Pixel Thread

The SEO Playbook, is a long blog post by a guy who goes by the name of Stuntdubl. It’s a useful overview of where SEO is today, breaking down the many different aspects that exist to the practice.

SEO is the thought process of lateral thinking and understanding of website creation and marketing combined.

A lot of companies see SEO as something for the techies to deal with, but it’s about much more than just the code.

If you want to get your head around some of the jargon and some of the tactics that surround Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), check out the SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO. It’s a great resource for anyone new to SEO, as well as old hands who might need a quick refresher on some of the basics.

The amount of care and attention author Rand Fishkin puts into the guide is inspiring. He’s great at sharing knowledge and experience and comes across as very altruistic. creating a lot of goodwill for his company, SEOmoz.

It’s a perfect example of good content driving traffic and links (like this post).

I’ve been working with Modern Glass Bristol (window films and glazing), looking at their online marketing and working out on the best way for them to increase their visibility on the web.

This was an interesting project for me - it was in an unfamiliar area, windows and glazing - which made it a challenge.

Modern Glass were interested in a localised campaign which made the project very focused.

I looked at their business and talked to them about areas they wanted to build on and areas that were the most profitable. I looked at their existing online and offline marketing and gave them a proposal that included:

• a new website, focusing on specific keywords
• a google adwords campaign
• targeting of natural search results

They were keen on all aspects of the proposal and I’ve been working on the campaign over the past few months. Their new website is simple, accessible, and usable. It’s optimised for search engine spiders (the software that search engines use to crawl the web indexing new sites) and people…

I also discovered a great way of hiding an email address from spammers while working on this project and so far it’s been very successful. Details in the next post.

Without trying to write a post that is in itself ‘link bait’ by being controversial, the title of this post is my genuine feeling about ‘link bait’. My immediate response to the term, is ‘what a waste of everyone’s time’, but then I can also see ways where it doesn’t need to be a waste of space.

If you haven’t come across the term yet, ‘link bait’ refers to any content posted on the web that the poster hopes will generate them traffic.

The most obvious form of this is using controversy to try and interest people in your opinions.

For example a blogger might post something with a controversial title just to get people to read their blog.

But what’s the point in saying something controversial if you don’t mean it?

This desperation for clicks just adds to the endless inane chatter that the web facilitates so well.

Alternatively, if someone posts something insightful which gives a new perspective on a current debate, then that’s also link bait, because people will want to link to it. Content is king again?

The moral of this story is only publish genuine content that you believe in. Don’t try and be controversial to generate links, you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

More:

Matt Cutts (Google) on link baiting
Link baiting on Wikipedia
Boris Johnson - king of link baiting in the real world ; ) (NB linking to Boris certainly does not imply support of his policies, but just proves that his baiting works!)

I’ve just been having a Christmas drink with my sister and brother-in-law. They’re starting a bespoke furniture business, and I was talking to them about how they could be doing things online. They’ve commissioned a website, and they’re pretty confident they’ll be able to get customers through adwords.

I encouraged them to think about their natural search results positioning, because:

1. In the long term it’s more economical - it might take a bit of effort to achieve the natural results but over time this effort will pay off. You don’t have the continual pay out that you have for adwords campaigns
2. Managing adwords campaigns effectively is really time consuming
3. Natural Search pulls 250% more traffic than the paid search
4. Natural search visitors convert nearly 30% higher than paid search

More details on the comparison between natural and PPC in this blog post.

Sometimes I feel a bit like a broken record, I’m always telling people I meet who have their own businesses and websites that they should be blogging. When you work online all week, you forget that other people are quite rightly far more focussed on their core business rather than how they could be using the internet to promote themselves.

If you have a business, here are ten reasons why I think you should be blogging:

1. At its most basic, a blog can work as a simple content management system for your site, enabling you to update it without running up fees from your web agency
2. A well-written blog will promote your knowledge and / or the quality of your product
3. Blogs can provide instant communication with your customers via RSS, great for notifying people of events or new products, (but don’t ever let your blog become a sales pitch)
4. Posting on a blog is less intrusive than sending a marketing email to your customer list. People will read it if they want to rather than your message being forced into their inbox
5. Blogs create a regular ongoing dialogue with your customers, reminding them of your existence even if they have no intention of buying your product or hiring your services at that moment
6. You can benefit from feedback from your customers via comments on your posts. Even if it’s negative feedback this is useful, as it tells you where you could be doing things better
7. With its commenting system, a blog is more like a one-to-one communication tool rather than mass communication system. A blog can build a more intimate relationship with your readers than a newsletter or marketing email
8. Having a blog on your site will improve your ranking in the search engine results pages. Search engines give more value to a site that has been recently updated. By including a regularly updated blog your site will be continually refreshed
9. Your site will become visible to blog search engines like technorati.com and blogsearch.google.com attracting new people to your site
10. Writing and posting blog entries is easy, it requires no technical expertise and is as simple as filling in an online form

If you want to read more, have a look at: Naked Conversations : How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers It’s more about big businesses using blogging, but it’s all very relevant.

An older book that also tackles similar themes is The Clue Train Manifesto. It was published in 2000, but a lot of the ideas it explores are still relevant now. As one review on Amazon says: “This is about as far away from a traditional business book as you can get”.

Next time I’ll post links to some of the companies that I think are doing this well.