Wingnut SEO

Someone was asking me today what I have book marked so here goes:

SEO Related:

• http://www.seomoz.org/ - Great articles, great tools.
• http://searchengineland.com/ - Helpful news about the search engines
• http://www.seo-browser.com/ - Quick Spider Simulator
• http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/ - Another decent Spider Simulator
• http://www.seotoolset.com/tools/free_tools.html - Free SEO tools
• http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html - Errors with your Robots.txt because you know nothing about it?
• http://info.vilesilencer.com/ - Need to find some SEO friendly directories for quick and dirty low quality linkage?

SOCIAL MEDIA Related:

• http://sphinn.com/ - Should probably just set this as my homepage
• http://www.gooruze.com/ - Only use it for the Q&A section

BLOG Related:

• http://www.wolf-howl.com/ - My very first SEO related blog bookmark
• http://www.irishwonder.syndk8.co.uk/ - Blackhat musings
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ - 125 Social Bookmarking sites
• http://www.zanypixel.com/blog/untapped-link-building-strategies/ - 100 link building strats
• http://www.kolbrenerusa.com/blog - 50 Niche Social Networks

DESIGN Related:

• http://www.colorjack.com/sphere/ - Find the right colors
• http://browsershots.org/ - Test your web design in different browsers

TECH Related:

• http://techmeme.com/ - How can you live without the Tech News?
• http://forums.techguy.org/ - Great forum for any tech problems you have

FUN:

• http://www.theoldcomputer.com – Because everyone needs Nintendo ROMs sometimes

If you don’t know what Twitter is… where have you been? Twitter is basically micro-blogging, it’s like that FaceBook “tell your friends what you’re doing” section… and that’s it. What’s the point? The point is that it is great networking - it’s like super-social media…

Right now I get a lot of traffic by posting a link to my new posts there… but it’s more than just marketing and getting traffic… you actually can make friends - you’re in constant communication with anyone you’re following. I started out following a bunch of my favorite bloggers and only about 2 real-life friends… Something cool that happened is that some of these guys followed me back and said hi - I was suddenly connected with some brilliant writers and big names in the SEO/SEM/Social Media/Blogging world. I have even met someone I initially only knew through Sphinn thanks to the magic of Twitter.

So if you are reading this and not in the Twitter club you should go sign up and follow me on Twitter.

NOTE: If you do sign up for Twitter - and use it on your mobile device - it’s very easy to drunk-Tweet… like drunk-dialing… except it might rank for your name later.

Dan Perry has come up with a rather genius link-bait in the form of giving away something - Win a Google Fridge.  I have decided I need to win this fridge because it would be the perfect size to store my life sized bust of Matt Cutts that is made entirely out of his hair and used chewing gum (pilfered from conference trash bins).  Without a fridge the bust needs constant spritzing of the purest mountain spring water or it tends to dry out and catch fire… I don’t know why

Real posts will happen when I find some time… so thanks to all my readers for sticking with me

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything (he says as he declares RSS bankruptcy after a long holiday and can finally breath again.)

Here I am sitting in front of a computer after a long break, staring at the screen trying to figure out what I’m doing. What great posts did I miss? What sites can’t I live without? What book marks should I get rid of? What the hell has the SEM world done in the last year - how it is going to change in the next 12 months? What sites should I be parking for 2008?

I look forward to the year ahead - but at the same time it is terrifying. Looking at the mountain of work that sits in front of me… praying one of my hair-brained web ideas that I have been half-cooking will go huge and I can just sit and do nothing… except maybe two chicks at the same time.

To make things less scary one needs a plan. My plan for this new year is in the works - It involves actually following through on great ideas that I am too lazy to do anything about.

Take things one day at a time - do what you love - and the rest will all fall into place.

Happy New Years everyone - I promise to write something less personal with more useful information next time - And hopefully a couple of the bad links I put in will become real pages very soon.

Finally someone else has said it.  I mean I have been shouting this from the rooftops for a while now but I never thought I’d be taken seriously.   No longer will I sit alone at the lunch table crying silently into my milk carton.

Now that I’m totally justified by calling myself famous I’d like to turn your attention to a cause that I feel very connected to.  One that, through the past decade and a half, has helped Ethiopian babies or something.  It’s called the Columbo award (better known as The Rubber Chicken.) This award, my friends, is pretty much just voting for your favorite blogger in a popularity contest style rampage.

Just click 5 for my post “Want Traffic?  Rank for High Traffic keywords“  and 1 for everyone else.  Who are these guys anyway?  They clearly are not as famous as me.  If you’d like to read the others the list is as follows

• We Add Words to AdWords… Google Subtracts them
• Why eBay and Wikipedia rule Google’s SERPs
• SEOs home alone - Google’s nightmare
• 13 Things to Do When Your Loved One is Away at Conferences
• SEO High School Confidential - Premiere Edition!
• The Sphinn Awards - Part I & -Part II.
• Top 21 Signs You Need a Break From SEO (2007 version)
• 10 Signs That You May Be a Blog Addict
• The SEO’s Guide to Beginners
• The Internet Marketer’s Nightmare
• Mission Accomplished — Top Ranking in Google
• Google Interiors - the day my house became searchable

Thanks to everyone for reading :)  Also, these writers above are pretty great and it’s an honor to be mentioned with them.

If you want to read more about the Rubber Chicken Award head on over to Mike Blumenthal’s great site.

If you are like me you are subscribed to about 500 blogs and skim them over fully reading about 100 every day.  Then you go on vacation and it all goes to hell.  It gets to the point where you either have to declare blog bankruptcy and hope you didn’t miss anything important or that if you did someone else writes a recap of the best blogs you missed over Christmas…(I might do that later if someone else doesn’t first… kind of hoping they will)

Anyway, here are some tips to help you keep up with your daily blogs when you’re spending quality time with family and friends and don’t want to seem anti-social.

• First of all buy a smart phone (if you don’t have one and are in the internet world you’re silly - ask for one for Christmas - The new sprint Centro is only $99) and set up your RSS reader on it
• Now that you have this portable reader use it every free chance you get - while Grandma is talking, in between drink orders while at the bar with friends, and don’t forget bathroom breaks… it’s way better than a newspaper.
• If you’re watching the football games Halftime and timeouts are great for checking your feeds… You can even get really into them and shout out loud just be sure to insert your favorite team’s name in there so people think you’re just checking out the scores, or your fantasy football points.
• Finally get your Twitter feed going on your new fancy phone - follow a bunch of the bloggers you read - they clearly don’t have lives and are writing tips how to keep up and posting them on twitter when they finish.

And there you have it.  4 easy ways to keep up over Christmas without making people hate you and think you’re anti social.

Merry Christmas and Happy holidays everyone

So I haven’t actually written about SEO in quite a while and a few of my readers (well, one really - and no, It wasn’t my Mom) have expressed concern that my SEO blog is losing focus and turning into a Social Media blog. This is true, I have been addicted to social media - and the first step to fixing an addiction is to admit your problem. My name is Dave, and I am a social media addict.

Anyway, on to SEO.

I was recently asked this question - “What are the first things you look at, on a website, when you start a new SEO project”

Great question, I actually have a mental checklist - That I will now turn into a physical one for you. My first glance is generally for technical issues that can be fixed quickly without much effort and generally my first first steps to any SEO project (keyword research not included.)

• Useless Meta-tags - Get rid of them.
• 301 Redirect - to “www” or not to “www” (example.com or www.example.com)
• 404 Pages - Try example.com/thispageisnotherebecauseitshouldbea404 - if a 404 message doesn’t come up something is wrong.
• Robots.txt - Make sure it doesn’t block things that it shouldn’t LIKEWISE make sure it blocks things that it should (TOS, user logins, privacy policy, ect - unless these things are original and fun and you want them indexed)
• Make sure no duplicate content issues - such as examplesite.com and examplesite.com/homepage being the same
• Are internal links maximized? Anchor text uses natural language that describes what it links to rather than “CLICK HERE” or “MORE”
• Heavy Java script at the top? Can it be externalized? Can it be moved down?
• Image Alt tags - use them

And that’s it - Of course there is much more to the SEO process, but as a first glance these are the things I notice. I will probably expand this list in a future post - to outline the entire process - as there is more to what I see right away, but I was trying to make this a simple/quick checklist.

Here is an image from where some of my Organic traffic is coming from for this month thanks to Google Analytics.

Hah. Haha… Who is searching for this?

The page they find is about how having boobs makes boys like you.

In a post I wrote not to long ago I spoke of how important being nice can be. I still believe this so when someone takes time to sphinn or digg or (insert social media submit word here) I try and thank that person for the submit and if they are someone I haven’t seen before or are new, I try and give some advice to help them develop their social media profile. You can catch more flies with honey and all of that nonsense.

I’ve hung around social media sites for a while now, seen the ebb and flow of what goes popular or hot, I have read posts such as David Harry’s “How to Dominate Sphinn in 4 easy steps” and Slightly Shady SEO’s Guide to Frontpaging Sphinn and many more good posts like these about digg, slashdot, reddit, and others.

A couple of my submits have gone hot, I have watched the best times for my articles and other peoples articles. I feel I have a fairly good understanding of what will go hot, what wont, what would have if it was submitted at a better time.

So when an article of mine that I knew would go hot was submitted at an off-peak hour, I thanked the submitter and offered up a little advice on good times for sphinn submits.

A few days later I commented on an article over on SamFreedom’s blog in a controversial way, as I did not like the post as much as I had enjoyed his other ones. Figured it would be appreciated as the blog is called Internet Marketing Controversy Blog.

I found out in the reply to my comment that apparently he was not happy with the advice, and was offended I would even think to offer it to him. When the story did go Hot - after I had to ask a few people for help - and even 6 random people (from where I do not know) gamed the system (Side note: Once the story did hit the front page it did recieve 14 more real votes that it would not have since it was burried)

This of course instantly made my advice was “wrong” and he felt he should use this to invalidate any comment I made.

I was kind of surprised that he was so offended. I tend to like all advice, no matter where it comes from. Of course I don’t listen to all of it, but it is still nice to have - some is good, some is bad, some doesn’t even make sense. I try to learn from those around me, what they are doing poorly, what they are doing well.

I’m still going to go on being nice to people, offering advice from my experience when I can, and if it backfires, well it backfires. Such is life, some people are just more sensitive than others.

I was looking over my analytics today and noticed that a large portion of my traffic is coming from places that don’t use English as their primary language.

I don’t know how accurate this information is but it got me thinking… if they are finding me though stumble or digg or elsewhere what happens if they don’t speak English very well/at all?

So I did what anyone who values ALL of their traffic SHOULD do and went out and found an “auto-translation” plugin. If you don’t see it, scroll down a little it’s underneath MyBlogLog Reader list in the sidebar (while your there take a second and join my community.)

I speak a little Spanish so from what I can tell it looks like it works fairly well.

It’s pretty cool. I found it over at carlosquiles.com that was directly linked from the WordPress plugin page.

If anyone of you out there speak a different language - I’d love to have some feedback on how well it actually translates - thanks in advance for any input.

I really appreciate all of the support. Thanks for stopping by to everyone and a very special thank you to my international readers.