SEO: February 2009 Archives

It's not unusual for certain individuals within an online organization to be under the mistaken impression that natural search engine optimization efforts are free. It doesn't help that Google returns over 5 million results for "seo is free," either. Google does, however, return only 5,000 or so results for an exact match on the search query "seo is free."

Relatively speaking, this disparity in Google results could be interpreted that 99.999 percent of the people associated with an online organization believe that SEO is free. Of course, the data could be construed inversely to support the observation that that 0.001 percent of those in an online organization understand that SEO isn't free.

Of course, there's a myriad of free SEO tools and quick-hit auditing services to help people diagnose their sites' SEO performance and a seemingly infinite profusion of free advice on how to do SEOyourself. As a result, it's completely fair to say that industry players and so-called experts like myself actually contribute to the erroneous notion that SEO is free.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3632902

The use of online video for both ecommerce advertising and marketing, though not entirely common-place, is still increasing. Part of what's driving the trend is that new businesses offering affordable do-it-yourself services continue to roll out more sophisticated features.

Today we round-up some new announcements in the sector, offer an expert's view on trends for 2009 and, finally, provide some resources for optimizing your online video.

See the full story at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3800406

The more time you spend promoting your website, the more you find there are not actually any advanced link building methods -- no silver bullets to catapult you to top of search rankings. If you're disappointed, don't be. Consider the realization a major step in your link building education. All is not lost. Don't lose your composure; what we need is to think creatively.

Advanced link building requires you fear nothing (e.g. rebukes from others) and are willing to sacrifice everything (the efficacy of the brand) if they (the advanced methods) don't work out (i.e. penalties) when leveraging available opportunities to build links. That being said, we actually need to go beyond just being creative with link building efforts. We need to completely redefine the link building box we're thinking outside of. Remember that link building is a moving target, because search engines change their algorithm frequently, that it is a long term process, and there is no silver bullet. Moving forward all the while with traditional link building will yield the best results. As in life, there are no shortcuts - so don't expect them.

However, I've tapped my creative reserve and personal experience to share a few solid ideas you may have never thought of to build links. Some might consider these link building options gray hat (or even black hat, depending), but they do work and that is reason enough to consider them. In the end you'll find that the best, most creative link building efforts have yet to be discovered.

See the full story at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/advanced-link-building-tactics-and-techniques.aspx