seo link building Archives - Page 2 of 4 by Mark Murnahan

Are There Any Dumb SEO Questions?

I want to introduce you to Michael Colemire, a Kentucky artist, and newly initiated asker of dumb SEO questions.

I talk to a lot of people about SEO and social media marketing. It is my job, so that makes perfect sense. I answer a lot of questions, debunk a lot of myths, and develop a lot of ideas. I brainstorm with industry know-it-alls, and I brainstorm with people who know little or nothing about these topics, but want to grow their business.

Something I found interesting while I recently visited on the phone with my friend and long-time reader of my blog was that he was afraid of asking dumb questions. His name is Michael Colemire, and he is a very talented sculptor and wood carver. He is not a marketing guy, but he has some great works of art to market, so he wants to learn.

Michael said that the reason he often hesitates to comment on my blog is that he didn’t want to bother me with dumb questions. Also, being such a nice guy, he did not want to feel like he was taking advantage of me. After I picked my jaw back up and thought for a moment, I realized that he had expressed a pretty common and legitimate sentiment. I want to shatter any misconceptions about this.

You see, I have a pretty tricky task of writing a blog about SEO and social media marketing. These are topics which reach people from every different skill level and many different schools of thought about best practices. I try to produce something useful that will cover many skill levels, and that is the trickiest thing.

Why I Want Your Dumb SEO Questions

Reader’s comments are very important to me, because they help me to understand what people already know, or want to know more about. Comments (including “dumb” questions) help to keep me sharp with an appropriate answer, and they give other readers opportunities to look at things from other angles, and cultivate their thoughts.

Let’s take a break for an Internet truth:

A sad truth of the Internet is that it is very easy for people to be selfish. A lot of people will not do something for other people “just because”. It is common that if people think it may benefit you, more than it does them, they will just pass on by. They won’t comment, they won’t retweet it, and they won’t share it on Facebook … unless there is more in it for them than for you.

Something I shared with Michael, and I’ll tell you, is that those “dumb questions” also provide other benefits to me, such as better ranking and recognition in lists that measure a blog’s value to readers. No, it doesn’t pay me money, but it does bring me a bit closer, and it is like a big warm hug and a pat on the butt. I think that every writer needs a pat on the butt and an “attaboy” now and then.

I guess you could say that your comments and dumb SEO questions directly benefit me in a lot of ways, but what about how they benefit you?

Afraid of a Dumb SEO Question or Comment? Think Again!

I know that a lot of people will totally overlook this, but when you add your comment to my blog, it will probably benefit you even more than it does me. This is because when you add your comment, you can add a link to your website, which can have a real benefit to your search engine rankings. It also comes with networking benefits as I described in a recent article titled “Why Disqus May Be The Best Social Network of 2011“,

Do you know what a link from a high-traffic and well ranked blog can do to help your search engine rankings? Well, I’ll just say that it is why I delete a constant flow of spam comments from people who want no more than a link from this blog. Yes, I kill the useless spammy comments, but the legitimate stuff stays here.

Your sincere questions and useful answers deserve to be rewarded, and that reward comes in the form of the number one highest valued SEO treasure there is … a link to your website. Not to mention a great opportunity to network with other readers who may decide you are pretty cool.

One more thing: If you are a super great person like Michael Colemire, I may even credit an article to you.

Thanks for the dumb questions and for taking advantage of me, sculptor and artist Michael Colemire.

What SEO Questions are Dumb?

There are a lot of things which I may think are obvious, but then, this is the work I do every day to earn a living and feed my family. These things are supposed to be obvious to me, after about 15 years in the industry. Let me assure you that they were not always so obvious. I have worked hard and spent a lot of time to develop a solid understanding of my job. Practice makes a world of difference.

I can’t carve or sculpt like Michael Colemire, and I probably never will. If I asked him how to carve a piece of wood into an intricate design, my questions may sound really basic to him, but only because I don’t know the answers.

I guess my point here is that the dumbest questions about SEO are simply the ones you neglect to ask. I would love to say that there are no dumb questions, but I am not ready to commit to that, just yet. I have heard some pretty damn dumb stuff over the years. Most of the questions about the work I do, and the things I write about are just kind of like the questions I would ask Michael. Not dumb at all, just inexperienced.

On the topic of SEO questions, I have listed some of the most common SEO questions, created lists of things people should know about SEO, and have a pretty lengthy blog archive. I welcome you to read these, but in any case, I hope that you will never hesitate to add your comment or question about an article I write. After all, answering questions a primary goal of this blog.

So, what are your dumb SEO questions? Bring it on!

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What Created the SEO Monster, and Who Keeps Feeding It?

Have you ever been hit by a stroke of Genius, telling you that automated directory submissions will help your ranking in search engine results? Maybe you thought that some nicely crafted meta tags would help your search engine ranking. I may be a bit too hard on people at times, but common sense just completely eludes many people when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). Many website owners want to rank in the top of search results so badly that they will try almost anything. Well, as long as it is cheap, easy, and sounds techie-fancy.

When I started to write this, I was going to rant about automated directory submissions. Then I realized that I have touched on the topic of directory submissions before. I still have something to get off my chest, and I still have something to say about the toxic lies and misinformation that have been created surrounding the SEO industry. It is often fueled by greed and hope of getting something for nothing.

It is easy for liars to make something believable to people who know little about the topic. This has created an ugly monster of the SEO industry.

The SEO Monster Eats, Every Day!

In just the last spin of the clock, I have had several people ask me for information about automated directory submission services to improve their search engine ranking. It reminds me that most people really do not understand SEO. Judging from the glazed look on their faces, I can tell that many people really don’t want to understand. They just want it to magically work. I understand that, and I can imagine how frustrating and stressful it must be for non-SEO people to filter reliable information about search engine optimization through all of the common SEO lies (although this may help: 7 SEO Lies: How to Know When the SEO is Lying).

Outdated, Outrageous, and Downright Dishonest SEO Garbage

There is so much bad information and outdated material spread across the Internet that I think it would frustrate the heck out of me if I was trying to feel my way through it for the first time. What bothers me is how many people are out there trying to earn a buck by selling things that do not help, and even more commonly, severely damage paying customers’ hopes of being found in a search engine.

The world of SEO truly is like a foreign language to most people. They read something about SEO and meta tags, and they think they are on to something revolutionary. It just stuns me that with all of the great information out here on the Internet, how many people are fooled by the first scam they come across.

For some people, I think there is a sense that if it is written, it must hold some truth. Once they find out the hard way that it was a scam and it didn’t work, they either give up and hate everything about SEO, or they take the time to learn the difference and read something sensible and logic-based like “Good SEO vs. Bad SEO: How to Tell the Difference“.

Even in large corporate settings, I have often found people in the role of search engine optimizer collecting a nice salary who got their job just by spouting out a few industry buzz words. The people hiring them are either enamored by their “vast knowledge”, or just give up and offer them a job on blind faith.

A really hard pill to swallow is that most of today’s SEO “experts” have never ranked for anything significantly competitive. That is not a gouge against my industry, and these people are not my competitors. It is a statistical truth. To make this point clear, just have a look at the backlinks to most SEO websites and then see where they rank for the first four words of their home page title. Try this with the website of the SEO who reaches you by email, on the phone, or in a paid advertisement, instead of you finding them through a search.

Productized SEO Services Created a Monster

I think that productizing SEO and selling easy to understand pre-packaged SEO services has created and fed this monster. As an industry, those of us who sell SEO services realized a long time ago that it is much easier to package things up and say “Here is your price, and here is what you get.”

This certainly makes it easier to sell SEO. After all, it is easier for clients to choose from a list and compare it to what others offer. Also, it is a lot more profitable for the SEO to create something once, and sell it many times. The truth is that it is seldom what is best for meeting the customer’s objectives, and it creates a mentality that ranking well in search engines is merely a predefined set of SEO tasks.

This is not to say that things like SEOmoz’s SEO tools, SpyFu, and the squillion other SEO tools are not just great. These are tools, but like a paintbrush, they are only as good as the person using them. A tragedy that happened is when a lot of SEO realized that they could sell far more, and easier, if they promised something such as top ten ranking for “x” number of keywords and then price it and put it in a shopping cart for people to buy. There are countless types of SEO services being promoted with a “buy it now” approach, without any consultation, without any strategy, and with a promise of easy results.

Do you really trust anything that is so easy? OK, rephrase … Do you really trust anything that is so easy in 2011?

Directory Submission Service Example

I started my rant with directory submissions, and I will still use it as an example. “What is a directory submission service?” I hope that is what you are thinking, but in case you did not already know, I will explain it. It is a once-heralded way to automatically submit a website to long lists of search engines and directories, with a hope that it would help search engine rankings, bring more visitors to a website, and boost sales.

I suppose it seems logical to a lot of people that if they use SEO directory submission services to add their website link to a squillion directories and search engines, it will produce magical results. Now let’s clear this up. Seriously, do you think that a magical automated fix like directory and search engine submissions will be your pink pony ride to success?

Oh, and nobody else ever thought of that, so it will be revolutionary! Right? Search engines will suck that up like grape soda and will count all of those backlinks (links to your website) as proof that your website is valuable.

Rub a lamp, sucker! Maybe a Genie will come to your assistance, too.

The Productized SEO Monster Awakens My Inner-Sailor

There are just a few things which make it hard for me to hold back my inner sailor and refrain from dropping severely foul language all over my blog. People falling for things like automated directory submissions and other simple tricks helping their SEO efforts is one of those things. I just don’t think I can even be nice about this. Shit! Call it a temporary case of Tourette’s Syndrome, but this inner-sailor in me is wanting out pretty badly.

People who actually fall for things like this drive me nuts. I just want to say “Hey, Genius, do you want to know the truth, or would you rather waste more money and time to screw up your website?”

If you want the real truth about SEO, slow down, pay attention, and stop breathing those SEO fumes in the air. Spend some time to learn things that will actually work, and will help you to grow your business. For example, those links in the text of this article are not just there for me, and they may help you, a lot. Better yet, here is a link for some relatively easy SEO tips that can save you a lot of time and frustration: SEO Lessons You Should Know.

These tips will not cost you a penny, and will only take a short time to read. Maybe I am just full of hot air, but if so, go ahead and search Google for SEO lessons and see where that link I just gave you shows up in non-advertised, relevance-based organic results. Hint: It is not number two on the list.

I do not write about this because I am seeking a bunch of customers. I only work with a couple clients at a time, and I turn away far more than I work with. Yes, writing about SEO helps people to find me, but it is not just here to help me. This is here to help you.

Just one more thing! Have you subscribed to aWebGuy.com yet?

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Is Twitter Good for SEO?: Is Ice Cream Good for Hemorrhoids?

I suspect that you want to know, “is Twitter good for SEO?” Either that, or your bum is feeling pretty sore, and you are willing to try anything. I am happy to help with the Twitter part, and I am sorry about your rump. Try pistachio, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t work.

I am surprised that more people have not discussed the topic of Twitter and SEO to provide their opinion-based answers. I think that a lot of people are afraid to touch on this, for fear of giving an unpopular answer, or being wrong. Well, leave it to me to tell you this: “Yes, Twitter helps SEO!”

Twitter can help with SEO efforts, directly, as well as indirectly when Twitter users share the information in places such as blogs, social bookmarking sites, and elsewhere. If somebody tells you otherwise, you are listening to the wrong SEO advice.

I read an article on the widely respected SEOmoz.org blog today that addressed the SEO value of Twitter. It reminded me how much I sometimes forget the importance of bringing things down to a very simple level. I guess I just forget that not everybody has done this “Internet thing” to earn food for the past decade and a half. I try to keep things pretty simple, but I know I can wing one over readers’ heads some days. I try to provide useful marketing and SEO tips, but if I ever forget to make them simple, I apologize. This one should be nice and easy.

I thought that the value of Twitter for SEO was pretty obvious to most users, a long time ago. Sometimes, when I see what other people are saying, I recognize that details like this can slip by some people. Here is a quote from the recent article on SEOmoz titled “The Social Media Marketer’s SEO Checklist“:

“So for a long time, most SEOs blew off links from social sites like Twitter and Facebook since they didn’t have much direct SEO value because the links are almost always nofollowed [learn more about nofollow]. Now that we know that Google and Bing use Twitter and Facebook to influence regular search results, it’s time to start thinking about how the person in charge of Social Media can start to think like an SEO as well.”

The article had some good points, but it really did take me back to grammar school. Quoting the article, “Now that we know” … what? Holy hemorrhoid! I guess I assumed that we knew this kind of thing years ago. Links from my old Yahoo chat groups in 1998 helped my SEO, but is that revolutionary, too? It was kind of funny to me how much it resembled something I said in early 2009 when I wrote the book “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends“. Here is a statement I made in the book, and I stand by it today:

“Many search engine optimizers (SEO) will overlook the value of Twitter for improving search engine penetration. If they miss this part, they are making a big mistake. A reason many SEO will dismiss this value is that Twitter uses the “nofollow” attribute in outbound links. Make no mistake; Twitter can greatly enhance your visibility in search engine results.”

Heck, maybe the Internet is coming up to speed, or maybe I am just one of those people who are as strange as a pickled duck fart and foresee things in some uncanny way. I don’t know … maybe it is a combination.

Do More Tweets Help SEO?

This should be obvious, but the impact of more people tweeting your website content may be even higher than you imagined. Whenever somebody tweets your linked content, it creates links to your website. The quality and quantity of inks to a website are the most important factors that search engines use to gauge the importance of a website. Also, the links Twitter produces are not necessarily only on Twitter. There are a lot of services which aggregate Twitter’ed content, as well as many widgets and other syndication through RSS in which it may appear on other websites.

It will be far more important for other people to tweet your content than just tweeting your link a squillion times. Don’t bother with that, because it is not going to make you a ton of new friends. A few times is fine, but let’s not go out of the way to garner death threats, and insults about your mother.

Do More Twitter Followers Help SEO?

I am the last person who would wish to promote a “Twitter follower-frenzy”, so I almost hate to say this. Many indicators will suggest that more followers on Twitter can improve the SEO value of a tweet. Yes, a high follower count does correlate to higher SEO value, but I believe it correlates even better with the number of Twitter lists a person is on and other measurements.

I know that a lot of people want to become popular on Twitter, but before you implement some off the cuff plan, be sure to read the article titled “How To Become Popular on Twitter Without Actually Being Useful“. If you do the things that many moronic marketers suggest, people will wish a bad case of herpes on you and throw you on a flaming bed of nails before they will care to listen to you … or buy your stuff.

The important factor is being useful and giving people what they want. Here you go … try thinking a little bit more like this video.

There is not much that I dislike more than a bunch of bad marketers out there with nothing useful to say. I think that millions of Twitter users would agree with me on this. Don’t take this as any suggestion that you go and try to gather as many Twitter followers as you can. Instead, I recommend, as I always have, that you be useful. As with anything SEO-related, being useful and providing compelling information is what matters the most. If you can do that, many of the other factors seem to magically fall into place. I am pretty sure it can also help hemorrhoids, even better than ice cream.

Twitter Changed, But it is Still Useful for SEO

Although I still really like Twitter, it changed a lot over time. Twitter had a huge growth spurt, and as the new users poured in, much of the real value of the service dwindled. It is still good for SEO, but what so many people do not grasp is that if you expect people to tweet and retweet what you have to share, it had better be pretty damn awesome to be heard over the excess noise.

How much did Twitter change? I could write another book about this, but I would rather stick needles in my eyes. I will just offer this: I wrote about Twitter retweets on February 29th, 2009. It was titled “Twitter: The Tweet About Retweet” and it received many hundreds of retweets. Tweetmeme says 420, but that data is old, and it was actually many more. In another case, I wrote a really short and basic article (approximately 250 words) about Twitter username selection on April 8th of 2009. It also received a ton of retweets and 158 reader comments. Back in the earlier days, I would measure between 500-1,500 clicks on darn near any link I tweeted, within minutes. Now, a hundredth of that would buzz my radar.

Maybe I just became less “brilliant” with the things people love to share, but I am pretty sure that is not the case. Many Twitter users just don’t see it when they are trying to follow a squillion other people, with hopes of being followed back.

Today, when I tweet something from my blog, I do not count on Twitter to pass it along. In fact, Twitter directly accounts for under three percent of my website traffic. Moreover, I have measured that the website traffic coming directly from Twitter has a low probability of participating and adding their comments to a topic. I think this is because of Twitter-enhanced attention disorders which were there before Twitter. Twitter just made it even more “old fashioned” to actually read things and pay attention. My study on this is forthcoming, but let’s just start the study with whether you will take the time to finish reading and add your comment.

Since the time of these popular Twitter-related articles, I have written hundreds of very compelling and useful blog articles which far exceeded the relatively minor value of those. I can effectively measure the value of Twitter from a conversational standpoint as much lower than it was. The SEO value of Twitter and the Twitter “retweet” is still there, but if you want to break through the noise, it better be something stunning.

As I said in the article titled “Is Squidoo Good for SEO? Likely More Than You Think!“, I must add a basic disclaimer as follows:

“I do not rely on any single SEO tool too heavily, and I do not recommend that you do that, either. There is not a short list of SEO tools and tricks that will make you famously successful with search engines.”

If you came here about the ice cream, I am sorry about your bum. Perhaps you could try eating it really fast to take your mind off the ‘roids. If you came here about Twitter and SEO, please add your comments on my blog. Just type it in and let’s have a good old fashioned ice cream social.

Photo credit to weelakeo via Flickr

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The Best SEO and Social Media Tools Are Not As Expected!

Best SEO and Social Media Marketing Tools

It seems that a lot of people talk about the mechanical aspects of marketing these days. When the Internet is involved, people seem to get really hung up on the technical issues … the mechanics of marketing. Sure, it matters, but the mechanics of today’s marketing starts to seem like the equivalent of marketers of the past calling a printing press their best tool.

I am a marketing guy, and a web guy. I write a lot of articles about SEO and social media marketing, and it is something that I know well. I write about topics such as SEO tips, blogging tools, social media measurement, marketing strategy, and much more.

I work hard to teach people how to help themselves, and when they need some extra help, I provide services for hire. Now I want to share an important tip that may very well help you more than any other!

I have expressed this before, but I want to say it again: “The Best SEO and Social Media Tools Are Not What You Think!” Some people will find this to be shocking, but the best SEO and social media marketing tools are not at all what you have likely been led to believe. I want to clear this up for you, and share what I know, without a doubt, to be the best tools for improving your online marketing efforts.

In order to best express this, I offer you this short video titled “Best SEO and Social Media Marketing Tools”.

Coffee and Cigarettes?

Yes, there is my answer … Coffee and cigarettes are my favorite tools for building a brand and for improving search engine optimization and social media marketing. I am crazy, right? It is a challenging concept for a lot of people, but it is often much easier than explaining every nut and bolt that makes a marketing machine run smoothly.

You see, coffee and cigarettes are a part of my brand. I even published it in a book, and I have said it a squillion times: “I take coffee and cigarettes and turn them into better social media marketing and SEO.”

The real truth is that the mechanics of marketing are of considerably small consequence when compared to marketing creativity and talent.

When I call coffee and cigarettes my best tools, it is because they help me to work longer hours, without sleep. They keep me functioning during those long hours of trying to discover something genius about a client’s products or services, and what makes them more attractive to their model customers.

My tip for the day is to consider the tools which are not so obvious. Try something less mechanical and be ready to get creative.

Do you smoke cigarettes and drink coffee? Talk to me … your comments are well-appreciated!

SEO and Social Media: Picking Chicken Poop from Toothpaste

I have heard many arguments separating SEO and social media by trying to decypher which is more valuable. Many of the people arguing this point are on one side or the other, and miss the point that they are both tactics which work together toward an overall strategy. Many people also seem to miss the fact that they are largely the same thing.

Here are a few questions that marketers use for producing arguments:

Which is more important … SEO or social media?
Which discipline provides the higher return on investment?
How do you calculate the ROI of social media?
SEO? Isn’t that some sort of fairy dust?
How do you separate chicken poop from toothpaste?

OK, that last one was my own personal interpretation, but seriously … how can people get this so mixed up that they stand in their corner arguing their respective knowledge without coming together in the center and having a big group hug?

SEO opens a lot of doors for companies. Having their greatness spread across the Internet in a way that people will find it when they search for something is extremely productive. People still ask me the question “how will people find my website?” To me, the question seems pretty easy … they will search for it! Having great information on a well prepared website and making it available to search engines is a “no-brainer”. Well, it is a “some-brainer”, because a lot of people still don’t really grasp it. In any case, it is very valuable, and backed up with a lot of facts. It also provides a lot of value to back up your social media marketing endeavors.

Social media is a great way to discover the people who may be interested in searching for you. It is often a proactive approach where you can add yourself to the mix. It is also a great way to learn more about those people who are already searching for you, will be searching for you, or may never search for you but will take a recommendation from others they trust. It also provides a lot of value to your search engine optimization endeavors.

I find that a lot of people get these two fields very confused, both by trying to separate them and by trying to merge them. SEO and social media both have their own unique qualities, but the reality is that trying to separate them is about as easy as picking chicken poop out of your toothpaste.

Both of these areas of Internet marketing are the same in many ways. Search engines use popularity of a website measured by incoming links pointing to the website content as a major factor for ranking. Social media also uses the popularity of website content as a major factor for ranking. What a lot of people fail to realize is how much they both work the same, and they both work in synergy.

I would be pleased to carry on in my typically lengthy way of writing until my brain hurts from extolling the values of these various marketing tools, but I have already done that. After all, have you seen my blog title? It is titled “SEO and Social Media Marketing Blog“ for a reason.

Today, I want you to jump in and help me to explain how both are intertwined yet diverse.

If you can offer a better way to describe the relationship of SEO and social media than to say that it is like trying to pick chicken poop from your toothpaste, I will offer you a kiss full on the mouth. I have nice fresh breath, but I can assure you that I have found a whole lot of “chicken poop in my toothpaste”.

I still brush regularly.

Photo credit to andrein via Flickr