Now, while his story is a modern morality tale, his words – taken out of context and with a sly wink – apply powerfully to SEO.

Lunch is for wimps

Google never sleeps. Round the clock, the algorithm works, finding new flaws and opening up new loopholes. Knowledge is out of date faster than an overripe banana. If you’re not checking your rankings every day, if you’re not reading the latest thoughts

It’s a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses.

In SEO, there is only one #1 position. From #2 on down, you’re picking up the crumbs from someone else’s table. Those crumbs can be enough to make a living – but you should always, always be driving for that #1 slot. If that means someone else gets hurt, who cares?

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

Always want more. If you have a million organic visits a month, you have to be greedy for 2 million. Without that drive, you find yourself sliding back without even noticing it. If you’re not hungry enough, you can be certain that someone else is – and unless you want them to eat your lunch, it’s better to eat it yourself first. Even if you’re not hungry.

What’s worth doing is worth doing for money.

If you’ve got a talent – for building links, driving traffic or getting better rankings – it’s worth money. If you can’t find someone to pay your commercial worth, go create your own value. Every day, billions of queries run through Google alone  – every one of them can be monetised if you’re smart. Find a niche and dominate it. Your time and knowledge is money – treat it accordingly.

The most valuable commodity I know of is information.

Data. Data. Data. It’s the lifeblood of SEO. If you don’t what links the competition have got, how they got them and what they’re worth, then you’ve got nothing. You need to know how websites work – from the front end, through the back end, and through to the very infrastructure on which they run. You need to know how and why Google do what they do. Research, test and discuss: there is no other way.

Sheep get slaughtered.

If your only strategy is to follow the competition, you’ll lose. You get no prizes for finding the same loophole that your competitor found last week. By that time, he’s cleaned up and you’re just chasing his tail.

It’s all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.

A number one ranking is great for bragging rights. But if that isn’t creating money, who cares? Ranking is only a means of getting traffic. And traffic is only a means of getting money. If all you’ve got is a ranking, then you’ve really got nothing. Turning that into cold, hard cash is the name of the game.

Many people do not consider that they need to think hard about the types of search terms people are using to reach tehir website and make sure that they come high on search engines for those search terms as well as for others which are relevant. It can be a lot of hard work analysing all of the data with regards to traffic to the site and you will have to go back to basic marketing principles to work out who your potential customers are, what your competition is and how best you go about finding a unique selling point to put you above them.

When planning a new business or website, think hard who your competitors are before you start as if you cannot get high enough on search engines to get much traffic, then it might be worth considering a different business.

They have had Google’s backing on this and it will not include organic search results unless they are to be used in any marketing content. It could be confusing to therefore work out exactly what is included in this. Examples could be if Google has a search result with an incorrect price in it, due that price recently changing. This could be a big problem if the price has increased but the ASA would consider it to Googles responsibility to check the details and therefore there would be no action taken.

However, the type of things they are interested in is if there are paid links which are undisclosed. An example of this would be an SEO company buying a link from a blogger in order to increase their rankings in search engines and directories. They will not be banning this type of thing but want to make sure that people using the blog would easily know that it was a paid link.

This has consequences in that it is unlikely that SEO companies would want bloggers to reveal that their link is a paid one. In fact many SEO companies that buy blog posts and links at the moment specifically ask, in their guidelines, that the fact it is a paid link should be kept quiet. We all like them to be well hidden within an article or list of links and look like a genuine part of the blog.

It is obvious why we need to do this, but with other advertising, it does have to be clearly labelled. Such as an advertising feature in a magazine or a television advertisement that runs for longer than you would expect and is in a documentary type style. It is easy to see why they think that the Internet should not be managed in a similar way.

This will mean that certain links that don’t current fit Google’s guidelines will not be acceptable by the ASA’s standards and vice versa.

Many people complain about the way Google operates especially with regards to the way they do not take action against larger brands. Although they claim that they do, it is most likely that the ASA will do so as they risk no financial loss in doing so.

The impact this investigation is going to have is not easy to predict, there are already companies such as the Office of Fair Trading who take action to ensure disclaimers are appropriately used. For example many companies that currently pay bloggers for posting have a rule that the blogger must state in the terms and conditions that some of their posts are sponsored. However, this may not be enough to satisfy the ASA.

If the ASA do start acting and forcing these changes then more people are likely to highlight the problems to them and it is likely that they will be more influential than Google in these matters.

The bottom line is – this could potentially hurt SEO a lot!

My opinion is based on a couple of local key phrases I’ve been working on which were always organically positioned at number 1, but drowned out by the traditional Google Local listings and map. The change is (again) in my opinion an update to the algorithm.

My trail of thought:

• My organic result which was positioned number 1 organically got merged with my Google Local listing, therefore the site is now Position 1, without a map above it. I.e. we are now being seen an awful lot more which is awesome.
• The people who had optimised for Google Local are still on page 1, if they have a website. Which tends to make me think the ranking factors used in Google Locals top 10 map listings are now part of Googles main algorithm. Thus a local company would stand a better chance of ranking locally because of these new “credits” Google is giving local companies for there target phrases.
• However what this also means (and is being observed) is national companies which have strong pages can build past the new merged local results.

I could be wrong, but I actually think this is a beneficial change which will benefit SEO’s as Local SERPs are now open for play again within Google’s main algorithm and most importantly the top slots which were previously dominated by Map listings have now gone.

Why would they do that?

You may be wondering, well to me it seems obvious. The map listings alone without the rest of the Google algorithm were extremely easy to gain/weak. A lot of affiliates were cloaking the crap out of it for terms such as “Dating in London” which would should channel you off to Adult Friend Finder .. Dirty Affiliates.

So to incorporate Local as a “bonus” to local companies within the main Organic Results seems like an obvious solution.

Of course I haven’t tested it nearly enough to confirm this, but I know if I were Google, this is what I would do.

Why do I think these could be beneficial? My research is based entirely on observations of successfully ranked sites in competitive areas. Feel free to submit others and I will add them in and link back to you.

Meta Description

The meta description tag should contain one or more sentences describing the page. Search Engines will display this under the Page Title, therefore it’s extremely important make it interesting to encourage potential visitors to click through.

Example:

<meta name=”description” content=”A description of your page goes in here.”>

Meta Keywords

Meta Keywords are also used by some Search Engines although they have been written of by most people,  it is still a worthwhile cause as it could count towards an overall page Quality Score in Google and older Search Engines still use them.

Example:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Your phrase here, another phrase here” />

Meta Robots

This tells the Search Engines what it can and cannot do on a particular page.

This can be a very good one if used correctly even if others don’t say so. Its used throughout a few of my websites to ensure the Content gets indexed. This and the use of nofollows prevents Link Juice being passed to Tag Listings etc.  So on each “Post” every internal linked is nofollowed and on each Tag listing I use the Meta Robots tag like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow,noodp,noydir,noarchive” />

Meta Robots full list of Attributes:

• Index – Index this page please Googlebot (or other search engine).
• NoIndex – Don’t index this page Googlebot
• Follow – Follow all the links on this page
• NoFollow – Don’t follow anything on this page
• Noopd – Don’t use the description from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ)
• Noydir – Don’t use the description from the Yahoo Directory
• Noarchive – Don’t show a cache of this page please

Meta Distribution

This tells Google who your target audience is and would usually be set to Global.

Meta Distribution Attributes:

• Global is intended for all users.
• Local – for local IP block of your website
• IU – Internal Use Only not for public distribution

Example:

<meta name=”distribution” content=”Global” />

Meta Author

This should contain the owner/author of the page being displayed. It is an optional tag which you may or may not want to use. I will add that most SEO people seem to have it in their header, if they do it can’t be bad right?

Example:

<META NAME=”Author” CONTENT=”Anthony Shapley”>

Meta Generator

This is used to show what Content Management System is being used to Generate your website and is used by the software distributors to track the reach of their product. Whilst this is fine, I do highly encourage everyone to remove Version Numbers because if an exploit is found, it’s easy to work out if it applies to your website.

It makes no difference to your Search Results, you may or may not want to use it. Personally I would just remove it.

Example:

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress 2.6.2” />

The day started with Joost’s presentation on Blogging, which was awesome. Covered some quite technical bits that some people would perhaps usually overlook (including me) so I’ve been spending sometime improving loading times which were surprisingly bad. They still aren’t great, but it was a superb presentation and anyone who wants to blog seriously needs to read Joost’s blog.

Immediately after Joost’s presentation we had Julian from the Telegraph discussing big site SEO, which was also great, covering SEO from a Newspapers perspective was a very useful.

We then had superb Judith Lewis covering Universal Search – Judith’s presentation was very insightful for anyone starting out learning SEO covering all aspects of getting in the index including, web pages, images, products, videos and beyond.

After that Joost, Judith and I decided to head back to the hotel to freshen up (I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to find it) and I’m glad I went with them because I never would have!! We then went back to watch Zoe Piper talk about the Content Network. In case you’ve forgotten what the content network is, its what us SEO’s use to find relative back links. Uh I mean its how we advertise sites..

I then met a whole bunch more people (so many) including The Hodge who organized the whole event! It really was non stop all day until the early hours of Sunday morning by which point I’m ashamed to say I’d got so drunk I ended up being rather ill.

All in all, superb day and I highly recommend everyone considers visiting the next one in 2010 – I will be there!

Directories

Every link building campaign is started with a big Directory Submission, this is the foundation. Directories don’t pass a ton of equity but they are an easy way to ramp up numbers and a good mix of unique Class C IP Links. Its also extremely cheap or if your really skint you can do it yourself. When doing directory submissions I highly recommend using a multitude of different titles and descriptions. I wouldn’t use the same one more than 10 times before moving onto something slightly different.

Articles

After laying a solid foundation of links its start building some contextual links into the mix (anchor text your phrase), write 20 – 30 on topic unique articles, not spins. Copyscape picks them up so Google sure as hell can. Submit them to follow sites such as Ezine Articles, etc. Ensure they get accepted.

Social Sites

Register on all the popular social sites, some give links away when you actively participate, more than most people care to notice. On top of that they will rank underneath your site for your Brand which is also awesome. Aim for about 50 – 100. Knowem is awesome for this if your lazy.

Press Release

Once you’ve rolled out all of that write up a Press Release announcing the launch of your new site, link back to your homepage with your Brand Name and an interrior page with the text your targetting. Maximum of three (IMO). Hopefuly it gets picked up well and you get a whole bunch of links. Use PR Web for the best results.

Big Links

Once you’ve done all of that properly, you should have a pretty strong profile, finish it off with some big juicy links aim for PR5 – PR8. You can even get good on-topic links at this sort of quality for free if you offer a unique service and good content. Alternatively be prepared to cough up some cash. If you do, make sure you do it in a contextual manner on a fairly new page.

And then repeat where you think you need it, Link Building is very much an Art, whats in today probably won’t be the fashion tomorrow.

Just thought I’d let you know that if you post more than 10 times on his blog and pass the editorial review you will get a clean link back to your site. This is a reward to those who take the time to participate in the community he has built around his site.

Another benefit of doing this is to reduce the amount of links on a page. After Matt Cutts recently announced that a Pages, PageRank is divided between all links on a page regardless of whether they’re followed or not, it makes sense to just completely remove links from comments – unless your going to do followed links. We even went as far to test if the GoogleBot would follow a URL that wasn’t linked and index it i.e. a link citation you might call it. So far all of our tests have indicated that GoogleBot doesn’t follow unlinked URLs in Content. Personally I am quite suprised by this!

I will probably implement something similar on this site shortly.

If you enjoyed this post and would like to learn SEO I would recommend starting on my SEO Guide that I am gradually writing.

Will you benefit from it?

So much is being spoken about SEO these days that goes ‘right over the head’ of so many website owners, that some of them just abandon the idea of employing SEO techniques or employing an SEO Consultant to advise them, purely because they just do not understand what all the fuss is about. But there is no doubt that almost all website owners could benefit from it, employed properly and in a manner suited to their particular business.

Do you really need it?

Many small to medium e-commerce website owners are of the opinion that ‘if my prices are lower than all my competitors, buyers can see this if they compare them, why should I need to do anything other than keep my prices competitive?’ Or, ‘if I have found a niche in the market, or am offering the general public a service that no one else is offering, I am bound to succeed’. They are overlooking one basic – that is the fact that buyers have to FIND their website first, when searching for the products or services they offer, to be able to compare their prices with others selling in the same field.

It is a fact that more referrals to your website from search engines cannot alone guarantee more sales for you. And, that there are other Internet marketing methods that can be employed to improve sales that do not involve the use of SEO. But these will usually involve a lot of work and expensive paid for advertising. Utilised properly, SEO is an effective tool for most website owners wishing to improve not just traffic to their site but resulting sales from that traffic.

White Hat –v- Black Hat SEO methods

Statements from any SEO Consultant guaranteeing you that employing them will result in your website getting top ranking in Google are to be viewed with caution. Google, along with other search engines change their ranking algorithms and will not divulge detailed information of precisely how websites are ranked with them. No detailed discussion of these Black Hat SEO methods will be gone into here, as the main object is to discuss the Benefits of SEO when utilized properly, not to provide some sort of ‘School for Scoundrels’ where Black Hat methods are concerned.

What to look for in a good SEO Consultant

The aim of a good SEO Consultant (or a White Hat SEO Consultant) should be to achieve the most prominent listing of your website possible without the employment of Black Hat Techniques, but there can be no 100% guarantees – therefore the giving of such guarantees should be viewed with a certain amount of suspicion. And, they probably intend to achieve this by employing ‘Black Hat’ methods, there is a very real risk that, although short term success might be apparent, the methods they employ will probably result in your website being penalised and even blacklisted by the most popular search engines. Some very large multi national organizations have discovered this to their cost.

In other words, good SEO Consultants employ ‘White Hat’ SEO techniques. And they will take into account the size and scope of the website business they are dealing with and make suggestions accordingly. It is not one rule for all and not every website will benefit the same from the employment of SEO. SEO Consultants who promise you the earth very quickly should, in the main, be avoided.

Suffice to say, the techniques will include the basics of ensuring your site is registered with major search engines, and listed in the appropriate directory. They will assist with the writing of optimal content for your website, and recommend changes where they would be beneficial.

If you want to learn about SEO I would recommend reading these posts in order:

• How to Write Remarkable Title Tags – an SEO’s perspective
• Improving CTR with Meta Descriptions and bits on other Meta Tags
• Tracking your Inbound Links

There are several simple principles to stick to when writing that remarkable Title Text:

* Include a good call to action. This will provoke the user to click on you, over your competitors. For example:
“******* **** – Florist Sundries | Cheap Wholesale Florist Supplies”

Would be much better as:
“Get Florist Sundries Supplies at cheap prices from ******* ****”

Personally I would remove the “at cheap prices” but this shows how simply tweaking the keywords in the title creates something much more user friendly, meaning they are a lot more likely to click it.

* Whilst a Title Tag can be up to 80 amount of characters you should aim to keep it to 64 because Google and other Search Engines only display 64 characters. Missing characters of the end is not visually attractive in my opinion.

* Testing Click Through Rates. When the site is of a commercial nature, i’ts sometimes beneficial to test Title Texts use Pay Per Click, create a campaign, exact match it to your ranking term and rotate ads in order to work out the best possible text. This is measured by the Click through Rate and/or Conversion Rate of each Ad, depending on whether visitors or sales are your goal.

If you’ve managed to do all of that then you’re one step closer to a well optimised website.