpenOffice.org has been downloaded almost 55,000,000 times since its latest release (OpenOffice.org 3.1) and is in use by most colleges and universities worldwide. Not only is the switch from commercial office suites a breeze, but thousands of graduates will be looking for this on their desktops when they hit the workplace.

PDF Software

For some time, business users shied away from Ubuntu because they could not fill out PDF forms using this OS. While there are now applications like PDFFiller and Evince that will allow Ubuntu users to easily complete PDF forms, Adobe Acrobat with the plug-ins installed will also permit this if the original document was created as a form.

Industry Specific Software

This is where Ubuntu can take a hit in the corporate desktop race. Many businesses have specific software packages that they need to work with. With Windows being the market giant, much of this software has been created to run in this environment.

This doesn’t mean Ubuntu users are at a loss. Installing solutions like WINE (Wine is not an emulator) or Cross Over can help business users run Windows based software in a native Ubuntu environment. Of course, if this does not work Windows can always be installed on a virtual computer hosted on the Ubuntu OS to run the applications that need Windows.

Gaining Acceptance

Once users see how easy it is work with Ubuntu the fear of the unknown should quickly dissipate. Have patience with them as they learn how powerful this computing tool can be, and when they find out that they can install all of the software at home for nothing, even the most stubborn should start to turn.

Jeff Orloff wrote this for Tophost.gr, a web host in Greece offering both shared hosting and dedicated servers.Similar Posts:

• How to Install Boxee in Ubuntu Linux
• How to install Ubuntu using Wubi from Windows Vista
• Updated: The Ubuntu Installation Guide
• How to install a Nvidia display driver in Ubuntu
• How to Install Google’s Chrome OS in a Windows Virtual Machine

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Ubuntu in the Office