SEO Tips & Advice | Social Media Strategies & News

This is part one of my “Don’t be a Snob” series. How many parts will there be John? I hear you say. Well – I don’t know! Definitely 2 – maybe more

I hear it all the time – through forums, through conversation and all sorts of other channels.

Oh, I don’t want that link – it’s a nofollow

It’s exactly this type of mentality that can actually go against you and hinder your rankings. Why? Well the search engines know about link building, I mean come on – it’s part of their algorithm for choosing who should rank and where. It’s an important part of Search Engine Optimisation, one that I personally always stress that if you could only choose one SEO factor, I would recommend link building.

So how are nofollow links any use? After all – they don’t pass any link value, so why bother?

Read more…

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Listen up – I need to be quick.

Just finished recording a screen capture video showcasing the Google Real Time Search and I wanted to get this post out there. After all, if I waited, it wouldn’t exactly be “real time” would it?

Late last night (UK time), I saw the news, that Google had announced further information about their real time search (via Mashable – thanks guys!) Now this is BIG with a capital – well B of course!

Why? Simple – this affects EVERYTHING in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The organic results aren’t gonna be the dominating factor on certain search terms. PPC (Pay Per Click) may be overshadowed even more if your ad appears down the right hand side.

If you’re an SEO that has been burying your head in the sand when it comes to Social Media and how it “doesn’t affect you”, then sorry – this is a kick in the balls for you. You woken up yet? This is as big as when PPC got introduced so deal with it, accept it and understand it.

It’s not just Google Real Time Search – it’s Bing. They announced before Google about their intentions to show Twitter AND Facebook updates in results. Bing also has a more exclusive relationship with Facebook as Microsoft (creators of Bing) have invested, and that includes exclusive deals, such as paid for ads and no doubt special treatment.

So Google will be showing Facebook PAGE updates and nothing more (yet), even this element doesnt appear to be live yet. Make sure you have your fan pages indexed! This is an awesome opportunity.

OK, make sure you check out the video below to see more about how Google Real Time Search will affect the search landscape.

Let me know what you think. Am I getting too excited? Too ahead of myself? Or am I just super awesome and know my shiz? Let me know!

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Well I did it,

Conducted my first ever webinar! I’d like to say thank you so much to the people who shared the experience with me. It wasnt without it’s faults though!

Thank you again for your understanding and patience when it came to the audio dropping out and not only that, but my laptop just deciding to shut down!

I re-recorded the whole webinar today so for those of you wanting to watch it again, you won’t get any glitches, and for those guys who missed out, you can get access to the full recording by clicking on the image below.

This won’t be the last webinar I will be holding. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I was very pleased you found it all useful and informative. I used the service DimDim.com which does appear to be a good service. There were some audio issues – but that might be down to my upload connection as it’s not the fastet. I will give it another attempt and see how it pans out from there.

I am currently in the process of uploading the downloadable files for the webinar. Currently you can watch it online now, and I’m uploading the avi file so you can save it to your computer. I will also be uploading a version that you can put on your iPod or other device that supports mp4 format.

If you would like to download the webinar, be sure to register by clicking on the image below and you will get notified once the files are available.

Until then, I hope you enjoy the webinar! I’d love to hear your feedback, so please stop by with some comments.

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Hey there,

Like it or not – the internet is still growing and your business needs to be visible. People don’t use other mediums like the used to. The phone book is not as popular as it once was, and local newspapers are also seeing a decrease in readership.

One of the most telling signs is when Nielson.com reported that 81% of people use the internet first to find out more about a company? Pretty big number hey?

Well check out this video I did today, explaining to you just how important it is to be visible – as well as something you can do right now to check out if you will appear to the majority of people searching for your services.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below. I would love to hear your opinions.

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Hi Everyone,

Well I’m finally holding my first webinar! Looking forward to this!

There is a maximum capacity of 20 people so spaces are limited, and please only register if you are able to attend, as I would hate for people to miss out.

Anyway, below you will see a widget with all the details of the webinar and you can sign up.

Please note – the time and date indicated below is for your time zone

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This morning I got ready just like a normal Sunday and logged onto the laptop.

I opened up Tweetdeck and logged in. I’m then confronted by the news via Twitter and a few Facebook updates that Stephen Gately (from Boyzone) had suddenly passed away whilst on holiday in Majorca with his partner.

My thoughts and condolences go out to his friends and family.

Now, I’m not usually the one to use this type of news to create a blog post around it but this is the first time I’ve come across this type of thing whilst searching for a particular topic on Google.co.uk at least.

Now, the initial information I had was from someone I’m following on Twitter and that was “RIP Steven Gately”. Now, I naturally did a search to find out how this happened. First stop Google.

Why Google when I found out via Twitter? Well two reasons:

1. It’s still an automatic thing for me to use Google to search for stuff. I’m starting to utilise Twitter Search more but it’s still not my first port of call.
2. I wanted to get straight to the full story rather than snippets of what has/hadn’t happend, so I thought a search in Google is more likely to bring up sites such as the BBC.

There are a few ways I could have found out the information but I still chose the search engine rather than going direct to the BBC for instance. This could just be down to how I personally tend to navigate the internet, but with the advent of “live” search, it was worth noting the results I got from  the three main search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing. Please note, these results are all for the .co.uk versions and searched whilst in the UK. These searches were also conducted roughly an hour after the news broke (the first I was aware of it).

Google Results

OK, so lets start with Google. I went extremely broad for the search and went for “Stephen Gately” rather than any reference to his passing. This is the result I got:

Read more…

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Hey Guys,

So, we’ve covered a lot of ground when it comes to researching and generating keywords for your SEO efforts, and by using those techniques you should be well on your way to creating a lot more in the way of highly targeted money making keywords.

The downside is time – all these tools are fantastic and free but in order to generate a good list, you would have to use most of those tools separately. A manual task that isn’t the most exciting let me tell you.

How would you like the same sort of data and more – in a much quicker and easier way? Well you’ll be pleased to know there are tools out there that do this for you and this saves a huge amount of time!

Brad Callen and his team have upgraded their really popular and successful Keyword Elite tool and it’s a fantastic piece of kit. I had the original version and was really pleased with it, but Keyword Elite 2.0 blows it out the water.

Please check out the video below to see just how powerful this tool is – even though I’m only scratching the surface!

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Hey there,

Guess what. I have another free keyword research method for you. Aren’t I good to you?

This time we’re back to Google, and yes, they have provided more tools for us to use to help us find more keywords. Not only that, but it allows us to delve deep into niches and sub niches we may never have thought of within our industry.

This is fine to use with top generic keywords if you wish, to allow you to find out other popular terms and sub niches. Not only can you use this tool for keyword research, but you can use this to help you think of more content to produce based around you niche. How’s that for multi function?

OK, as usual I have made a video demonstrating it in action, so go ahead, check out the video and have a play around with the Google Wonder Wheel!

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Hope you’re enjoying the keyword research posts so far. As you can see there are plenty of ways of generating keywords, and working out how popular they are.

I also showed you a way of finding out the commercial intent of a searcher with certain keywords. Want to find out what keywords your competitors are bidding on? Bearing in mind people are actively spending on these keywords every time someone clicks on them they have to turn a profit for them to continue bidding on those words! Either that, or they have bottomless pockets

Well with the help of a free plugin – you can find out what keywords your competitors (or anyone) are bidding on. Please note, this only works with Firefox (an alternative to Internet Explorer) You can download Firefox here.

Please check out the video below to find out how to use PPC Webspy:

Grab PPC Webspy for free

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By now, if you’ve been playing around with the selection of free keyword research tools I have demonstrated, you should have some kinda list of keywords that you feel would be great to aim for. If you haven’t – I suggest you check out the Keyword Research Category.

But what now?

Well having a list of keywords is great – knowing how popular they are, even in different countries is also great. But how do you know if you’re going to profit from them? Lets face it – that’s why we’re doing this stuff right?

It’s all very nice showing of your nice rankings, but that means nothing if it’s not bringing in the moolah. I’ve ranked highly for some real strong keywords before, but the conversion was not worth writing home about. Yes, there could have been other factors such as the written copy etc, but even with lots of traffic to counteract that – it still was a flop.

Is there a way of finding out how likely people are going to spend money using particular keywords? Well actually there’s at least two ways and today I will be covering one of them. The best part? It’s still free

MSN also provide various tools but one in particular stands out, and is worth including in your keyword research process. Trust me, it’s worth taking that extra time on this.

So go ahead, check out the video below to get an understanding of how the tool works, and also to be clearer in how to think about the keywords you want. Top level generic isn’t always best

MSN Commercial Intent Tool can be found here.

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