Thursday, April 17th, 2008
While doing a check for backlinks to our wildly popular SEO Comic, I found this blog post (http://filehostfactory.com/site/8/?p=7268). What intrigued me the most was the overwhelming number of link ads (contextual ads) being placed in the post. If you look at the screen shot below you can see what I mean.
I counted 171 words starting with Filehostfactory and ending with “your own site.” Out of those words, 34 are being sold as Chitika ads. That is 20% of your content being sold to advertisers. Wow! And it doesn’t make reading it any easier either.
According to Chitika big money by top bloggers is a certainty so this type of in-your-face link advertising may be more prevalent as small-time bloggers seek a bigger piece of the blog advertising pie.
Has anyone had monetary success with this type of advertising? It would seem to drive viewers away in my opinion.
I do appreciate the link to our comic.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Posted in Blogging, Out on a Limb, SEO Mistakes | 5 Comments »
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
I was checking into our blog’s external links and found this blog post: http://www.ciao9to5.com/increase-technorati-rating/.
The author, Will Harrison, is trying to increase his Technorati Authority and thereby his rating. His method to do this is to link to 5 blogs, his own and 4 others he enjoys and pass it along. Big Oak SEO blog was one of the 4 he chose (thank you). If he has linked to you and you find the post with the link, a request is made from the post that you do the same.
Sounds much like a chain letter of sorts, which I’m not a fan of, but for the sake of the experiment, I’ll try it. As of today, Jan. 10, 2008 my Technorati Authority is 35 and my rank is 231,062. I’ll report back if any noticeable increase happens.
Here is a snippet from Will’s post:
This makes Technorati seem like an easy enough place to increase your rating. All you need for authority are incoming links.
How are we going to get those incoming links? Glad you’ve asked. I found this method called ViraLink. What happens is: I will post the link to 5 blogs I enjoy, including my own, under this post. Those 4 blogs that aren’t owned by me will see their Technorati ranking increase and look to find out who linked them. Actually, it would probably be best to link smaller blogs that will look to see who linked them. Anyways, when they find this post, they are to copy the post and add another 5 blogs onto the list. It kind of starts a chain.
I see no harm in trying it out, so here is Will’s 5 blogs with my 5 blogs added:
- CIAO9to5
- TylerCruz
- Jon Waraas
- Big Oak SEO Blog
- Practical Blogging
- SEO Tier
- 97th Floor
- Graphic Design Blog
- Hobo SEO
- Marketing Revisited
I hope the 5 blogs I added will benefit from this as well. They are all worth reading.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted in Blogging, Link Building, Out on a Limb, SEO Strategies | 4 Comments »
Thursday, December 13th, 2007
I have started doing something I hope catches on in the blog community: Commenting with purpose. Being the owner of this SEO blog I’m always delighted to see comments, especially since this means someone thought enough of what I wrote to read it and then comment on the content.
It can be discouraging when a commenter is taking advantage of the fact that I do follow comment links, but if they have said something worthwhile I feel it is a small price to pay if I give away some link juice. It can also be disheartening to see I have three comments on a post, but the total word count for all three comments is about 30 words. Sometimes three simple comments like, “Nice post, I agree with your thoughts,” can be nice, but more often I would rather have one comment that says something more and even challenges what I have written.
So, I have committed myself to commenting with purpose. When I visit other blogs I will make every effort to make an intelligent, thoughtful and interesting comment that actually adds to the post. It may not always be lenghty, but my comments will never be boiled down to a “Nice Post” comment.
I hope those commenting on my blog will try to do the same, and I also hope my readers will not feel pressured to write more than they want. After all, I would rather see a short post with gratitude than nothing at all. Thanks for reading and for commenting. And when you do comment, use your name, not your keyword, it cheapens the comment, in my humble opinion.
Update: Well I’ve made one comment per day this week and I feel good about my contributions. Here is one of the comments I made on a post by Jill Whalen about changing urls.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted in Blogging, Out on a Limb, SEO Mistakes, Social Media Optimization | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
Having the best blog in the world, won’t do any good if no one knows it exists. Make sure Google visits and indexes all your posts with a few simple plugins. These are for Wordpress only, but why would you be using anything else? The following Wordpress plugins will help provide numerous links to older posts on your blog that might otherwise be buried. The added benefit is your blog readers will also be inclined to read more posts when using these plugins.
Similar Posts
URL: http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/
This plugin will search the text of all posts and display other posts which are similar or related. This will help provide links to older posts making them more accessible to the reader and to the search engines.
All in one SEO Pack
URL: http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/
This plugin is a must have SEO plugin and combines all many SEO features in one plugin, where beforehand you needed two or three. You can control the following options with this plugin:
- Define your home page title, description and keywords
- Define your post, page, category, archive, tag and search title formats
- Use categories for META keywords
- Avoid indexing of duplicate content (prevents indexing of category, archive and tag archive pages)
- Autogenerate descriptions
This particularly replaces the SEO Title Tag many blogs use.
Top Posts
URL: http://www.macalua.com/2007/02/01/top-posts-by-category-plugin/
This plugin will post your most read blog posts automatically a blog page, providing a good starting point for new readers. While giving new readers some direction if you have an overwhelming number amount of posts, this will also provide the search engines with a direct link from a top level page to deep posts in your blog. Think of it as a super sitemap.
You can also create a smaller top post list that can be shown on every post of you blog in the right column.
Making sure your blog is well read by readers and well known by search engines is a critical step towards increasing your blog’s popularity.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Blogging, SEO Tools | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
How well does Akismet stop comment spam? The Big Oak SEO Blog has been running since October 2006 and as of today, November 28, 2007 it has protected this blog site from 10,608 spam comments
Nicely done, Akismet. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Of course it does say a lot about the pervasiveness of comment spam today and how active it still remains, sadly. But it is also a confidence builder for using the DoFollow Wordpress plugin without the fear of comment spam overrunning your site. Akismet can protect you from comment spam 99% of the time even with 10,000 spam attacks.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted in Blogging, Out on a Limb, SEO Tools | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
As any SEO company will tell you, link building is the backbone of a successful SEO campaign so many of my posts revolve around methods of building links without actively searching out links. If you can create buzz and get links naturally just by having creative and helpful content you will increase your chances of higher rankings.
One of our clients, F. Curtis Barry & Company, a warehouse consulting firm, has done an incredible job writing on their multichannel company blog. They have done so well that their blog actually has a higher PR value than their company blog. The blog acquires links more naturally and therefore has the opportunity to drive traffic to their company site, so having the blog rank well is good thing; it is a online sales tool that is at work 24 hours a day.
In our experience with writing and managing blogs for our clients we have discovered that writing about other blog posts can sometimes have a side affect of a link pointing back to the post from the outside blog post. For F. Curtis Barry this backlink came from the Wall Street Journal. The post on the F. Curtis Barry Blog commented on an article (and linked to it) by the Wall Street Journal and a few days later traffic was coming from an automated link back on the WSJ artilce. It is good thing to get traffic and links from WSJ.com…and we didn’t even have to ask.
Be careful though, writing about other comments and posts is a good strategy but only when done with sincerity. It can show that you are only writing about other articles for pure marketing results if you aren’t careful. Have a valid and well-thought out opinion if you do try this. Also realize that you may not receive a link back or that the link may have a no follow attribute negating any link juice (We DoFollow links). So be sure your post is valid on its own merits.
Comments and linking to blog posts on this site are always welcome. We check out links to our content all the time and will comment on other posts about us frequently. Have anything to add? Please add a comment or post on your own blog.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Blogging, Link Building | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
I saw that DMOZ launched their blog yesterday (9/26/07). I actually had to snicker to myself. Now they launch a blog? What about 2 or 3 years ago when it would have been helpful. So many people, SEO people, have been put off by the lack of response from DMOZ that I’m not sure they can ever recover. If not for the “support” of Google I’m sure this directory would have been finished long ago.
I found it particularly humorous they have a comments turned on. We’ll see if they actually accept any. I’m sure most of the comments will be of the unhelpful nature. Although I am purely speculating because at this time there were two comments and one of them was mine: “Welcome to the blogsphere. I hope this will be the first steps in mending the relationship between DMOZ and the Internet public.”. (9/25/07).
I did click the FAQ for the blog and it directed me to the DMOZ.org FAQ page, so there wasn’t much to learn from that.
DMOZ does explain the purpose of the blog:
We intend to use this blog to:
- Provide authentic messages about DMOZ and the efforts of our volunteer community.
- Highlight enhancements, both current and future.
- Allow editors to showcase their categories and describe, in their own words, why DMOZ is so important.
- Recruit new editors. If you have access to the Web and are passionate about a category, find out how to apply.
Additionally we want to hear from you.
I’ll hold my judgment based on the number of posts as well as the number of comments, both critical and supportive. It would be nice if DMOZ would start living up to the lofty goals it subscribed to many years ago and became a directory someone actually cares about again.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted in Blogging, Out on a Limb | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 9th, 2007
SEO consultants always have their favorite tools and a few months ago we hired a new employee which necessitated showing what SEO tools I like to use. That led me to come up with this list of my favorite tools for SEO. I wanted to list the tools I use most frequetly rather than a list of sites with large collections of SEO tools. Maybe that will be a future post.
My SEO Toolkit:
SEOpen
I use this dozens of times everyday for client and competitor sites. Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization. Including google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more. All features are available by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or by using the included toolbar. I wouldn’t leave home without it. You will need Firefox, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I can’t imagine an SEO consultant or SEO company not recommending Firefox over every other browser.
Keyword Discovery
KeywordDiscovery compiles keyword search statistics from over 180 search engines world wide, to create a very powerful research tool. It has a free trial, but it is well worth the money to get full access.
WebPosition Gold
Web Position Gold offers a nice set of tools that we use for monitoring search results. I know it does much more than this, but we do most things manually around here. I like the way it displays the search results online for our clients to see anytime they like.
Wordpress Blogging Software
All of our clients, and this blog, run Wordpress. It is the BEST software for blogging in my opinion. The ablibity to add funtionality through plugins will always be the deciding factor, especially with so many plugins being created to support our SEO efforts.
SEO for Firefox
Want to know why Google or Yahoo! ranks pages? SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results. You can turn it off and on easily.
Google Toolbar for Firefox
Do I really need to explain this one? Google search in your browser with lots of helpful toos, especially for on-page optimization.
SearchStatus
Add-on for Firefox that displays the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyzer, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools.
Google Webmaster Central
Be sure you have signed up all the sites you manage SEO for. This is very helpful for understanding how Google sees your website.
Yahoo! Site Explorer
I mentioned Site Explorer in an earlier post, Research Your Competition with Yahoo Site Explorer but it bears repeating, this tool is indispensable in my daily routine. Fortunately, SEOpen (see above) access most of the features for Site Explorer from its menu.
If you have any tools you use, please take time to comment and let me know.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, SEO Research, SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
If you feel this blog has given you good advice about SEO, helpful examples for search engine marketing and/or been an interesting read, please think about giving us a vote for Best Marketing Blog. In a world where we say thank you so little, this is an opportunity to say thanks to Big Oak and it’s blog authors. Sorry to interrupt with a shameless solicitation. 
But, if you would like to do us a favor and massage our egos, you can vote for us here: http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/22014#
You will have to sign up for an account to vote (bummer), but you can also nominate and vote for other favorite blogs or even your own blog.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted in Blogging, Choosing SEO Company, Out on a Limb | 4 Comments »
Saturday, June 9th, 2007
Obviously one of the most important parts of an SEO Company’s success is keeping up with the new trends, latest techniques and search engine news. The best way to do that is to read the best SEO blogs out there. I have listed some in my blogroll to the right. I hold them all in high esteem, and of course, I would recommend reading my own SEO blog.
SEO Forums
Keeping up to date with SEO forum browsing is also a good idea. Here are some of my favorites:
- http://www.webworkshop.net/seoforum/
- http://forums.seochat.com/
- http://www.highrankings.com/forum/
- http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/
- http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/
- http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/
Search Marketing Standard Magazine
I have recently discovered something almost unheard of in the Internet world, a printed magazine that still has relevance. It is Search Marketing Standard. I read my first issue this month and was impressed with the wealth of information and the breadth of subjects covered.
As an avid researcher and online reader it is refreshing to sit away from my desk, or outside, or at my home, or anyplace other than my office, and read a printed document. There is something comforting even in the this digital age about holding a glossy magazine and flipping casually through the pages. I even looked at the advertisements, something we have trained our eyes to avoid online.
Looking at a colorful magazine is one thing, finding it useful and informative is quite another. Search Marketing Standard did a nice job in both areas.
Search Marketing Standard (SMS)
The issue of Search Engine Marketing Standard that I read (picture to the right) covered many topics in the search engine marketing arena. Of course they had articles about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, but they also gave commentary about social media marketing, SEO certification and a few other gems, including blogging and linkbaiting.
One of the most useful items in this issue was a very informative listing of SEM training courses and certification. I would have like to have seen a review of each course, but that could be very subjective, time-consuming and costly so I can understand the omission.
I also felt a nice job was done bridging the sometimes enormous gap between beginners and professionals in the SEO industry. It is something I try to do on this blog so I was pleased seeing SMS attempt this as well.
SMS also realizes a magazine without a website is a missed opportunity, so they have built a companion site. While you can’t read the published articles (why would you subscribe if you could?) they certainly don’t withhold information about the SEO tips and advice. The site is a useful tool for research with helpful blog posts.
Yearly subscription to the magazine starts at just $15 for 1 year/4 issues for US-based readers and $20 for international subscribers (shipping included). Click Here to subscribe today, I recommend it.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, SEO Research, Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007
I’m trying something new on my blog. While I certainly don’t have a blog with hundreds of posts (this will be my 70th posting) I feel like the blog is getting a bit harder to navigate for newer visitors.
So with that in mind I have added a new plugin that will automate placing my “most popular posts” on a page. The plugin decides your most popular posts by calculating most visits or most comments. I have opted to use most visits. So, my viewing public, you will decide what makes the cut on my most popular posts page. Power to the people! You can find my top posts page from the link in the top navigation or follow this link to Big Oak’s Popular Posts.
As of 5/9/07 I am showing the up to five of the most popular posts in each category. I can change it to show the top posts without a category filter, which means the most popular posts in total. Which way is best?
Any thoughts on the importance of unimportance of this usability test? Comments welcomed, as always.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted in Blogging, Out on a Limb | 4 Comments »
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