Category: Advanced SEO

I love this idea: Build a great Website and people will come to it. It has never failed to work. In fact, “Build it and they will come” has been the foundation of my Web marketing strategies since I started…

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Dave Davies wrote a 3-part “history” of Matt Cutts’ public statements on Search Engine Watch. I only glanced through the first article and stopped reading at the following section: Links AT SES London, Cutts came right out and said what…

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More than ten years ago I decided the best thing I could do for a Website that needed to optimize for search was publish content that I would enjoy reading again and again through the years. Following that one simple principle has brought me search success on many Websites. When I reported a Panda downgrade for Xenite.Org two years ago it was obvious to me why the site had been downgraded. Fixing the downgrade and recovering the traffic was simple. I removed all the lazy, autogenerated content and relaunched the site with a fraction of its former content. From there I built out the site again, once more with real content that I myself produced. Xenite.Org is going strong today. SEO Theory and my other Websites never took that hit. I haven’t had to change anything for search engine optimization on any site where I manage the content and produce the content myself. Given a limited amount of time in the day, you have to decide whether you’re going to spend that time placing links or creating content and leaving it to other people to place the links. Now I do place links — I place them for all sorts […]

One of the SEO services that Randy Ray and I provide for clients is a review of Website security. On a happy Web no one would be trying to exploit loopholes in Internet services but the “commercial” hackers are chasing potentially billions of dollars in revenue and the “state” hackers are trying to dominate the Web. There is nothing you can do to prevent someone from trying to break into your site. You may be able to lock it down so they cannot get in, but their attempts to crack your passwords can still cause problems. I have discussed these issues at length on the SEO Theory Premium Newsletter. When your Website is down or labeled as being infected with malware, that costs you money. Let’s take a look at some of the issues a senior SEO technician should be able to delve into. It would be good experience for less experienced SEO techs to master these skills as soon as possible. Server Exploits There are different types of hackers out there. Some are just counting coup on Websites and though their hacks are annoying and cost you money they don’t leave anything malicious on your server. Of course, you […]

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 […]

I want to address three questions that recently brought people to the SEO Theory blog. They are all connected, although the people asking the questions may not have realized that. The first question is the one that intrigued me the most. Does Changing the Domain Name Really Affect Your Search Engine Optimization? Almost anyone with three or more years’ experience in the field should know by now that, of course changing the domain name will affect your SEO. But I don’t believe that is really the question these people mean to ask. I think they are looking for answers for a question more like, “Will changing my domain name affect my rankings/search engine optimization results”? In other words, people don’t normally look at changing their domain names unless something compels them to. Maybe they have been told by The Company (or The Client) that the domain name is being changed and they have to make sure nothing bad happens. Maybe a merger has happened and an old domain is being folded into another. Maybe someone sold a domain but kept the content. So, the first thing to understand is that not all domain name swaps are the same. If you […]

How do you measure failure and success in online marketing? I have said for years that it comes down to conversions (but I’m being simplistic here). We do now have more people talking about Conversion Rate Optimization but is there a story for success in that body of theory or is there more to it? Traditionally Website Conversion Theory says there are only three types of conversions: Informational Conversions, Transformational Conversions, and Transactional Conversions. However, I have come to realize that there is at least one other type of conversion: the Ideological Conversion. Ideological Conversions go hand-in-hand with Viral Propaganda Theory but the Web doesn’t stratify itself into ideological and non-idealogical sites or content. Virtually every successful Website tells a story and that story has an ideological core. There are two ideological poles: the Altruistic Pole and the Selfish Pole. An ideology tends to favor one pole over the other, although the favoritism may be very subtle. We Agree That Social Marketing is Altruistic Don’t confuse “social marketing” with social media marketing. Social Marketing attempts to bring marketing skills and resources to influence mass audiences for the greater good. Think of spreading vital health information, or of the historical campaigns […]