I recently came across what is to me a new SEO problem.
A site I consult with has some thin pages with a handful of ads at the top, some relevant local content sourced from a third party beneath that…
and a bunch of inbound links to said pages. Not just any links, but links from powerful news sites. My impression is that said links are paid (sidebar links, anchor text… nice number of footprints.) (more…)
Don’t limit yourself to bidding on competitors‘ brand / trademark keywords – rank your website for them organically, too!
This is counter-intuitive to SEO consultants – what content will you write and how will you get anchor-text rich links? That’s not a rhetorical question any more – there are a few types of content you can write to rank for competitors’ trademarks and convert the traffic!
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This is a guest post by John McElborough, a [ed: awesome!] freelance SEO from Brighton, England who blogs at johnmcelborough.com
There’s been a lot of talk in the SEO world of late about the idea of ‘content farms’- sites which exist principally to attract mid to long tail search traffic through large scale content generation.
Several high profile SEO’s have been pretty critical of sites like ehow, mahalo and livestong who use these tactics. Personally if a sites earning that much cash through SEO I’d rather learn from it than criticise so for my first guest post here on Gab’s blog I want to take a closer look at long tail tactics and share some practical tips for how pretty much any site can cash in on their markets long tail potential.
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Ads are increasingly being bought to promote content, rather than to create brand awareness or sell directly. What’s interesting to me about this is that it’s a trend growing in parallel with a trend amongst large, SEO-driven sites towards building blog-focused communities. (more…)
And I’m lucky to have been nominated in two categories!
1. My post, “The 4.5 Personas of My SEO Site,” is nominated in the SEO category! If I get into the Finalists round, I’d love for you to vote for me to win!
The post has also made it as a reference for Full Sail’s Internet Marketing Master’s Degree.
2. My article on 101 advanced tips to buy text links also got nominated in the Link Building category.
Here’s hoping the judges will consider my writing good enough to go through and win! 
Here’s what I’ve experienced and learned in the past year. Feel free to skim, but as with my scratchpad first discussing submarine crawling, what you read here today may be industry-changing search news in 6 months… (more…)
The video with my thoughts and questions is after the jump. Please give me some feedback on this – what can I do for you guys? (more…)
Aaron Wall claimed, in Strategic Content Based Link Building, that you could gain $10,000 worth of links with two days of work. That’s a lot of hyperbole, which goes back to how I didn’t make 3K in a week. My 3K post and my criticism in the comments on Aaron’s post is at the heart of this post’s idea: (more…)
If you live in Montreal, you’ve probably seen Silver Star print ads. But you’d be a lot less likely to see them in search results on any major search engine because their search marketing effort is nonexistent (well OK, maybe MSN might return them). Not only is their SEO (What is SEO?) non-existent, it’s a near-100% duplicate of Mercedes-Benz Canada’s site!
If you’re Google and some random Canadian searches for “Buy Mercedes Benz car,” would you rather return the more authoritative Mercedes-Benz website or a total copy on a subdomain?
The answer isn’t as obvious as you might think. (more…)
Hey gang,
I’m back from SMX West – the best three days of my life EVER – and have got some great material to share with you guys. Here are some highlights of what’s coming: (more…)
Here’s a refreshing interview with Kat French, well known in the SEOmoz and Sphinn community and certainly a person to keep an eye out for in search marketing. We cover online community moderation, the strength of social media and of personal networks, and much more. (more…)