Garrett's SEO Blog

This is an article I wrote about the 4 tools I use to track and combat Google’s Algorithm updates.

“Trolling is the act of purposefully antagonizing other people on the internet” – UrbanDictionary.com

Google decided to get rid of their Google Places and replace it with Google+ Local.

seoinfonews:

Yesterday, the Google Webmaster Help team posted another video by Matt Cutts - this one was named What happens if I link to a good page that later becomes spammy…

The reason why we didn’t cover it here was because we wanted to give it time to breathe and even out.

moneyisnotimportant:

1. The first step is to stop Googling things like, “how to make money online.” Not because you shouldn’t want to make money online, but because the stuff you’re going to find by doing that is going to help you losemoney online. Sort of like asking a casino owner how to make money in Vegas…
2. Don’t pay anyone for simple and proven instructions on how to achieve this goal. In particular, don’t pay anyone to teach you how to write or sell manuals or ebooks about how to make money online.
3. Get rich slow.
4. Focus on the scarce resource online: attention. If you try to invent a way to take cheap attention and turn it into cash, you will fail. The attention you want isn’t cheap, it’s difficult to get via SEO and it rarely scales. Instead, figure out how to earn expensiveattention.
5. In addition to attention, focus on trust. Trust is even more scarce than attention.
6. Don’t worry so much about the ‘online’ part. Instead, figure out how to create value. The online part will take care of itself.
7. Don’t quit your day job. Start evenings and weekends and figure it out with small failures.
8. Build a public reputation. A good one, and be sure that you deserve it, and that it will hold up to scrutiny.

Read more

uxrave:

via dragoni 

Here are my basic best practices for buttons:

1. Make buttons look like buttons.
2. Put buttons where users can find them.
3. Make the most important button look like it’s the most important one.
4. Put buttons in a sensible order.
5. Label buttons with what they do.
6. If users don’t want to do something, don’t have a button for it.
7. Make it harder to find destructive buttons.

A lot of people now-a-days are buying Facebook Likes, Google +1’s, even Twitter Retweets and Pinterest repins.  Is it hurting everyone? Of course it is! Here’s why.

Google recently unveiled new algorithm changes.  Check out this article to see if it will affect you, and how you can combat it.

Google recently lost a lawsuit in Australian courts, ruling that they were involved in misleading and deceptive conduct through their AdWords advertising platform.

An article I wrote on duplicate content, how it affects your site, and how to fix it.

Many people don’t seem to know the difference…so I wrote an article about it.

Also touches on Siri’s effects on SEO.

An article about Bing’s new Linked Pages.

Pinterest is the latest “hip” thing in social media and it’s spreading like wildfire. In January 2011, they had around 120,000 users. Now, just over a year later, they have over 4 million active users. From the standpoint of a social media marketer, that’s a huge potential audience. But what does it do for SEO?

An article I wrote about the effects of SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA on not only SEO but all internet businesses and websites.

digital-marketing-engineer:

1. Optimize your website so that search engines can find you organically.  You can either outsource or utilize the various tools available in the Internet to apply SEO to your website.
2. Broadcast your site once live by sending out a press release to your e-mail contacts and to media partners as magazines, newspapers, radio, and television stations. Also gather your contacts list and managed them in a system, this can be using a simple Excel worksheet, or you can use Customer Management Relationship software or other contact management systems.
3. Offer an incentive to your affiliates – Offering an incentive to your affiliates might just give them that extra 10% motivation to spend more time promoting your program. More promotion means more sales.
4. Your website needs to have a better presentation than your competitors.  This means a more engaging demonstration of what you offer, some are using videos to demonstrate the uniqueness about the business, which can be very effective for consumer related products or services.
5. Add a page of content – Write an article and add it to your site. The more pages Google can see on your website, the more chances you have of ranking for any particular keyword; keep adding more pages each day and build a habit in doing this.
6. Facilitate and run contests and giveaways via your website, even just a small free download report or some kind of coupons or vouchers. Companies like Groupons can work quite well for many start-up businesses.
7. Look for websites endorsing products or services that are complementary to the products or services that you promote and get in touch with the site management to propose swapping of links. There are also services out there that help members swap links with each other without cost.
8. Build an email database list and send regular newsletters with great content and offering
9.  Write articles in your field of proficiency and disseminate them to editors to serve as web content for their website with a request that a link to your website and a one-liner about your product or services be included in the article. This can significantly enhance your visibility.
10. Establish a business blog offering first-rate content and customary industry observation. Make the blog site interactive so you can not only create a solid brand presence but also utilize it to collect feedback. If you are too busy in writing articles, consider either outsource or use some of the industry news to create web traffic to your site.
11. You can also consider listing your products or services with auction sites.
12. Registration with the many search engines available is basic in Internet marketing because latent and prospective customers will normally find you through search engines. Remember, you should also register on search engines in different languages, in North America, it is good idea to register both in English & Spanish, in Europe, you should register in all different languages search engines you are targeting.
13. Promote your site in industry, specialized, and other key directories - doing so will help your ranking and obtain traffic for your website. By listing on directories, you can be exposed to industry specific members and professionals.
14. Dominate your marketing niche with affiliate, reseller, and associate programs.
15. Write one piece of content and turn it into multiple pieces of content. For example, let’s say you write a 250 word blog post on Monday. On Tuesday, you can simply turn that blog post into a podcast, and on Wednesday you can turn that same piece of content into a video. This will save you tons of research time trying to come up with the right topic to create content around. Article marketing is one of the best ways to generate traffic, and you can also partner with part-time journalists to help you out.
16. Create a web page on popular personal social sites such Facebook and Twitter etc.
17.  Create a special discussion forum on professional social sites such as LinkedIn, Xing and others.
18. Social Bookmarking - This technique involves using popular social sites and bookmark particular post you have made. After posting a video to Youtube, for example, you may want to get additional traffic and backlinks to your website. Bookmarking will help you rise up in the search engine rankings if used correctly.
19. Writing Articles- Article marketing is probably the best online marketing strategy when it comes to promoting your home business website(s) online for free. With a little time and effort on your part, you can easily push out 1-2 articles per day and post them to high rank and traffic places.
20. Request an analysis from a business coach who has both offline and online marketing expertise, they can offer advice such as changing your web look, changing your online forms and other ways to capture database or create revenue opportunities.

Newest update from Google.  Do you think it’s good?  Bad? How will it affect SEO?

The Hidden Potential Of Tumblr Pages And How To Utilize Followers

The title says it all!

You’re checking your Google Analytics and you see (Not Provided) as a keyword.  What is that?

An article I wrote about how to get forum backlinks that work.  Backlinks that don’t get denied from the moderators.

You don’t have the money

Finances are a sensitive issue.

You might not have the money right now, but there are plenty of ways to increase your income.

If you have to scour freelancer sites to aquire a hundred dollars here and there, do it.

Any money you make freelancing, save it to put towards your dream project.

Can’t afford to do that?

Create a strict budget, and set aside a portion of your income.

Don’t believe what the news tells you, money is everywhere, and people spend it every day.

Right now, someone is hiring someone just like you.

Amen.