Lee, Please ...

Just had this from someone who works for a client. I might just do a summary blog post on it. But the beauty with most things social, is that we all share ideas - and so they're not all mine. But after the first quarter of the year is over (my busiest) I'll be hitting the blog with more useful posts. I'm currently testing a few tactics so I'll loads of feedback to give.

Lee,

When will you be bringing out your book on internet marketing and the social media? The one all about 'how to....' that takes a complete novice through the hows and whys in a step by step format, such as:

• How to set up a blog
• How to write SEO relvant blog articles
• Where to publish your blog
• How to chose blog articles to write about
• How to make Facebook work for you
• How to make Twitter work for you
• How to set up your first twitter account
• How to choose the twitter topics to write about
• How to choose the facebook topics to write about
• All about google adwords
• How to choose relevant adwords
• How to organise your google adwords account to make it efficient and effective
• Where to link your adwords to your website and why
• What about other social media sites - what are they, are they useful

Then the advanced course - how to take all this info and turn it into a strategy for doing it for paid clients - how to find clients, what to charge, what to offer on a regular basis etc, how to write a proposal for the clients etc

If you could do it on a step by step basis, taking someone through from scratch how to sort it all out, with screen shots for each step, I think you'd be onto a winner.

You've probably got a lot of it written already, so you could get a £19.99 (or whatever) ebook going - back it up with a £199 course, and a £9.99 a month newsletter with the latest info and what you should be thinking of doing on a monthly basis.

Can I buy the first copy/newsletter subscription please?

PLEASE launch it asap, help me out and make yourself another great stream of income.

[Anon]

© Img Karola Riegler Photography

Answering Elaine's SEO Questions

Elaine asked some questions earlier in the week. I'm not sure how many were rhetorical, but I thought I'd add my thoughts (anything to keep me away from the VAT).

• Should I search the ethernet for PR4+ blog posts, which don’t implement the ‘no follow’ and then try and figure out how to, sneakily, get my link in, so it looks oh so natural?
  
  - Sneakily? I've had some great success using the Majestic SEO tool and SEOMoz's Competitive Link Finder in finding other blogs to get links from - I don't' take too much interest in page rank.
  
  - My biggest source of links is from retailers who place my reviews (testimonials) on their site and then link it.
  
  - I'm also working on another strategy which crosses the biz dev / link building objective by using Twitter to engage and then acquire commentary / links. I'll expand on this later.
  
  - A few years ago I saw that it'd be more difficult to acquire links without offering something better than the average site. So I started going further down the content route with more emphasis.
  
  

• Should I be making fan pages on Facebook, My Space, Bebo, Squidoo and Wikipedia?
  
  - I get some traffic from Facebook and Wikipedia. It doesn't help with SEO a great deal (well conventional wisdom says that - who wants to be conventional though?)
  
  - Don't forget Flickr though - more on that some other day.
  
  
  
• Should I be creating numerous twitter accounts to cater for the wide range of products I could twit to unsuspecting followers?
  
  - Nope - one per site is good. Twitter is a massive element of my biz dev strategy. It's paramount that I engage and illicit the support of my followers to grow my sites.
  
  
  
• Should I be writing numerous blog posts to my various alter-ego blogs and inter connecting them all?
  
  - there's nothing wrong with inter-linking in a relevant fashion. I do it to some degree, but only when the link is valuable because the content I link to is of use to the user. I won't do those stupid links in footers on their own.
  
  
  
• Should I be creating more niche websites on the WP platform?
  
  - I use Blogger, everyone knows that. But after some recent client work with WP I'm going to move a couple of new ones over to it and see how they get on. There's some awesome plugins that would save me a massive amount of work, so they're worth testing.
  
  - I often think its worthwhile extending your 2 or 3 main sites. You could use HitTail to extend your keyword range?
  
  
  
• Should I be searching out different hosts so that I don’t host my sites on the same IP address?
  
  - this strategy is only useful if you're over-reliant on using your own link juice and you find it difficult to attract links naturally.
  
  - make your sites good enough and it won't be a problem.
  
  
  
• Should I be signing up for the latest SEO/Affiliate conference, although they cost a fortune?
  
  - I was just thinking this. There's so many good resources (like SEO Scientist) etc that I feel that often its not worth it for the education alone. But there is the value of networking.
  
  
  
• If I sign up for the latest SEO/Affiliate conference will I make myself ill worrying about networking?
  
  - Elaine worry about anything? Nah. You're an expert!
  
  

• Should I be writing dozens of articles for article sites
  
  - only do what you're interested in. For sites that I have less passion for I use TextBroker - they're awesome!
  
  
  
• Should I be writing concise articles, inserting just the one link to my site, for other complimentary sites?
  
  - have a look at Glen's views on the most tweeted blog posts. Long posts work. Only link when its relevant. Do some content because people will find it useful.
  
  
  
• Should I be spending most of my time finding those ‘impossible’ PR8 one way links which will lift my site up to Nirvana Link Heaven?
  
  - Have a read of the World Wide Rave or Crush It! - there's some great ideas there to attract great links as a by-product of self marketing.
  
  
  
• Should I just concentrate on good content and bugger the SEO side of stuff?
  
  - Nope - they're two sides of the same coin. Make SEO a "given", always have it in your mind, but put the content first.

• Should I forget about good content and concentrate on the on-page stuff?
  
  - as above.
  
  
  
• Should I use ‘no follow’ to sculpt my site into the silo effect? (no I haven’t got a clue, either!)
  
  - lol! Read this post from SEOMoz.

• Should I start using pivot tables to analyse my data from Google Analytics?
  
  - I gave up on this post too. For some it'd be useful, but for me it was over-kill.
  
  
  
• Should I start actually analysing my data from Google Analytics?
  
  - hell yeh. As well as Hittail there's some great keywords in there for content expansion as well as source URLs that you can go back to and try and expand your exposure on.
  
  
  
• Should I be concentrating on the long tail keywords and not the short tail ones?
  
  - With different sites I'll do different things. But generally I concentrate on mid-range keywords and when the site has got some traction, I move further into the head.
  
  
  
• Should I be using Linkscape or Majestic - or both?
  
  - Both.
  
  
  
• Should I start buying links? (that’s a rhetorical question Matt, I’m a Yorkshire lass!)
  
  - It depends what you mean "buy". But in the traditional sense, now. But some directories are worth it.

• Should I start selling links? (another one of those rhetorical jobbies!)
  
  - One of my competitors does. Now do I report them? cough

• Should I start interlinking my pages with the relevant anchor text (don’t forget to alter it, though) from within the content on similar pages?
  
  - Yes, where relevant.

• Should I ‘no follow’ all my affiliate links?
  
  - you should be robots.txt'ing them. I've not really bothered with nofollow. Perhaps I should.

• Should I ‘no follow’ all my outbound links?
  
  - I don't do it. If I link to people its because they deserve it. Ok, so I've done it once or twice when I've thought they've not.
  
  
  
• Should I bother with reciprocal links?
  
  - Value is obviously less than one-way links with relevant anchor text in relevant content. But also think about the traffic they give. I get some useful traffic from reciprocal blog roll links.
  
  
  
  
• Should I bother with backlinks from sites with PR1 or less?
  
  - Today's ugly duckling is tomorrow's "bit of alright". If the site is relevant its worth asking. A site might also have a penalty and if it is removed then the link-juice could be of use.

• Should I submit to directory sites?
  
  - There some useful ones, but they're mainly topic related.
  
  

• Should my main content be moved to the top of the page with the help of CSS?
  
  - Er no. Concentrate on what's within the content - that's infinitely more important.
  

• Should I start following all the Twitterartis mentioned on the latest top 500 worldwide SEOists?
  
  - I've really reined in who I follow. There's some good information streaming through. But be selective.

• Should I stop salivating each morning at the thought of the little pearls of wisdom which might have appeared in my Twitter timeline overnight from SEOists with strange names?
  
  - I'm going to be controversial. SEO doesn't change as fast as people think. Only people's perceptions of it.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below :-)

Img © walkn

How To Get More ReTweets

An awesome presentation, you may have to join the dots, but take a look at this analysis of retweets:

The Science Of ReTweets

View more presentations from Dan Zarrella.

Thanks MDS Battery For My Porno Bunnies

Just a quick one to say thanks to Mike from MDS Battery for my Duracell Bunnies. When I saw the automated null invoice come through with "Porno Bunnies" as the item name I was a bit worried. Thankfully they weren't engaging in any sordid activity, but simply naked! I've still censored their bits though.

p.s. there's a free bunny with every Durecall order!

Kids Today Don't Know They're Born

I must be getting old as I'm moaning out about how lucky kids are today compared to when I was in short trousers! They get everything on a plate and even their exams are bloody easy, they can't go to school with a bit of snow or a grazed knee, they get school psychologists and all sorts of pampering.

All this takes me back to that fantastic Monty Python sketch:




Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. "Farewell to Thee" being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.

Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.

Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?

Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah.

Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

GC: A cup ' COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TG: OR tea!

MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."

EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpaulin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TG: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!



GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope..

Are Malformed Links Any Good?

When I got interviewed last year by the Telegraph for this piece featuring my Easter eggs site I was over-the-moon. Who wouldn't be? Then I was gutted to find out that they cocked up my link. After contacted them several times they still haven't changed it. But I was still happy that I got the exposure.

But looking back, almost a year later, what have I got from it? Well I'd not really put two and two together until this morning.

Even with Easter a distant memory whilst people tried to enjoy the summer, get ready to go back to school, think about Christmas then actually enjoy it, I kept getting a good number of direct visitors.


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Before the article I was getting about 10 direct visits a day out of season, and after it was about 120. Very strange.

I looked a the nature of the traffic and they were from a diverse array of cities - obviously with a London bias and there wasn't anyone pinging the bugger out of the site looking at the network locations too.

Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that people would click on the link, see they've encoded the link wrong and then rectify - just as I did? Seeing as I've done no email marketing for the domain since last Easter I think that's fairly reasonable.

The only nagging thing in my mind was the large growth in direct traffic before the date, but looking at the previous month, it happened there too.

But what about link juice? Does Google et al follow mall-formed links? I'd probably say that they do when they're caused by just adding non-alphanumeric characters to the domain extension when their can be no other domain extension it could be.

Another thought was that if MajesticSEO can find them, then so can Google - they did, found it, however because the domain was the anchor text too. I'm positive Google would pass on some weight from it.

Also I did have a nice growth in links after that date too. I did no link-building/acquisition after Easter last year so did I get links from people that read the article - it'd be difficult to tell. But this chart is nice:


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So, from experience. Here's some advice. Work hard to get links from quality sources, if they do screw them up then try and get them changed (obviously), but if you can't then take any benefit from them you can. There's always the traffic - and that's the main thing right ;-)

Tracking Link Profiles Over Time

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Well it looks like Myspace is not only loosing the traffic stakes against sites such as as Facebook and Twitter, but also in terms of inbound links too - as can be seen by the chart above from Majestic SEO.

It's a bloody nifty tool and one I've been looking for for a while. It lets you compare a the number of inbound links (and their domains) found for given sites over time. This will allow you to gauge your efforts against your competitors.

One of my major tasks in the coming months is to improve the link profile of my and my clients' sites, and this will be a great tool to provide KPI data.

Hopefully you guys will have a good play with it.