Costumes got me thinking about websites and writing. I know, sometimes I have crazy thoughts. Here it is. On Halloween people dress up as witches or the guy with the baby from Hangover. Dressing up is great for Halloween but it would be weird if people dressed up all-year-round. So why are some websites in costume all year long?

What I mean by costume, is dressing your website in language that isn’t appropriate for the product or service you are selling. Sadly, a popular costume for websites is lawyer. No one wants to read about the latest toy from the perspective of a lawyer. Moms want to hear about toys from a Mom’s perspective. So let your website be a Mom, not a Mom dressed as a lawyer.

Often times on Halloween, people like to dress up as the opposite of what they are in real life. The same is true for websites. It is weird when an Oncologist website is dressed up as a 20-something hipster. This costume is not reassuring to the people searching for reliable information to make their treatment decisions. If you are a doctor, people expect your site to be professional and caring not cool or nonchalant.

During the Halloween week and weekend, often times people get invited to several parties. Usually these gatherings will have overlaps of people they know so they wear different costumes to each party. There are websites wearing multiple costumes. This can happen when multiple people are contributing to a website and there is no vision for the brand/voice of the site. This can also happen with small companies when they are not conscious of their changing attitude and perspective toward their business. Multiple costumes make potential customers feel that your business is disingenuous or wishy-washy.

So how do you make sure your website isn’t in costume?
1.Don’t use language you wouldn’t say in a conversation with a customer or client
2.Don’t try to be something you’re not
3.Use the most simple language that makes sense for your target market
4.Talk to your brand evangelists
5.Be consistent

When I was first learning how to submit XML sitemaps to search engines, I found all the information I needed, however, the information was spread out amongst several sources. My intention is to create a quick reference guide on how to submit your XML sitemap to all of the major search engines (in one convenient location).

If you have no idea what a XML sitemap is, or you are interested in learning how to create one, be sure to check out the precursor to this post: How To Sitemap: Creating XML Sitemaps.

Monty & Spider by Ratkimo

You can wait for the search engines to spider your site and find your XML sitemap via the robots.txt file. Or, you can manually submit your XML sitemap to the major search engines. Personally I’d do both. Submission doesn’t take that long and it doesn’t affect your site negatively.

Please keep in mind that the following search engine submission steps only apply to static sites. If you install one of the XML sitemap plugins for a CMS based site mentioned in my previous post, you will have different steps to follow specific to that plugin. In most cases search engine submission is automatic once you have the plugin installed.

Google XML Sitemap Submission

Webmaster Tools provide valuable information on how your site is crawled (including errors). I personally find Google’s Webmaster Tools to be the most useful and recommend submitting your XML sitemap this way.

Check out Google’s step-by-step instructions for adding a website to Webmaster Tools.

Once you have your site setup in Google Webmaster Tools, login and go to the dashboard on the left. Under Site configuration click on Sitemaps then simply click on the Submit a Sitemap button and enter your website address alongside the location of your XML sitemap: www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

Yahoo! XML Sitemap Submission

To add your XML sitemap to Yahoo! visit Yahoo! Site Explorer.

After you login with a Yahoo! email address you’ll encounter two options:

1. Submit a Website or Webpage
2. Submit Site Feed

Select Submit a Site Feed and enter your site URL alongside the location of your sitemap: www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

You can also choose to authenticate your site and utilize the free tools offered by Yahoo! Site Explorer.

Bing XML Sitemap Submission

Bing also provides useful crawl information in their Webmaster Center. You can add your site to a Bing Webmaster Center account here.

First you need to login with a Windows Live ID (you can create a Windows Live ID with any email account). Once you are there you’ll see where you need to enter in your site URL alongside the address of your XML sitemap: www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. Next you simply follow the steps provided for authenticating your account and you’re good to go.

Alternatively, the quickest (and easiest) way to submit your sitemap is via an HTTP request. This might sound complicated. In reality it is incredibly effortless.

Simply copy and paste the following URL into your web browser. Replace www.yoursite.com with the actual URL of your site. If it works properly you will see a thank you page. And that’s it. You’re done!

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Ask XML Sitemap Submission

While you’re on a roll, submit your site to Ask.com. It only takes a matter of seconds, so you might as well. Submit your sitemap via an HTTP request (like the Bing example above).

All you need to do is copy and paste the following URL into your web browser. Replace www.yoursite.com with the actual URL of your site. If the submission works properly a thank you page will be displayed after you hit enter. Easy smeasy.

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

If you choose to set your site up with any of the webmaster accounts, be sure to go back and check the data at a later date. The engines need time to collect data, so keep checking back!

For any additional information on sitemaps, a good resource is www.sitemaps.org.

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Stephanie Woods is an internet marketer living in Kelowna, BC. You can find her at her (very) new internet marketing blog. She has also been known to frequent Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing.

One of the more tedious tasks in my monthly routine is preparing keyword ranking reports. While I enjoy analyzing the numbers and discovering how well our clients have (hopefully) improved over the past 30 days, actually collecting those numbers is a chore I don’t relish. If I can pay a few dollars to have a service perform this task on my behalf, I’m all for it.

Listed below are eight services that will track your keyword rankings for you. I’ll do my best to list out their various pricing structures, to give you a simplified snapshot to help you find the service that most suits your needs.

In order to qualify for this list the service needs to still be supported and cannot require a Google API to work properly (since they’re no longer issuing keys).

Raven SEO Tools
Free Version: No
Free Trial: 30 Days
Cost per Month: $79 to $199

SEO Keyword Ranking
Free Version: No
Free Trial: 14 Days
Cost per Month: $5 to $99

Exact Factor
Free Version: Yes
Free Trial: No
Cost per Month: $4.83 to $19.66

Solo SEO
Free Version: No
Free Trial: 14 Days
Cost per Month: $29

Keyword Envy
Free Version: No
Free Trial: 3 Days
Cost per Month: $9.95 to $35.95

SEO Ranking Monitor
Free Version: Yes
Free Trial: 30 Days
Cost per Month: $5 to $25

Advanced Web Ranking
Free Version: No
Free Trial: 30 Days
Cost per Month: $16.58 to $24.92
Desktop Application

SEO Book Firefox Plugin
Cost per Month: Free
Firefox Plugin

If none of these tools suit your needs, perhaps you’d prefer to track your keyword rankings with Google Analytics. It limits you to finding out what page your keyword is on instead of which position, but some reporting is better than none at all.

How to have your content ready when your boss asks for it.

You waited and waited and now you have your keyword research. An exciting moment, until you realize you have to do something with it. Thousands of words staring at you from their excel spread sheet spells writer’s block and drunken monkeys.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is a great book. It is about writing fiction but it has great points on general writing. The title comes from a clever story of Anne’s father giving her brother advise about a report on birds he is petrified to begin. “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” the father says.

This may be ridiculously simple advise. But I tell you, it is easy to forget when you are faced with a writing project. Some of you never thought you would be writing but here you are with keyword research on your desk. How do you overcome drunken monkeys? You start writing. Anne explains it so well:

“You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind – a scene, a locale, a character, whatever – and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt. Also severe hypochondria. There may be a Nurse Ratched – like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.”

You get the point. It isn’t easy to follow this advise, that is why I am giving it again. Because truthfully, although it is simple, you can never hear it enough. Sadly, most don’t consider it until they are desperate. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your pages complete when your boss asks to see them? This is how:

1.Don’t panic
2.Pick a keyword or keyword grouping
3.Set a time everyday to write. Block out your calender for an hour. Don’t answer your phone. Don’t let people talk to you. Shut off your email notifications. Sit there and write.
4.Set a page writing goal. Make it attainable.

Hiya Google spiders,

While you’re here, can you please make sure you check out our main product pages since we make changes to them frequently? Also, we added some new blog pages, so be sure to check those out as well.

Have a great week!

Thanks,

Steph

Wouldn’t it be great to leave a note providing suggestions to search engine spiders about how you want your site crawled when they visit your site? Well guess what? You can.

Spider dog. Courtesy of epicfunnypictures.com.

A XML sitemap is similar to the notes left behind by my well organized sister-in-law when I dogsit for her and my brother. Her notes let me know when to feed the dogs, how often and where to find everything.

A note written for the search engines spiders provides similar details about how to properly crawl your site.

Back in 2005, Google developed a new sitemap protocol in response to the fact that sites kept getting bigger and more complex (foreward ho). The XML sitemap is born. It is designed to make good use of the search engine spiders’ time by enabling the engines to index pages from your site more efficiently.

XML sitemaps do not guarantee that all of your pages will get indexed, but they do help. XML sitemaps also provide you with the opportunity to let search engines know what pages you feel are the most important (i.e. main product or service pages) the last time the content of each page was modified, and how often you expect that content on each page will be updated.

Is Sitemap Submission Outdated?

There are people on both sides of the fence when it comes to the practicality of submitting sitemaps to search engines. One of the reasons why some people are skeptical is because your site will most likely be found by spiders regardless.

In my personal experience the pros outweigh the cons.

As with many SEO tactics, I am a strong believer that every little bit helps. In most cases it won’t have a negative effect to submit your XML sitemap to search engines. So why not?

First of all, it ensures the search engines index your pages. Secondly, you can submit your XML sitemap to one (or all) of the available (and free) webmaster tools provided by the major search engines that help point out crawl errors.

XML Sitemap Creation 101

It is possible to create a sitemap from scratch; however, many people use a sitemap generator and then tweak it. Let’s face it, it’s a tedious task to manually create a sitemap and an automated sitemap generator works.

If you have a static site, try out this XML Sitemap generator.

If you utilize a Content Management System (CMS), there are various plugins that you can make use of for sitemap submissions. Some recommended plugins for CMS’ are detailed below.

Once you’ve created your XML sitemap you can manually play around with the various XML tags and attributes that can be used in a sitemap file, also known as XML schema.

Not quite this manual. Photo courtesy of umanitoba.ca.

The following are the XML schema available and how you can use them for each URL on your website.

• <lastmod>
  • Lets spiders know when you last modified the page.
• <changefreq>
  • Provides information on how frequently the page is likely to change. This is more of a hint though. It doesn’t mean the engines will follow that command.
• <priority>
  • This tag enables you to tell spiders which pages you feel are most important. Main product or service pages are generally given a higher priority. Labeling all pages as high priority will not help you because priorities are relative to other pages on your website.

XML Sitemap Plugins for CMS

If you have a Wordpress site you can try this Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin. It was designed specifically for Google, but it works with the other major search engines as well. A good benefit of this plugin is that every time an update is made to the site, like a new blog post, or a new product is added, the module submits the changes automatically. This can help new pages get indexed more quickly (but not always guaranteed).

For Drupal sites try the XML Sitemap Module. Installing this module makes XML sitemap submission to the engines a breeze. Like the Wordpress plugin, this module submits any changes made to the site automatically to the search engines.

I haven’t had the chance to personally work with a Joomla CMS yet and therefore am not sure which plugin is the best. On the Joomla site this Xmap plugin seems to be the most popular and has the highest number of votes.

If you’re using any other CMS, a simple Google search for XML sitemap plus the name of your Content Management System (e.g XML sitemap Joomla) should provide you with some worthy XML sitemap plugin information.

XML Sitemap. Check. Now What?

If you have a static site (as opposed to a CMS as discussed above) the first thing you need to do is upload the XML file to the root of your domain (add the URL to your site). This will require logging into the FTP with your credentials. The most commonly used format is this: www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

Image courtesy of seraphicpress.com

Once you have uploaded the XML file to your domain, you can edit your robots.txt file to include the sitemap URL. A robots.txt file tells search engine spiders what they shouldn’t crawl. A sitemap tells them which pages they should crawl. Together they compose a detailed note of recommendations you can leave for search engine spiders.

Spiders are programmed to look for the robots.txt file when they crawl your site. As of 2005 you can include a line in the robots.txt to tell the spiders to look for your XML sitemap. If you have multiple sitemaps (for large sites) you can include more than one sitemap per robots.txt file.

You can direct spiders to your XML sitemap by placing this line anywhere in the robot.txt file:Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Not having a XML sitemap isn’t the end of the world. In fact, your site can still do extremely well without one.

It is, however, one of the only ways to directly communicate with spiders and leave them a little to-do list. Enticing isn’t it?

My next post will detail how to submit your sitemaps to the major search engines.

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Stephanie Woods is an internet marketer living in Kelowna, BC. You can find her at her (very) new marketing blog . She has also been known to frequent Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing.

The convergence of SEO and social media as interrelated disciplines has been evident for a number of years. Smart SEO’s jumped on the social bandwagon years ago realizing the potential of social media to drive traffic and links. Today, search marketers (along with marketers in general) are some of the most active in the social arena. And for good reason. Well executed social media activity offers a range of SEO benefits, perhaps best captured in Adam Singer’s diagram:

Image Source – Future Buzz

Yet whilst they are clearly interrelated, the two disciplines remain distinct in approach. One aims to satisfy robots (SEO). The other aims to satisfy humans (social). The question I have is whether a person with a purely robotic approach can still be an effective SEO…?

The question arose as I discussed link building tactics recently with an SEO colleague. His approach to SEO is predominantly a robotic one. Tweak pages and build links. While he certainly understands the benefits social media delivers from an SEO perspective, his hands-on experience with social tools is minimal.

When SEO meets social

My colleague began taking me through his personal blog commenting practices for link building purposes. As a blogger myself, I gave a publisher’s perspective on the issue. I view comments that contain links with obvious anchor text extremely pessimistically. I know exactly what the commenter is trying to achieve. And I probably delete 9 out of 10 comments of that nature. But I’m probably more of a social media purist than others.

Of course, views towards acceptable blog commenting practices are subjective. A definitive shade of grey exists around exactly what constitutes a constructive comment, particularly when there is an ulterior motive. A fierce debate raged on an Australian blog recently with social purists attacking blog commenting policies with blatant commercial intent. However, over at Search Engine People, a perfectly rational discussion on essentially the same topic drew a completely different perspective from a predominant SEO audience.

However, the specific debate over blog commenting practices wasn’t really what interested me. It was the larger issue of whether the pure robotic mindset was still valid as an SEO. This SEO was somewhat blinded to the perspective of the social purist  because of a lack on hands-on experience. And while he had a basic sense of the type of behaviour that’s acceptable, a true understanding of social media etiquette is difficult to comprehend without truly experiencing it.

The proof came when I asked him to send me some examples of comments he had left on blogs. He sent me three links to posts he had recently published comments on. However, as I viewed the posts, all three had been deleted. Zero percent strike rate. After viewing the original comments I could see why. The comments weren’t the inane “great post” you see from the laziest of comment spammers, but despite being well-intentioned, I would have deleted them myself.

Other blunders from robotic SEOs

I’ve seen similar blunders from SEO colleagues when attempting to establish blogs for SEO purposes. They understand that search engines love blogs, yet they don’t understand how to establish a successful blog. Instead of creating useful and valuable content, they farm out copywriting to India for $3 an article, treating content as a commodity. The blog is doomed to failure. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Different problem, but same symptom. The robotic SEO has failed to truly understand the mechanics of the social web. Content for content’s sake will never attract the quality inbound links they crave. Blogs don’t work simply because they are in fact a blog. They thrive based upon the quality of content published. Plain and simple.

So with these examples in mind, I pose the question – is it now a necessity for an SEO to have practical social media skills? Can purely robotic SEOs continue to survive in a world where social media skills are increasingly required? Or are they an endangered species…?

Over to you.

________________________________

James Duthie is an online marketing strategist and also writes & manages his own online marketing blog. You can subscribe here.

I am often shocked by some of the questions I get from clients. I’ve been asked everything from, “Do you write creative briefs?” to “Which color scheme should we use on the website?” Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to help but in most cases I’m not equipped with enough information to make high-level marketing recommendations. Most copywriters aren’t.

For example, a company highers hires a freelance copywriter to write their blog. They don’t know why they have a blog or what they should do with it so they ask their new copywriter to manage the blog. This is not a good situation for the company or the copywriter. The copywriter is not equipped with enough information about the company’s brand or other marketing initiatives so they blindly lead a highly effective marketing tool into the dark abyss of worthlessness. You don’t want this to happen to you.

So how can you get the most out of your copywriter?

1.Have a united front: Someone needs to captain the marketing ship. This person needs to coordinate with the copywriter(s) and marketing people working on company projects to create a cohesive marketing face.
2.Make a plan and set goals: With a marketing plan and goals, your copywriter will be able to execute their role efficiently and you will be able to measure the effectiveness of their work.
3.Communication: With a united front and a marketing plan, it will be easy to communicate your company’s direction and agenda to your copywriter. With this information, your copywriter will be able to turn your vision into targeted, effective copy with a branded voice.

Don’t waste your copywriter by asking them for opinions and work outside their expertise. No matter the size of your company, putting the above steps into action will save you time and money. Your copywriter is a valuable tool and when used wisely is a true asset.

Let’s face it. You wish your website ranked for the number one spot on Google. Yes there are more important things like overall online visibility and ROI. And yes, there are other major players like Yahoo! and Bing. But today we are going to focus on Google. In fact, I am going to make a bold statement and say that anyone who tells you they don’t care about ranking high in Google is lying.

Now let’s start with the basics.

Software robots, or bots, called spiders build lists of words they find on websites. This process is called crawling. Spiders crawl through web pages and index what they find. They also follow every link found within a web page. This practice of following links enables spiders to quickly travel across the web indexing pages.

There are millions of websites and billions of web pages. Because of this, Google has sophisticated algorithms that determine how much time a spider can spend on your site. In order for your site to be displayed in the results pages, it is important that the spiders properly (and fully) index your website.

Spider Friendly Checklist

For those of you well versed in all things SEO, nothing here will be new to you. For the rest of you newbs out there (we all have to start somewhere), please keep in mind that some factors have more importance than others and are listed in no particular order. In my humble opinion it is beneficial to execute all of the items listed below. Every little bit helps. With constantly changing algorithms, it is imperative to have all the bases (and basics) covered.

Individually each of the tasks below won’t have a huge impact. Collectively they will help your site rank; especially if you’re in a niche and not-so -competitive industry (like crumb rubber in Penticton). If you are in a competitive industry (like New York
real estate), these tactics are small (but necessary) stepping stones to compete with the big boys. At the end of the day, no matter how competitive your industry is, if spiders are unable to index your site, you won’t be found in Google. Simple as that.

All of the items below can (and do) have blog posts of their own describing each task in detail. For the sake of brevity, each tactic is described in basic top level terms.

• Create good site architecture and link structure: Two to three clicks to reach a destination (i.e. important product or service landing pages) from the homepage is optimal. If a spider has to crawl too deep it may never get to those pages. Also, be sure you don’t have any orphan pages (i.e. pages that aren’t linked to any other pages on your site). This seems glaringly obvious, but it happens.

• Avoid the use of dynamic URLs: A dynamic URL is a URL that is not written in plain English. An example of a dynamic URL is this: www.mysite.com/url.com?id=4&ses=aa#. One of the problems associated with dynamic URLs is that too many parameters can cause a spider trap. This happens when a spider gets trapped in an endless loop of code. What you want to use is a URL that has your chosen keywords written in plain English. This is referred to as a canonical URL. Dynamic URLs are handy for tracking things, so if you do need to use them, make sure you use a mod_rewrite to ensure the spiders track the canonical URL.

  Another tip: use underscores instead of hyphens hyphens instead of underscores. Spiders read underscores as all one word, whereas dashes are read as separate words.

• Beware of duplicate content
  issues: Duplicate content can waste valuable spider time. However, there are instances where it is unavoidable, so ensure that it is dealt with correctly. In many cases the best solution is to use 301 redirects to point all of the duplicate content to one page. Your date with spidey is limited so make sure you’re giving him new content to index. It’s a waste of time having a spider index pages that they already have. Also, Google gets to pick which of the duplicated pages it wants to index and it just might end up picking the wrong one.

  There are more advanced options to consider as well. These include adding a canonical tag (a page level meta tag) to specify which version is the canonical page (aka plain English URL). The downfall to this is that the spiders have to crawl the page first to read the tag. So it’s not necessarily maximizing your time with Google’s spider. Google recently another option: in Webmaster Tools you can tell Google’s robots to ignore any dynamic parameters, and have the spiders only crawl the canonical version of page. The benefit to doing this is that it can reduce crawl on unnecessary pages and free up bandwidth for other pages to get crawled.

• Create a robots.txt file: This file creates an opportunity to tell the spiders which parts of your site are not important for them to check out (such as folders where your images are contained). This helps to ensure you’re not wasting valuable face time having unnecessary files checked. Robots.txt can also help you tell spiders which pages it shouldn’t check to avoid duplicate content issues. Be careful though. An incorrect robots.txt can also make your site uncrawlable.

• Generate an XML sitemap: It’s true that Google will eventually find your site and spider it. It’s also true that this can take some time if you have a brand new site with no little or no external links pointing towards it. Submitting a XML sitemap to Google helps speed up the process and is generally considered good practice.

• Utilize onpage SEO tactics: Not all onpage tactics are equal. However, it’s inevitable that algorithms will change and covering all the bases is encouraged. Onpage tactics help busy little spiders building their lists of words to distinguish which keywords are central to each page on your site.

  Your goal is to create content that people will like to read and share with others (and hopefully link to). Make sure the following tactics are used so that the inclusions of keywords still sound as natural as possible (including the use of modifiers and synonyms of the selected phrase).
  

  • Use your most important keywords at the front of your page title.
  • Utilize relevant keywords for the H1 tag for page headlines.
  • Adjust your internal linking structure so that you are linking using relevant anchor text.
  • Label images and photos with your targeted keywords only if relevant (i.e. no unnecessary keyword stuffing).
  • There is no magical formula for how many times you should repeat your selected keyword phrase. However, it’s safe to say that using it at least two or three times throughout the body copy makes sense.

• Ensure your pages have a fast download time: Google says that spiders will crawl as many pages as they can without overwhelming your server. Most often they only crawl a portion of your site before they move on. There is a direct correlation between page download time and how many pages are crawled that day. Make sure that your pages are not too big and load quickly.

• Be careful when using Flash: Yes. It is true that spiders have come a long way in their ability to index Flash images. At present, Google’s Flash algorithms extract text and links only. Which sounds all good. However, the problem is that Google’s spiders will not crawl or index any Flash executed using Javascript (which a lot of Flash uses). At this point in time it is still best practice to be careful when using Flash for integral parts of your website i.e. links, navigation and important content.

• Create custom 404 pages: If a spider is on your site and hits a 404 page (i.e. page not found) with no links on it, then it’s the end of the visit for you. It has nowhere to go. A custom 404 page ensures that there are links for the spider to continue indexing your site.
  

• Add your site to Google Webmaster Tools. Google will let you know if there are things wrong with your site. Like crawl errors. Or duplicate meta information. This information helps you keep your site Google friendly.

• Do not hide behind logins if you want your content to be seen: If a user needs to login to view content, then so will the spider. This means that any content hidden behind a login will not get indexed.

• Do not require that cookies or session IDs be enabled to view your site: Our friendly crawlers do not have the ability to access cookies or sessions IDs. If this is a requirement on your site, it won’t get indexed by spiders. There are parts of a site where it’s okay; like the checkout. There are parts of a site where it’s bad; like your homepage.

And there you have it: A solid platform upon which to build a successful (and well spidered) website. What are some of your tips for maximizing your time with Google’s spiders? We’d love it if you’d share them.

Stephanie Woods is a freelance SEO/SEM consultant (www.stephwoodsseo.wordpress.com) in Kelowna, BC, Canada. You can follow her on Twitter (www.twitter.com/steph_woods).

The SEO Gurus and Experts have been somewhat less vocal than usual over the past few months.  It can be traced to the revelation by Mark Cutts at SMX Advanced in Seattle as reported by many including Lisa Barone and Dan Thies that  basically nofollow might not work like people expected for sculpting PageRank.  You might have expected that, if it did not work, this might already have been spotted by some of the gurus.  However there was no hint anywhere that this might be so.

My colleague, Brian Carter, may well have been tuning into the same groundswell with his recent post, 4 Reasons Why SEO Blogging Sucks.

His four reasons were:

1. Why Give Away Your Competitive Advantage?
2. Theories About What Works in SEO Abound, But Are They Right?
3. Few People Have And Disclose Solid SEO Research
4. SEO Is Controversial, So Why Bother?

He might have added a 5th reason:  it is unclear what can really be said with any authority about SEO.

Searching for SEO Truths

How do we then track down the truths.  Some might say we should Go Straight to Google for SEO Truths.  As one commenter put it:

Every now and then Matt Cutts will “reveal” something really interesting, but most of the stuff he talks about is common knowledge. Gotta test it on your own. It either works or it doesn’t. Trial and error. Don’t have to be a genius to get SEO down to a few easy processes. Reverse engineering is what it’s all about.

David Berkowitz also gives assurance that You CAN Handle These SEO Truths

If you’re looking to make sure you’re covering all bases with search engine optimization, a good place to start is Rebecca Lieb’s new book, "The Truth about Search Engine Optimization." You’ll find 51 truths in this book, covering everything from link development to video optimization. They’re bite-sized chunks, and if you feel well-versed in some areas but want some help with others, it’s easy to flip around and read it in the order that matters most to you.

However not everyone agrees.  Attempting to be controversial, Justin Brooke titled his book, SEO Lies | A Book About SEO Truths.  He offers 5 SEO Lies You’ve Been Told:

1. SEO Is Hard
2. SEO Takes A Long Time
3. You Need Lots Of Content
4. Don’t Use Duplicate Content
5. NoFollow Links Don’t Count

He strongly encourages you to get the book, and learn the truth.  Many might strongly disagree with what he says, but this does illustrate the large differences in opinion that exist on SEO.

SEO Myths

Using the word lies was deliberately provocative.  However the same difference of opinion is shown by the more diplomatic word myth that some use.  For example, Jill Whalen listed her Top Ten Organic SEO Myths

1. You should submit your URLs to search engines.
2. You need a Google Sitemap.
3. You need to update your site frequently.
4. PPC ads will help/hurt rankings.
5. Your site will be banned if you ignore Google’s guidelines.
6. Your site will be banned if you buy links.
7. H1 (or any header tags) must be used for high rankings.
8. Words in your meta keyword tag have to be used on the page.
9. SEO copy must be 250 words in length.
10. You need to optimize for the long tail.

Matt Cutts has also attempted to enlighten people on Some SEO myths.  How can so many different theories continue to circulate on some of these issues? What makes it so difficult?

Why the SEO Truths Are So Elusive

One might question why there should continue to be so much confusion about what is true and what is not true in SEO.  In fact, Google does provide a Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, dating back to November 2008.  It can be downloaded via this link (PDF file).

http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

It has some excellent advice but it is however only a Starter Guide.  Where can we get a Total SEO Manual that will come with a Truth Guarantee.

The problem here is that search engine algorithms are continually evolving and hopefully improving in an attempt to produce ever more relevant query results.  These algorithms include hundreds of factors and it is possible that even the Google engineers are not quite sure of how any given change may impact results.  Google is reluctant to reveal too much since major websites might then attempt to game the system and ensure that the web pages are listed higher than they really deserve to be.

What is one to do?  You could of course study the experts views for example in the SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors 2009.

In some cases you will find a reasonable consensus and can perhaps treat such factors as true.  However for many others you will find a wide range of opinions.  What is a practical way of doing search engine optimization given all this uncertainty?

SEO Basics

Truth is a very hard edged parameter.  Given that we are trying to understand SEO as it applies to small websites of less than a hundred pages and large websites that may have hundreds of thousands of pages, it may be difficult to find truths that will apply whatever the size of the website.  Nevertheless there are some basics that would apply in all cases.

If you read some of the material linked above, you will be able to develop your own list of key factors.  My own listing of the key steps in SEO may provide a starting point here.  A good way of checking whether you have covered all these basics is to see what the Google Webmaster Tools website  has to offer as diagnostic information on your website

Where it gets difficult is when you try to work on more sophisticated SEO aspects of your website.  The competitive positioning in your market sector may be changing over time.  The search engine algorithms may be modified in a way which affects rankings. It may even be difficult to see how to do appropriate experimentation and be sure that you have really identified how to achieve optimal results that will endure.

SEEO

The last two letters here are meant to signal Evolutionary Optimization, a somewhat complex methodology often applied to chemical processes with uncertain mechanisms.  We only use the words here to help explain a concept.  If optimization is thought to be a process of getting to the top of the hill, Evolutionary Optimization is concerned with merely getting a little higher on the hill, without knowing necessarily where the top of the hill is.  In testing for SEO, we should have that same concept in mind. 

SEEO then is Search Engine Evolutionary Optimization.  We may never know the ultimate that is possible, but we are always looking for incremental improvement.  Our split A/B tests should indicate which way to change to get a better result.  However they are not guaranteed to be the final answer and an ongoing program of testing should always be done.

That extra E for Evolutionary is a powerful reminder that SEO is not something you do for a website and then forget. It is ongoing to identify when things are changing in unexpected ways.  Doing EO you are constantly looking for better results.  Sometimes you may even find it is needed to correct an erosion in rankings that changes in algorithms were causing.

This process will not give those long-term SEO truths for all websites that we may have sought.  It will however give ways of improvement at this point in time for this particular website.  Continuing testing will then confirm how to keep improving as the search world evolves.

If you believe the hype, Twitter is the biggest serial killer since Jack the Ripper. Mitch Joel thinks it killed RSS. And there is certainly an element of truth in that. How often do you really check your reader these days…? Be honest. For others, Twitter is the death of Facebook. And there’s no question Mark Zuckerberg is quaking a little. Centralising the platform around status updates and the recent introduction of the @ reply were both aimed at nullifying Twitter’s strengths. Some are even brave enough that Twitter could kill Google via real-time search, although surely Google would acquire them before that became a reality. And while I’m not often one to sound the death knell, I’d like to throw one more into the mix. Because I think Twitter may just be killing the inbound link…

A couple of weeks ago Darren Rowse pondered whether links were becoming an endangered species on the web. The post caught my attention as I had indeed noticed a similar trend on my blog. Whereas links poured into my blog as little as 9-12 months ago, the flow stopped to little more than a trickle in more recent times. In fact, my Technorati authority ranking (which is based upon inbound links) fell by almost 300% over the past 3-6 months. Shiza! Conversely, my subscriber rate was growing faster than ever before, so quality didn’t seem to be the issue. Something was fishy…

Theories on the death of the inbound link

Darren pondered a range of theories as to why inbound links were entering endangered territory, including competitive instincts, sculpting, laziness and ignorance. But for me, the explanation is simple. It’s Twitter. Twitter has evolved to become THE channel of choice for content sharing. Consumer behaviour (or perhaps just geek behaviour) has changed rapidly! Whereas a link within a blog post may have been the primary method of recognizing quality work as little as a year ago, a ReTweet has quickly become the preferred way to share/acknowledge great content. While I don’t have exact historic data, I’d estimate the trend has followed this path:

Causation or correlation?

That is the question. My theory is that rather than approaching extinction, inbound links have simply been transferred into a more convenient format. They’ve shifted from blogs to Twitter. Twitter has provided a lower maintenance method for people to share ideas and content. So when presented with the choice of writing a blog post, or sending a Tweet, most people opt to Tweet. Whereas a blog post often takes hours to craft, thoughts and links can be shared within Twitter in mere seconds.

This shift in behaviour presents an interesting quandary for Google. Inbound links are the currency of the web, and a core signal Google uses to assess the quality of a web site. Yet Google currently ignores all links emanating from Twitter. At the moment that’s fine, because Twitter is still just a mere blip on the web’s total radar.

But what happens if Twitter continues along its astronomical growth rate? What happens if it truly becomes a mainstream service to rival Facebook in scale and size? Could Google really ignore the signals of 300+ million users? Could they continue to rely on inbound links as a core signal if user behaviour moves away from them? And if they do will it ultimately affect the quality of the algorithm?

What do you think?

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James Duthie is an online marketing strategist and also writes & manages his own online marketing blog. You can subscribe here.