Central Perk

miercuri, 19 ianuarie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

32 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2011

Posted: 18 Jan 2011 01:35 PM PST

With all the excitement and planning that comes along with a New Year, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with newfangled ideas. You probably have a long list of SEO tactics in the pipeline for 2011. Finding the resources, whether time or money, is the real trick.

The point of this post is to minimize your to-do list by covering 32 SEO tactics that you shouldn't focus on. If any of these buggers have made it onto your 2011 task list or are still lingering in the queue from years past, go ahead and cross 'em off. They won't help you reach your goals and some of them can even hinder your progress.

If you are still looking for things to do, check out these New Years post for ideas.

2011 SEO and Social Media Checklist by Jennifer Horowitz on SEJ.
7 Predictions for SEO in 2011 by SEOmoz's own Rand Fishkin.
10 Google Adwords Features for 2011 by Kunle Campbell at Fuzz One.

Alrighty then, lets get on with the list of things for you to take off your list.

32 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2011

Hiding Stuff On-Page
There are a hundred ways to hide keywords and links from your users' view and still have them reside behind the scenes on a web page for the search engines to crawl. Some of these methods are smarter than others, but the collective mind of Google's web spam team is smarter than all of them. From just plain silly to downright sneaky, numbers 1-5 in this list of SEO tactics to avoid, we cover off some of the most well known methods for hiding copy and links. At best, you could experience a small, temporary boost from some of these tactics. At worst, you'll land yourself a penalty.

Do not...
1. White text on a white background (I know what you're thinking, but black on black won't work either.)
2. Hidden text over an image
3. Hiding text with CSS
4. Linking/keywording in tiny text (font size '0' doesn't work either, smarty pants)
5. Linking from a hyphen, period, comma, or any other little character

Keyword Stuffing
There are a number of ways to overdo your keyword usage beyond the hidden methods mentioned above. Here are a few to give you an idea of the type of things to avoid.

Do not...
6. Use the Meta Keywords tag. This is a giant waste of time.
7. Use your Title Tag as a place to list keywords.
8. Fill up your Meta Description with keywords, forgetting about click-thru rates
9. Name your images with the character limit in keywords
10. List every city and zip code within a 10 hour drive
11. Put 2000 words of keyword rich content below the footer
12. Keep track of your keyword density (Thankfully, I've heard a lot less from eager website owners on this topic in 2010 than I did in 2009.)

Link Network Schemes
If your link building plans involve any of the following, you need to do a little more research on link building. :)

Do not sign up for...
13. Link Schemes
14. Reciprocal Linking
15. Link Farms
16. Link Wheel
17. Link Exchange (unless it is a real and substantial business partnership or relationship)
18. Three Way Linking (or Two-way, Four-way or any other way)

Other Link Types to Avoid
Ah links. It isn't just the networks that are a waste of time. Here are some other link acquisition tactics to avoid.

Do not...
19. Forum/comment spam (thanks Rob)

20. Submit to thousands of directories for $12.42.
21. Segment your content and launch sub-domains so you can link to yourself

Publish/Index as Many Pages as Possible
Just because you have 4 million pages doesn't mean they should all be indexed. Just because you have come up with a list of 800,000 keywords and misspellings to describe pepper mills, doesn't mean your e-commerce site should have a web page to represent each. Quantity is not quality. More pages in the index does not mean more traffic. Here are a few SEO tactics to remove from your to-do list.

Do not...
22. Try to get the search engines to index all of the search result pages on your site.
23. Publish a new page for every single keyword target.

Google Local Tricks
Google Local is still fighting spam that works, which I won't be covering here. Lets not perpetuate the issue, right? Here are a few things that they've figured out and should be avoided altogether.

Do not...
24. Place location keywords in your places page categories.
25. Create a bunch of Google Places pages that all list the same physical address.
26. Torment your customers so you'll get plenty of (negative) reviews. (this one got a lot of attention late last year)
27. Provide different keyword rich business names to local sites.

Random Uselessness
Take these ideas straight to the curb. No recycling please.

Do not... trash
28. Measure your website's strength or success with PageRank.
29. Find out which pages are ranking well and never touch them again.
30. Blindly target keywords just because your competitors are.
31. Submit to hundreds of search engines automatically for $9.99.
32. Use robots.txt to control robot access (I've harped on this before)

If anything here is on your 2011 SEO tactic list, go ahead and cross 'em off. See how I'm helping you out?! No doubt I've missed a bunch of old-school spam. For example, I'm certain I haven't covered every type of link scheme that has ever existed. Let us know what I've missed in the comments below.

I'm a tweeting machine as I put together blog posts. Thumbs up to the tweeps who helped me out with ideas on this post - TomSchmitz, gfiorelli1, pizzaseo, hyderali_, leadingdir, AlanBleiweiss, randfish, clairecarlile, JSBANZ, Joe_query, RobOusbey, bryantdunivan, and lyena.

Happy To-Do List Trimming!

Images from ShutterStock

Do you like this post? Yes No

What Everyone Should Know About Health Care Reform

Good afternoon,

Today the House of Representatives plans to vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act, landmark health reform legislation that President Obama signed into law last March.

My White House colleague Stephanie Cutter explains the harmful effect repeal would have on the nation’s economy – and your own pocketbook – in our latest White House White Board video:

President Obama is willing to work with Democrats and Republicans to improve the Affordable Care Act, but we can’t afford to go backward.

It’s fair for all of us to ask, “What does health reform mean to me?” – particularly if you already have insurance you like.

Without the health care law, we would return to the days when insurance companies could deny, limit or cap your care. Insurance companies could continue to place lifetime limits on coverage even if you need it, increase premiums without any accountability or recourse for consumers, and deny children health care due to pre-existing conditions.

Under the law, families will pay less for their insurance premiums than they would if the law is repealed. An insurance company that tries to implement an unreasonable premium increase will be forced to publicly justify it. And your premium dollars will go further thanks to a provision of the law that requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of your premium dollars on your health care, rather than executive compensation and advertising.

Health reform is about much more than protecting American consumers – it also boosts the American economy, lowering costs and creating jobs.

And since the health care law was passed last year, our economy has created over 1 million private sector jobs and has grown at an average annual rate of 2.7 percent. There’s a lot more work to be done, but repealing the Affordable Care Act would be a step backward for our economy.

In fact, Harvard economist David Cutler estimates repeal would cost us between 250,000-400,000 jobs per year, which means millions of new jobs lost over the next decade.

As conversations about health reform bubble up in news shows and at water coolers over the coming days, I hope you’ll find this information helpful. Everyday we’re working hard to implement this important legislation, and we will certainly keep you updated with our progress.

Sincerely,

Nancy-Ann DeParle
Director of the White House Office of Health Reform

This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com.
Unsubscribe e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com | Privacy Policy
Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

Short Term Content Versus Evergreen Content Graywolf's SEO Blog

Short Term Content Versus Evergreen Content

Posted: 18 Jan 2011 08:10 AM PST

I’ve got a confession to make. I used to be a short term traffic junkie. I ran other websites where I’d get up early in the morning or stay up late into the night, blogging about the news in that space. And no it wasn’t SEO related subject matter. But I learned something on the way–short term content can be huge if it scores but–just like that wad of cash you brought into a strip club–it’s gone in an instant. And it’s not coming back.

I used to play a lot in the reality TV space, working with Survivor, American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, Amazing Race, all sorts of man-on-street, mindless TV fodder. It’s easy traffic to have to because most TV networks have awful site architecture, hide all their content in flash, and couldn’t rank for Fuzzy Pink Sock Puppets in Los Angeles if their lives depended on it. But here’s the lesson I learned: that traffic is fleeting. You can get a massive influx of visitors and, while they may not be big ad clickers, you can count on 2% of the population to click on just about anything … if you shove it down their throats. But then a week later, that traffic and that keyword is gone. Sure, you’ll get the secondary hit when the show gets rebroadcast in Europe or Australia, but it’s just not the same. If you want to keep the traffic coming you have to keep chasing it.

You can still see people chasing this dream: just look at the secondary stories on Techmeme …

At some point, though, you’ll realize it’s a lot of work for a lot of glory but not a lot of payout. Things may have changed now that there are multiple on-demand copywriting services like demand media who can crank out articles like Hostess cranks out Twinkies, but the economics don’t work unless you have long-term, big budget, branding-minded display advertisers. You can still see people chasing this dream everyday: just look at the secondary stories on Techmeme. It’s all page view journalism.

If you’re looking to build a steady income without having to be chained to your laptop, look into building content and websites based around evergreen content. Now I’ll be honest: running a website about How To Install a Koi Pond or Choosing a Retirement Home for Your Aging Parent is never going to be as sexy and exciting as blogging about the latest version of the iPhone, but it is going to be a lot less work and, if you do it right, be a lot more dependable from an income perspective. That’s not to say you should ignore news events, just don’t depend on them … think of them as the icing on your cupcake.

Short Term Content I spoke about long term content in the first article...
What is Evergreen Content Evergreen Content is a subject I talk about quite frequently...
Viral Marketing for Long Term Sales Over on threadwatch I recently made a comment that social...
Integrated Versus Interruptive Advertising When I was first starting in Internet marketing, one of...
Targeting Keywords versus Targeting Traffic In the olden days of SEO it was all about...

Advertisers:

Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
Glass Whiteboards - For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
Link Building- Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for $295
KnowEm - Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Short Term Content Versus Evergreen Content

A Visit From His Excellency Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011

A Visit From His Excellency Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China

Today President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will welcome His Excellency Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China, for a state visit. Portions of the visit including the arrival ceremony, a joint press conference with President Obama and President Hu, and President Obama and President Hu's toasts at the State Dinner will be live streamed on the WhiteHouse.gov/live.

Learn more.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao of China begin their working dinner in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House, Jan. 18, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Seth's Blog : Launch it like Google

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Launch it like Google

About a year after they were founded, Google was first mentioned in the New York Times. As an aside, in a non-news column.

Today of course, it seems like everything they do is instantly news. It's easy to forget that just about every major online service (eBay, Amazon, Paypal, Twitter, Facebook) launched in obscurity. Same with classic books, pop musicians and political careers.

The big splash might feel good, but it's clearly not necessary.