The Perfect Business Blogger Profile

Economists and some government reports are saying that the American economy is improving. Therefore, hence, and in conclusion we can expect to see that more jobs will be appearing. Alas! Unfortundately, and sadly those won’t be the same lucrative jobs of yesteryear. What happened? A couple of things happened on the way to the next job market. One of them was automation. As we look for newer and better efficiencies in productivity and administration we continue to reduce demand for actual human workers in various non-scalable capacities. That’s the ironic thing about a technology-driven economy: all the investors insist that any human-performed task is not scalable and therefore not worth investing in. Never mind the fact that there are now 7 billion people on the planet and that number is expected to grow by leaps and bounds over the next 15-100 years. The one thing of which we are NOT in short supply is people. It’s just that people don’t scale despite the fact that they breed faster than rabbits. Assuming it takes you 10 minutes to read this article, in the time you read these words 2500 future workers will be born around the globe. That’s just an estimate [...]



via SEO Theory http://www.seo-theory.com/2013/06/19/the-perfect-business-blogger-profile/

The Politics of Linking on the Web

I build link pages. I do this for myself, for clients, for friends, and occasionally for strangers upon whom I take a pity. A “link page” is no particular thing. It doesn’t necessarily look like THIS or like THAT. It’s a page that exists only for the purpose of linking out. Outbound links are important to the World Wide Web. It’s the links that make it the Web, obviously. I have — for many years now — advocated placing as many outbound links on Websites as possible. The SEO advantages of doing so have been plentiful, and not just because “parts of [Google's] system encourage links to good sites”. Links Are Based Upon Naivete When I built my first Web directory I reviewed thousands of Websites that enthusiastic people submitted for inclusion. Back in those days we had no blogs, no content management systems, and everyone was pretty much ignorant of PHP, Perl, CSS, etc. The time it took people to put together even a 1-page Website might have been considerable, when you allow for the fact that they had to go through an extensive learning process (about basic HTML, Web editing tools, FTP, using an FTP tool, their service [...]



via SEO Theory http://www.seo-theory.com/2013/06/17/the-politics-of-linking-on-the-web/

Problems That Advanced SEO Must Resolve

In 2007 I wrote “Ranking SEO Knowledge: Basic, Intermediate, Advanced” as an attempt to classify the unclassifiable: levels of knowledge or capability in the organic search marketing field. So much has changed since then. We have witnessed the birth and death of entire search verticals, engines, and SEO practices. And some things have not changed. Early on in the article I wrote: There are not that many truly advanced knowledge SEOs, in my opinion. The most advanced people tend to think on a very theoretical level, looking at things in terms of scale. Advanced SEO Theory is concerned with patterns of behavior and trend analysis. Many SEOs practice some advanced SEO techniques. It’s not like there is an elite SEO Advanced Club (in fact, most of the so-called “elite” SEOs have been doing SEO for so short a time they don’t really know much). I’m not sure how many of the “elite” SEOs that were popular in 2007 are still popular and “elite” today. Some of those folks have moved on from organic search marketing so their knowledge has certainly not progressed as much as anyone who has hung around for the past 6 years. One of the areas where [...]



via SEO Theory http://www.seo-theory.com/2013/06/11/problems-that-advanced-seo-must-resolve/

Why Analyzing Competitor Websites Wastes Your Money

After link building (even in the poorly disguised form of “content marketing”) the most popular search marketing passtime appears to be “competitive analysis”, focusing primarily on two areas: Backlink Profiles and Rankings. Both of these forms of competitive analysis are time-and-money wasters for SEOs and their clients/employers. Let’s take a look at some hard facts. Competitive Analysis Only Works When You Compete Directly Virtually every company I have ever spoken to or worked for has handed me a list of “competitor Websites” to look at. These lists are always wrong. You typically compile a competitor list by deciding which keywords you should be ranking for and looking at who ranks above you. Someone once told me that this is comparable to CVS Pharmacy looking across the street and figuring out whether they are competing against a Walgreens Pharmacy store or a local pharmacist. However, that is not the case. In a brick-and-mortar situation the customers come to the store. The store doesn’t move around the community and chase customers. In an online situation the Website comes to the customers. The customers just happen to find competing Websites in their search results or link lists or online discussions or through ads [...]



via SEO Theory http://www.seo-theory.com/2013/06/10/why-analyzing-competitor-websites-wastes-your-money/

Answers to Questions About Search Engine Optimization

I receive a lot of questions from people about SEO. Many of the questions are naturally of a very personal nature — about specific Websites, rather than general topics. Still, once in a while some interesting questions arise out of conversations I have with clients, or they pop up in my email, or they just bring in random traffic to the blog. Here is a selection of questions people have been asking over the past few months along with my answers to them. How Complex is Google’s Algorithm? What we think of as “Google’s algorithm” is, in fact, many algorithms — probably on the order of several hundred or several thousand, depending on how far from the search box you want to dig into the Google system. In computer science an algorithm is a set of instructions that are intended to provide precise guidance on how to execute a specific task. An algorithm might be used to return today’s date in a special format. An algorithm might be used to conjure up a relatively unique number for use in a database. An algorithm might be used to store data on a hard drive (or a group of hard drives). The [...]



via SEO Theory http://www.seo-theory.com/2013/06/09/answers-to-questions-about-search-engine-optimization/