This is a post of why natural link building seems to be no longer working, despite Google not admitting that.

I don’t know how many times Google have said: “Produce great content and if users find it useful, they’ll recommend and link to you.” But Google, how do I get these people to even come through your engine? “Produce great content and they’ll (somehow) come…

Ever go to a search engine to find out more about a specific place, such as a street or park or business? Want to see what the area around a historic monument is like? These types of searches are often referred to as location searches because the intent behind them is to find information [...]…

About a year and a half ago, I asked for suggestions for webspam projects for 2009. The feedback that we got was extremely helpful. It’s almost exactly the middle of 2010, so it seemed like a good time to ask again: what projects do you think webspam should work on in 2010 and beyond?

Here’s the instructions from an earlier post:

Based on your experiences, close your eyes and think about what area(s) you wish Google would work on…

For anybody interested in news sites the interactive graphic below is an interesting breakdown and shows just how powerful some of the social news sites are. The Drudge Report especially sends a huge amount of traffic as does the BBC at nearly 2m per month.

Interestingly the BBC has committed to increasing the traffic they send to other sites:

BBC Online will be transformed into a window on the web with, by 2012, an external link on every page and at least double the current rate of ‘click-throughs’ to external sites…

This image might need updated in the years to come, but it does a great job laying out how Google works when you type a query into their search engine. Search is so easy to do that it is hard to appreciate how complex it is unless you take a look under the hood. Which is exactly what this graphic does

Click the image to get the full sized beefy image

A side benefit of this graphic is that it should help prospective clients realize how complex SEO & PPC campaigns can be…

Today, I am presenting at the second GetListed.org Local University in the Cleveland. If you are coming PLEASE take a moment to introduce yourself as I would love to meet you.

For those of you that attended the presentation these links will provide background information and details for a pathway to dig deeper into the world of managing your listing on Google Maps. For those of you that are not in attendance, the slides provide a good overview of critical base line ideas and tactics that every local campaign should embrace…

There are so many blogs on search marketing.

Then there are so many forums.

And Tweets.

So much SEO noise, and so little time.

So how does anyone make sense of it? The deluge can be overwhelming for the experienced SEO, let alone the poor beginner. If you are just starting SEO, here are the ten areas you should spend most of your time on when you’re starting up…

Over the weekend Google added the remaining states (mostly in the Northeast) to the list of where Tags are now offered.

…

How does a search engine choose whether to show news items in web search results and when not to?

If you live in Bealton, Virginia, chances are that you may not be too interested in news of a car crash in Brooklyn, New York, when searching for information about Brooklyn. If you’re from [...]…

With the group round of the World Cup coming to a close and the round of 16 under way, it’s the perfect time to see what’s piqued searchers’ interest since our pre-tournament search trends kick-off.Understandably, searches for [world cup standings] climbed steadily during the first week of play as fans around the globe watched the various teams jockey within their groups to qualify for the next round…

In a major cost cutting exercise the government is to close up to 600 websites in a bid to save over £100m per year in running costs. Some of the numbers being quoted are quite amazing, the Business Link apparently cost £35m last year.

A report from the Central Office for Information, published today, found that £94 million was spent on the construction and set up and running costs of just 46 sites…

I don’t usually post too much on the ins and outs of the SEO industry. I’m in it I guess, but there are other blogs way more geared to report on that. However, for this merger that just happened, I’ll make an exception. I’m talking about a new company called BlueGlass.

The reason this interests me is that we have a weird issue in the search marketing / social media industry: most companies have 1, in some rare occasions 2 figureheads…

In March 2010, usage of Facebook’s internal search engine jumped approximately 48% to peak at 2.7% of U.S. searches.  Though April and May U.S. search share dipped, these numbers are still rather substantial given Facebook search’s obvious people-focus and legendary limitations.  That said compared to Google’s monolithic 63.7 percent of American search share, Facebook’s internal search usage does not seem like a big deal…

1. Using a Non-SEO to Manage the Campaign

Kind of obvious really right? Maybe, maybe not. Although “hard” SEO skills may not be necessary, but an understanding of “basic” SEO definitely is for any serious brand. Doesn’t matter if the actual SEO is being carried out by an external agency – in order to align the brand and it’s strategies you need someone who understands both – an SEO Manager needs to understand both…

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a technology that can enable a computer to look at pictures that include text, and translate those visual representations of text into actual text. If you have words within images on your web pages, there’s a good chance that search engines are ignoring those words, when it comes [...]…

While a lot of the attention on AT&T and Apple in the past few weeks has been focused on the release of the iPad and new iPhone,  the elimination of unlimited data plans is an equally important development, especially for website owners and publishers.

Even though the iPhone is meant to render full web pages, research has shown that people still prefer mobile-formatted content on iPhones …In prior years, AT&T offered unlimited data for $30 a month; however, they maintained that a small percentage of users were using a disproportionate share of data…

A long, long time ago… almost 2 years to the month… I asked a bunch of cool Sphinners I was getting to know for their advice and insights on that great search marketing network we know as Sphinn. For various reasons, I never published those interviews – until now! (SEOptimise reminded me.) In light of Twitter and Facebook’s exponential growth in the past 2 years, the changes in the link graph this has engendered, and related developments, these answers are pretty interesting…

In April, we invited young artists in 17 countries to create a Google doodle based on the theme “I love football.” Since then, more than 35,000 children in Australia, Germany, Ghana, South Korea, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Kenya, UAE and Israel have created original designs for this first-ever international doodling competition…

Two weeks ago, Google announced that they would be rolling their new simple, fixed price advertising product out gradually to the whole of the U.S. Last night Google made good on the first phase of that rollout. Tags is now available in 29 states and the District of Columbia. From their Places Help Article:

Advertising options: Where are tags available?

Google Tags is currently available in the following U…

I’ve been thinking for a while now that, as an industry, SEO agencies are really suffering because of the word “optimisation”. It’s just not the right word.

The Google algorithm is based around 2 things, the easy bit which is on-site optimisation and the hard bit which is link-building. Anybody can optimise a website but in most industries link-building is 90% of the algorithm…

They stole your articles didn’t they?
You didn’t even know until they outranked you.

They jacked your $50 lander without a single thought to how you’d feel?
Insensitive pricks

They violated your salescopy with synonyms.
Probably didn’t even use a rubber.

They rank #8 and you rank #9 on EVERY KEYWORD!
bastards!

Listen, why don’t you just relax…

Internet success stories rarely get any sexier than the story of Johns Wu. 

In 2006, while still an undergraduate research student in neuroscience, Johns started a WordPress blog he named Bankaholic.com. A one-man-show, Johns used an SEO/SEM-focused approach to build traffic and revenue. Just over 3 years later, he sold Bankaholic to BankRate for a reported $14.9 Million.

He was 22 years old…

I was reading this post by Ann Smarty on SalesForce’s brilliant WP plugin, and it reminded of recent news from BuzzStream. BuzzStream are like a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, but for link prospects. And they just added Twitter functionality.

Any link builder worth his salt knows that the best links are about repeatability.
And relationships are a big part of making links repeatable…

This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed.Our latest Search Story, Father and Daughter, is a tribute to all the wonderful relationships dads have with their daughters.While working on the story we came across a comment posted to Paul Simon’s Father and Daughter video on YouTube. Maybe it’s because I’m a father of two little girls, but this almost made me cry…

In a previous post, we talked about popular World Cup search queries. It turns out that people who search for one player frequently follow that immediately with a query for another player. In this post, we explore these timely connections between queries. Below, a thick line connects Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi because a lot of people followed a search for one of them with a search for the other…

Earlier this month I wrote about a granted Google patent, and a continuation of that patent filed earlier this year, that describe How Google Might Suggest Topics for You to Write About, by providing information to web publishers on queries and topics that are either under-represented in search results or where there’s more demand [...]…

School is out for the summer, and that means it’s time for some swimsuit shopping, travel purchases and—before we know it—buying back-to-school supplies.To help retail sites get ready for the summer shopping season, today we’re launching Google Commerce Search 2.0 for retailers in the United States and United Kingdom. The new version of Google Commerce Search provides a better experience online for shoppers and greater control—with immediate ROI—for retailers…

Reading the curiosity-arousing article on SEL, “The Phone, Calling,” I noticed that the use and presence of call tracking numbers, toll-free numbers and other non-main-line phone numbers could cause trouble for search engines.

“First, these numbers throw a monkey wrench in business identification. Second, they could expire, inadvertently creating a dead-end for a consumer. Publishers today struggle with how to accurately identify an actual business when many phone numbers are involved…

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review. test ignore
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Graywolf on Googlebase [...]

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant…

In response to Google’s efforts to block access to Latma’s We Con The World parody, which is another proof of Google’s political bias and unreliability, I am going to go a month without Google search. I look forward to seeing how this works, and will report back. If you want to make a widget to this effect, or do the same, please feel free, and do let me know.

Again, this censuring of Latma shows the problem we have with Google’s dominance in search…