SEO Tips & Advice | Social Media Strategies & News

You know the drill. You want to set up a website, you get all excited with the ideas and the concepts and are really happy you managed to get the domain name you were after. But now what? It’s time to check out where and how you are going to host your new website.

Thankfully web hosting is much cheaper than it used to be several years ago, so as far as price is concerned, there isn’t an awful lot of difference. However, performance counts when it comes to trying to get your site to rank.

The three kinds of hosting are shared, dedicated and VPS. Let’s take a look at the hosting options in more detail:

Read more…

Popularity: 14%

Hey Guys,

This post is a follow up to Why Google’s Electricity Bill Affects Your SEO.

Well much later than planned, but as promised, I put together a video explaining further about duplicate content.

The amount of sites I audit, and I see this time and time again. It appears to be (not sure why) a very common thing, so it’s worth checking out to see if you are suffering the same problems with regards to duplicate content.

This is a bit of a killer for your rankings, so make sure you fix it!

Check out the video below!

Popularity: 17%

What’s that? Electricity usage can affect SEO? Have you gone mad John? My question to you – have you only just noticed I’m mad?

Right, before I jump into this crazy post, I want to update you about the Podcast. It will resume, so don’t worry. I am due to be interviewing someone very soon, so wanted to hold onto waiting for a confirmation date. Really looking forward to conducting my first interview.

I will keep you guys posted via Twitter and email for when the interview is due. If you haven’t subscribed to my email list – please do! You’ll get a free SEO webinar and of course, updates as to what is happening!

So, where were we? Thats right – electricity bills and SEO of course!

Read more…

Popularity: 33%

OK, so as mentioned in the last podcast, I was going to make a post about determining your true SEO competitors. Thought it would be easier to show with a few images too.

Right, so your competition – if you’re a business or you have a client that is a business, they will have some companies they see as competition. If a they originally operated offline, they will have some competitors that were also running their business offline and these are the guys they tend to want to gun for. Thats fine, the chiefs are happy as they are getting one over their old rivals.

Honestly though – are they your SEO competitors? Unlikely. Even if they are doing SEO, are they going after the same keywords? Apart from the obvious high level generic words, you just don’t know what keywords they are aiming for. So if you’re going after a particular term and outrank them, does that really mean anything? No – they could be working on something completely different.

So what next? Why not pick a search term, put it into Google and see who ranks in the top 10. They’re your competitors because they rank aren’t they? Again – unlikely. You might be thinking I’m going a bit bonkers with that statement but hear me out on this one.

Read more…

Popularity: 37%

Hey Guys,

This week is something different for the podcast. Rather than cover this week’s SEO and Social Media news, I wanted to share something with you that has been bugging me.

I post to outline the content of this podcast will also be put live in the next few days with more detail.

Until then, enjoy the podcast!

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Have you felt the same frustrations? Let me know!

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 26%

Well this week – I am in a great mood (you’ll find out why when you listen), so it was my pleasure to compile all the news for you this week. Although its now passed my preferred bed time, I didn’t want to be late with this!

This week saw two sites in particular dominate (one for SEO and one for Social Media) as they had some great content.

As per usual, the links to the full stories can be found below:

SEOMoz – Finding Gaps and Opportunities: Step 3 of the 8-Step SEO Strategy

SEOMoz – A Natural Link Love Story

SEOMoz – 5 Ways To Turbo-Charge User Generated Content For SEO

SEOMoz – Whiteboard Friday – What Kind of Links Do You Need?

Search Engine Journal – Microsoft Bring Facebook Twitter Sharing to Bing Shopping Search

SEO Round Table – Google Maps Hijacking Getting Out of Control?

Search Engine Watch – Build Links with a Killer Sales Promotion

Inside Facebook – Some Facebook Page Fan Numbers Fluctuate After Changes to the Like Feature

Social Media Examiner – The Biggest Social Media Mistakes (a Jay Baer Interview)

Social Media Examiner – 5 Easy Ways to Drive Social Media Fans to Action

Social Media Examiner – Foursquare: Are You Checking Out the Hottest Social Media App?

Social Media Examiner – 3 Twitter Marketing Ideas That Avoid Marketing

All Facebook – Facebook Must Make “Instant Personalization” Opt-In Immediately

All Facebook – New FTC Complaint Filed Against Facebook

Mashable – 21 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 28%

It seems that there is a lot of focus on Facebook’s recent advances with their announcement of their open graph and a lot of talk within the SEO industry has been going on in regard to how this will affect SEO as we know it.

SEOMoz did a White Board Friday video (below) explaining the main differences between the two. If you haven’t seen it already I suggest you do as it makes things clearer.

I can understand why people were reacting as if this is the end of SEO – I even thought it but not in the way others have.

For the immediate future Google should be scared of Facebook (they’ve publicly admitted it) Why? One word – Traffic. Google over the last year has started to lose significant amounts of traffic to Facebook. And this is worrying for them.

Another threat? More and more advertisers will promote on Facebook – sometimes instead of advertising on Google.  Stands to reason hey? Crazy number of users, highly target-able and so cheap compared to Adwords (at the moment).

Are they threatened for search? Not at the moment. People just don’t tend to use Facebook as a search engine yet. If they do – it’s heavily reliant on things being made popular.

Google wins in the search war – but they cannot rest on that. Once Facebook becomes a habit for people to use as a search engine (and if they get good results) this could prove a massive blow for Google’s market share.

Read more…

Popularity: 28%

Before I dive into this week’s Podcast – I wanted to report back on a great day I spent with Deborah Micek exploring London whilst she was over for a Social Media conference. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see her talk on the Friday night, but did get to see the sites with her and get very wet in the English rain!

Deb took plenty of pictures, so I’ll see if I can ask for some and post them.

Now onto the news and well – another buy week in the world of SEO and Social Media with plenty to report on.

I didn’t realise but last week’s Podcast was not submitted to iTunes, so that has now been done and all accepted! Hoping to make this a popular podcast for everyone to enjoy.

Of course, let me know what you think – and what you would like to have included and I’ll see if I can accommodate This time I have included the links to the full stories, so for further information, please visit the links below.

Until next time, have a great week – and I’ll speak to you soon!

Stories mentioned:

SEOMoz – 30 SEO problems and the tools to solve them

Search Engine Land – How To Use E-mail To Benefit SEO

Search Engine Journal – 5 Types of Link Building

SEOMoz – Facebook’s Open Graph WON’T Replace Google

Inside Facebook – Facebook Now Testing Sending “Like” Window Stickers To Local Businesses

Social Media Examiner – 21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fanbase

All Facebook – The Rise Of The Facebook Start Page

 SEO and Social Media News 2nd May 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 36%

So there we have it! My first Podcast all recorded, uploaded and edited and about to be put “live”!

OK, so the editing is basic at the moment but as time goes on, I really want to enhance the sound with jingles etc. I’ve heard some great examples, so looking forward to getting custom ones.

I have a confession though – I was silly and forgot to mention that you will be able to get the links to the full stories on the blog, but not only that – I have not got round to getting the links for you this time! Sorry!

However, in the future I will make a note of the links, mention it in the Podcast that you can get them here and post them!

So until then, take a listen (and download if you like!) my first Podcast. As usual, let me know what you think in the comments below. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys!

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 29%

Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a fantastic new year celebration and are ready to hit 2010 with all you’ve got!

Towards the end of the year, I posted about Why Being a Snob Can Hurt Your Rankings with regards to the use of nofollow links. If you missed it, I suggest you check it out, as you may be one of those snobs

This time I want to focus on another snobby behaviour with regards to linking, and it’s one you cannot afford to ignore – especially with how the search engines are starting to shape up with how they look at links.

One of the most important SEO factors at the moment (and has been for a looooong time) is the quality and quantity of links pointing to your pages. This really helps when it comes to ranking, but how/why? Well the search engines see links pointing to your pages as “votes” or “approval”.

So how does it help you rank for specific keywords? Well – to keep it very quick and simple (for this post) – you link to your pages with keywords in the anchor text (the text that is clickable). So rather than using “click here”, or “more info” – you would use anchor text such as “Blue Widgets”, or “Dog Training” – whatever keywords you want to rank for.

So – it stands to reason to get as many links as possible using those keywords and yes it does work! So that’s great stuff – all you need to do now is blast a load of links with perfect anchor text at the pages and you’re cooking on gas! No. Not true.

Read more…

Popularity: 40%