Article marketing has been one of the foundations of link building ever since I got started in SEO. However, since sites like Ezinearticles and Suite 101 have taken a huge loss in ranking and traffic as a result of the panda update, should article marketing still be a part of your overall strategy? We need to take a step back and look at the big picture to find the answer …

While many people will debate this, I don’t believe sites like Ezinearticles were passing much link equity for quite some time…

The Filter Bubble is a new book by Eli Pariser that addresses the subject of how personalization of sites like Google and Facebook are sheltering us from information that doesn’t agree with our world view. Instead of the Internet being a window to new experiences and viewpoints, it becomes a mirror, reflecting back only what we already believe.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will state that I was given a review copy of this book, but it didn’t influence my opinion of the book…

Whenever I see someone else’s linkbait that fails, one of the common reasons is the failure to understand the need for instant gratification. I came across a text book example of this recently so I thought I would share it with you.Like my evil twin brother, Machu Picchu is on my bucket list of places to see before I die. It’s this mystical spiritual place up in the mountains of Peru…

One of the first questions that I like to talk with new clients about are their keywords: what are the keywords they want to rank for and why. The answers are consistently surprising.

Client: We want to rank for terms “x,y, and z.”
Me: Are those your best converting keywords?
Client: Well, I’m not really sure, but they do have the most search volume.
Me: You don’t really care about search volume unless you sell CPM based advertising…

Dear Matt Cutts, will you please stop waking up my wife in bed! Ok, sure, I’m having a bit of fun. Matt Cutts isn’t really stopping by my house, and I certainly hope he’s not in my bedroom. He is, however, waking up my wife … or, more correctly, his webmaster central YouTube videos are …

In late 2008, you will notice Matt slowed down his blogging pace and switched over to making videos…

Does the number of ads on your website affect it’s linkability? IMHO, yes it does. I do most of my reading on my iPad, using either Ziteapp or Instapaper. Both of these tools do a good job of stripping the content down to its most essential elements and displaying it in a readable format. Unfortunately for publishers, this includes stripping out the advertising (see Advertising and Usability)…

The following is part of a series on image optimization. In this post, we’re going to be talking about images for increasing the success of linkbait.

While the long term viability of the infographic as a linkbait tactic remains to be seen, there’s no question that adding images to your posts can definitely increase a post’s linkability. First, as an example of how having no images can ruin a post, take a look at this post on  Museums in New York City from Frommers (screen shot)…

I’m a big fan of the Sonos music system. When they recently asked if I’d like to review the new AirPlay integration feature, I was pretty excited. A few weeks later, an Apple Airport Express Base Station and some cables arrived with a diagram of how to hook it up. It’s pretty easy. You connect the base station via network cable and one audio cable then plug it into a nearby outlet…

Social Media still scares many businesses both large and small. But hiding from social media isn’t the answer. The real answer lies in embracing it … in all of its brutal, raw honesty.

Not participating doesn’t make people stop talking about you. It just means you aren’t part of the conversation… Let’s look at the case of restaurant reviews. In the past, small local restaurants had the upper hand…

The following is a review of the WPTouch Pro Mobile Theme. This is a premium theme that I paid for. This is NOT a sponsored review. I’ve been an big advocate of keeping a website on one URL and not using m.example.com, example.com/mobile/, or example.mobi as your solution (see Dangers of Multiple Website Versions). I’ve also shown example of how Google can get mobile website detection wrong…

The following is part of a series of posts on image optimization. In this post we’re going to be talking about using image optimization as a link building technique.

We’re going to approach this issue backwards, but hopefully you’ll understand why when I’m done. Let’s assume that you have your own pictures and have put some best practices for image optimization in place and your images are ranking…

I have mentioned the dangers of having multiple versions of your website. On recent trip I had first hand experience with it as user as I searched for the term [jetblue parking laguardia].

Bad Mobile Detection

Sending a desktop user to a mobile version is a bad user experience and not a problem you should have. Serve your content under one URL–just omit elements based on the user agent…

The idea of evergreen content is that it is essentially unchanging, intended to last “a long time,”and have little or no maintenance. So isn’t updating evergreen content a bit of an oxymoron? In some cases yes, in some cases no.

This discussion is part of a larger discussion I’ve been having on Twitter about re-tweeting old posts that have no published dates on them…

The following post is part of my Thesis tutorial series. In this post, we’re going to be looking at how to customize your date display.

In the past 12 months, Google has gotten much more aggressive about displaying dates in SERP listings. Since many of the sites I publish have evergreen content, they suffer from lower SERP CTR when “old” dates are shown in the SERPs…

The following is part of a multi part series on image optimization. In this post we’re looking at driving traffic with with “image of the day” type of posts.

Hopefully you’ve read how to optimize creative commons pictures and the basics of image optimization. Those posts will help you get the most out this technique. The idea is to create posts that are directly about your subject matter or related enough that they aren’t a stretch and to publish them on a daily basis…

If you were paying attention, late last week you saw a guest post that published Thursday night. This was an interesting post, as it provided some in-the-trenches, first-hand analysis of a website that was ranking and why. However, the downside was that this analysis named a specific website, where/how they where getting links and ranking, and crossed the line. It’s what many people would consider outing…

A question that I get asked fairly regularly is “how many websites should I run? Am I better with one website or lots of little ones?” The question has some different aspects, so, as someone who runs more than one website, I’ll try to share some of my experience.

… no website will ever be finished, but it can reach a point where it covers everything it needs to and just runs in low maintenance auto pilot mode …If you are brand new, or even if you’ve been doing this for a while, and you aren’t having much luck, my advice is to do exactly what Lynn Terry says and concentrate on just one website…

The following post is part of a series on Raven SEO tools. In this post, we’re going to look at the event manager.

The event manager is quite simply a way to “mark” a day or series of days for a single website you are tracking or across an entire profile of multiple websites. Under the dashboard tab is a sub-tab labeled “event manager.” If you click “add a new event,” you will see a screen similar to the one one below…

The following post is part of a series on image optimization. In this post we’re going to look at optimization techniques for creative commons images.

Creative Commons (or CC) images that have been labeled ok for commercial reuse can be an exceptionally powerful tool in the hands of every website publisher. I’m surprised more people aren’t using them. A brief recap: creative commons images labeled for commercial reuse are images that the copyright owner allows to be reused for commercial purposes as long as the image is credited back to the source…

In the most recent 12 months, Google has taken steps to reward websites that are brands, or at least give signals that they algorithmically look like brands. If you’re not national, regional, or local brand, here are some steps you can do to look more brand-like.

Get a Real Address

… if you’re going to put your eggs in one basket, it better be one you’re holding–not Facebook…I’ve written about Google giving a bonus to websites that had a matching real world address on their website and Whois information…

The following is part of a series on image optimization. In this post we’re going to be looking at sources for images.

Premium Stock Images

There are a lot of sources for stock images on the web. On the web, however, there is a huge divide in prices. While the images from this category are very professional, and very high quality, in this author’s opinion, the cost is extremely overpriced and should only be considered if you are a Madison Avenue Advertising Agency or operate with a similar pricing structure…

I recently came across an article that was bemoaning the fact that the travel blogging space has become overrun with low level search intended writing, and the actual feet on the ground, first hand, personal travel experiences are disappearing from the web. IMHO this author has confused love and money, a common complaint in the web publishing world.

The question you need to ask yourself is whether you are in the game for love or money … cause you can’t have both …To be honest, most of us will agree that the first hand, personal experience type of writing that someone does because they truly enjoy the subject is of a better quality and is what we really want to read and learn from…

Last week Google announced a new addition to the search engine results page: the +1 button. While there was a huge amount of press surrounding the launch, after playing with it for a few days, I don’t think it’s going to work unless it has an on page component … soon.

Let”s talk about what Google got right. The button is easy to use, unlike sidewiki or the privacy invading Google buzz…

The following is part of a multiple part series covering image optimization techniques. This article is intended for beginners through intermediate SEO’s; if this doesn’t pertain to you, you may want to skim as most of this will probably be review material for you.

Some of the big questions many people ask are why would they even want to perform image optimization? Doesn’t it just help people who want to steal or hotlink images? And is there really any meaningful traffic or links that you can get from image optimization? IMHO the answer is yes…

Recently there has been a lot of talk about Facebook versus Twitter and which is more valuable to web publishers. If you’re looking for the short answer, IMHO it’s Facebook; but, to understand why, you need to have deeper understanding of how each system works.

One of the key aspects of Twitter’s meteoric rise was a very low barrier to entry: basically all you needed was a working email address…

I’ve mentioned incorporating living URL’s into your SEO strategy before.  Now that I have been experimenting with them for a while, I have some tips about using them a little bit more intelligently.

If you read fashion magazines, you know that every year they publish a spring fashion update; bridal magazines publish new spring wedding dresses; and bands that have been around a long time will always return to give concerts in major cities like New York or Los Angeles…

While running multiple websites isn’t a strategy I recommend for beginners, it is something experienced publishers and SEO’s can do to diversify their income sources. While some people choose to run websites in different niches, another option is to run seasonal websites.

If you are going to run seasonal websites, you want to set up websites that have peak traffic and buying cycles that are at opposite times of the year–say, for example, Department 56 Christmas decorations and swimming pool supplies…

One of the questions that comes to my inbox fairly regularly is how do you actually build an affiliate website, one that will rank for competitive terms and make you enough money that you can live on? Talk about a big question that I really can’t answer in a single or even multiple emails!  Well, if you’re one of those folks, I’ve finally got something to offer you: Nick Reese’s Traffic & Trust ebook…

How much time do you spend doing SEO per day … or specifically how much time do you waste reading about SEO instead of doing it? Unless you are beginner who is still  learning, if your spending more than an hour reading about SEO everyday, you’re probably wasting your time.

While the SEO space is filled with “news”, drama, and attention seeking behavior (also known as ASB), there simply isn’t a significant amount of important changes that go on in SEO on a daily basis…

While Google has taken action against content farms, from a strategic perspective I still think there are lessons that every publisher can learn from the content farm model. If you haven’t already seen it, please take a look at the leaked AOL document on content farms.

… AOL sees content as a commodity to sell ads against …The first slide worth taking note of is slide 15 – content generation process…