Lessons learned from speaking at SES London

Speaking at SES London was exciting and daunting - to be honest, I’ve *always* wanted to speak at SES since I started doing SEO, and having two sessions to cover on link building was a dream - many thanks to Mike Grehan for the opportunity.
A couple of clear lessons learned, though:
1. Presentations are Linkbait
The two [...]

iBrian to speak at SES London 2008

I have *always* wanted to speak at SES. I love SEO and especially link building - my speciality. I love talking about the subject, and I love talking about my experiences with link dev work.
The trouble is, I’m usually too busy to keep any pace with blogging the subject - plus there’s also the concern [...]

Google using bounce rates for ranking purposes?

I suggested a while back that Google could use clickstream - user tracking data - to modify SERPs.
I now believe Google is already applying this data via via user tracking of how long a user stays on a site - and whether they click back because it’s irrelevant, or else quickly click out via [...]

Live Search: Aggressive duplicate content filters

Live Search - aka MSN Search - has been showing some of the most aggressive duplicate content filtering I’ve ever seen across any search engine of late.
I first noticed it with a client who is performing well on Google, but has dropped down significantly on MSN.
The main problem is that he’s in a market that [...]

Why companies should be wary of in-house link development

At SEW, Justilien Gaspard suggests 5 Best Reasons to Build Links In-House.
While I certainly encourage my own clients to cover some link development in house, it has to be done under guidance.
The problem is, managing a link development campaign requires experience, knowledge and creative thinking that you cannot easily train someone in.
Additionally, good link developers [...]

When clueless SEO’s work over the radar

So I received another email approach from another SEO company - who have visited one of my good content sites, and without realising that it’s published by another SEO company, sent a link buying request:

My name is [removed] and I work on behalf of [major UK brand]. We would be interested in placing an advertorial [...]

SEO cock-up - I forgot about nofollow

I just posted tonight about tracking spam behaviour to find link sources - then realised I’d overlooked nofollow.
In fact, I’ve been overlooking nofollow for some time now, and I’m slapping my head in frustration.
One of my SEO projects in development was a small network of blogs, with human writers assigned to write about popular posts [...]

How spammers can lead you to links

Okay, here’s a quickie - just received an email in my inbox showing comment spam.
It’s from an automated blog trackback - you know, those Wordpress installs that just republish feeds and trackback from it.
It’s easy just to throw it away - but having just looked at a couple of blogs I run, decided to run [...]

Lots of tips on the Platinax Forums

I’m trying not to post too much of particular use on my blog at present - let’s just say Brian Turner the SEO and my SEO company want to keep a general low profile for the time being. :)
However, I am pushing Platinax - a different company I run - and am currently publishing a [...]

When social bookmarking happens without you

Just had a great experience - thought I’d better submit my news articles for today to social media sites.
However, the first two I tried to submit were refused - because they had already been submitted by other users. :)
Either another SEO has decided to become my best friend, in which case - the cheques in [...]

Experimenting with Press Releases

Over the past week I experimented with Press Releases again - something I’ve not used much previously, not least because word was that Google had gotten down to devaluing them a couple of years ago, when submitting to PR Web was all the rage.
Anyway, I noticed Marketwire press releases getting some action on some pretty [...]

New changes on Google this week

For those who read this with an interest in SEO, I’ve noticed a few interesting changes on Google over the past week.
Firstly, Google seems to have tweaked the algo so that keyword domains have lost a little of their dominance. So just because “blue-widgets.com” is an established, if poorly built and promoted site, it no [...]

Rediscovering link building

Since Threadwatch closed it’s killed off my social respite time, forcing me to concentrate more on work.
It’s sad to lose that social connection with the SEO world, but since then I’ve found myself being creative again with link building, and discovered some interesting new solutions.
Some I know other SEO’s are already using - some I [...]

Rip-off links

Take a look at these two threads:

Want Help to Get Registered Office in UK
Another interesting Question?

The “SEO company” responsible for this forum spamming has a London address, but is essentially a bunch of Indian spammers.
Get this, though - I contacted them, and they told me each link provided in those threads cost £15. Each.
I don’t [...]

Consolidation vs Niche Targeting: Pros and Cons

I’m currently in a conundrum, so I’m going to think aloud for this post.
The problem is one of Generic vs Niche targeting - especially with regards to consolidating a number of niche sites into a larger generic one.
If you have multiple sites in the same generic vertical covering different niche elements, should you consolidate them [...]

Google News - getting harder to be syndicated?

For some reason, for the past two years I’ve taken it on board to develop a whole string of news site.
I figure it’s partly because I have a closet desire to be a newspaper publisher for real - it was one of my dreams even before I’d heard of the internet.
The other reason is that [...]

Simple vbulletin SEO tips: The Title Tag

We covered SEO titles for Wordpress in the last entry - now let’s optimise the titles for popular forum software platform vbulletin a little better.
As before, we want our site name to actually be the forum index page name. That means moving away from the generic titles to something a little more specific.
There are a [...]

Some Simple WordPress SEO Tips

Here’s a neat little tip for all you Wordpress users out there…
Really, it has to be said - WordPress titles suck. “Blog Name > Post Title”.
That’s not what we want to see.
So go here and copy/paste the code for dynamic titles Paul provided in the Platinax forums - Wordpress titles without the junk - [...]

Revenue Share - the next webmaster economy?

Recently I’ve noticed an emerging new trend online - revenue share as a business model applied to forums, blogs, and news communities.
The idea is simple - whatever advertising revenues the site earns is split with the active community members.
The most common way this is set up is via contextual advertising accounts, such as Google Adsense, [...]

Now is the time to have a business survival strategy: recession is looming

I know many people don’t pay too much attention to general economic data, but because of the news sites I publish I’ve been covering economic indicators over the past three years.
Here’s the bottom line - the booming world economy has been financed by borrowing - a debt bubble that has been warned about continually for [...]