It would great if you could add http://www.webmarketinggroup.co.uk/ to the list. We’d love to be amongst that illustrious company!

Cheers

Please could SEO digital agencies STEAK and minuteSTEAK be added to your list:
http://www.steakdigital.co.uk/
http://www.minutesteak.co.uk/

Thanks

Good summary, it’s been heading this way ever since G launched G+ but it’s amazing how it can help SEO, especially if u can virally get yourself into circles!!

Jonny

I think that doing it strictly for SEO is not worth it any more.

I’m a self employed Newcastle Upon Tyne based SEO Specialist, coming up 4 years full-time self employed thankfully, around the same time as my 28th birthday. It’s been tough ride so far but I still relish optimisation, it’s hard work and never-ending in a sense.
I hope 2012 is going to be a tip top year for all in many respects, add another year to your legacies, I hope this comment and consequential link to http://www.seeded-seo.com which I humbly put forward will help the year flow onwards and upwards, I genuinely do. I also have started another free to use lead generation service for SEO Experts in the UK: http://www.myseoexperts.co.uk

Best wishes and regards,
Sean

Would be great if Pleer could be included here. Thanks!

(You were right, more moving from only SEO to full service in the past 4 years!)

Thanks,
Rob

Take Care
Simon

Thanks!

I will email you out another one to the email you have given above.

To be honest, I will dip in on Christmas day, there is only so much festive cheer you can swallow.

I would say it depends on the business and the person responsible for the link building as to how this is explained to someone running a business. You find the building blocks scattered around the web, it’s simply a case of collating and then ranking such data for efficacy.

I’m so thrilled that you are posting again. You are listed on my blog .

Cheers,
Jey

Although the definition of manipulation is correct it’s being being used to describe something nefarious. Isn’t using your contacts to tweet, link to, like, etc, blah, a form manipulating the SERPs?

Like GamblingSEO said, it’s juts SEO!

SEO has become this huge ethical debate and I honestly don’t get it. White or black, you’re trying to game the system in some way.

In my mind, SEO = : manipulating search engine ranking factors to achieve tactically desirable organic search engine results page rankings.

from my own definition (feel free to correct/disagree with me!) , I can’t really see where “black/white/yellow/blue/lilac” SEO comes into it….

Just like money, rankings don’t care where they come from.. Since people are cognitive misers, i guess it makes sense “box up” these ranking mechanisms. into convenient categories. It’s all just bullshit though. it’s all just SEO.

So who says some of these tactics are “dodgy” or “blackhat” ? oh the guys at Google who scrape our sites and make £ by parasiting on our content for big advertising bucks.

Clever marketers of course play cat and mouse w/ Search-Enginges day after day – and the SE’s change and adapt their algos to try to beat the ‘SEO hackers. Those in the know KNOW that the system is flawed. The SE’s KNOW they are fighting a losing battle due to technological limitations.

Let’s face it all you SEOs.. – We all know that SEO is ‘gaming the system’ – it’s artificial – it needs to be nurtured and fed – so it’s far from organic. the cream does not rise to the top – big business and “SEO budgets” and BHers win 95% of the time.

Black hiat .. White hat.. Meh. Can we just be honest and call it SEO ?

But yes, we’re whitehat, no need for the PR dept. As I say, I’ve got no problem with whatever type of SEO people want to practise; black, white or grey provided they don’t pretend they are something they are not.

A business owner who is focused on creating a favorable experience for her website visitors might debate those who focus on tactics to attract users, before thinking about the user experience may be unethical.

SEO tactics or not are surely relative to other historical channels, the ask is much more about how much risk is acceptable to the business more than nay one tactics or guideline.

Just because a word can SOMETIMES have negative connotations does not mean it is ALWAYS a negative word. It is down to which meaning you chose to attach. If you chose a different meaning to the one intended, not much I can do about that.

With nonsense marketing words like organic seo and natural seo it’s no wonder non professionals get confused. It is not unethical to purchase a link to your website. It is simply against one search engines terms of service.

BTW, are you saying you and your agency are 100% white hat? Best check with the PR dept before answering ;)

IMO there is a big difference between “unnaturally manipulating” search results and improving your site to make it rank better. The latter I would consider natural, the former, unnatural – I don’t think that’s a difficult concept.

If we’re playing the dictionary definitions game, how about:

Manipulate:
-to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage
-to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one’s purpose
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manipulate

Doesn’t sound much like whitehat to me.

For what it’s worth I agree with much of the article and don’t have any issue with SEOs using different tactics as long as they are honest about them. Big “so called” whitehat agencies who don’t practise what they preach get least respect from me.

The meaning is to change your ranking, from one place to another, call it what you will the nature of the result is the same.

This word “naturally”, not quite sure I understand how natural the results of a machine based algo can be. It works on the basis of input/output, are you saying when you perform seo it is more “natural” than others.

How do you perform natural seo anyway, do you need to do it from a Hemp powered workstation.

If you look up a dictionary definition of manipulate, you will find

“to handle, manage, or use, especially with skill, in some process of treatment or performance:”

Sounds like whitehat seo to me.

Yes it is a scammy advert, but shock horror, being scammy does not effect its success.

If an advert runs and runs for months and is on lots of sites it’s probably sucking in more cash than an Apple store on iPhone launch day +1

That advert, based on the fact it has generated interest from the Feds must have been hugely successful.

And it does something very simple, it gives people what they want.
In fact, doesn’t all good marketing do that.

I highly doubt the CTR rate for such a scammy looking advert like the acai berry one gets a significantly better CTR than the average.

Content is everything on the page, could be a widget|article|image|video|product and maybe all that matters to Panda is the user stays engaged with that ‘content’ or page.

Sadly Panda falls down for sites like news and fora and not so much for content farms (ironically) as you are far more likely to return to the search results from a news site or forum than you are from a content farm (unless it is really really bad).

I understand about the dodgy ads pointing to “acai berry” rubbish. Can Google actually see this though? There would be *many* sites that would get penalised for publishing ads that point to shady stuff.

The article in question is fairly large though and seems to cover a fair bit. About.com has been about for years – I’d be surprised if Panda would affect this site purely due to it’s size and reputation (even though Panda has seemed ruthless).

I like your “SEO trick” point though – I never thought of that.

Richard

Sure – that can be nice link bait but thats not a way to make long term customers.

Personally I’ll outsource my linkbuilding and kill it with rankings, I’ll keep the hoaxing to you guys.

Awesome PR stunt, but a depressing indictment of the state of our press.

Essentially all I want to do by contributing content is be constructive, demonstrate the training the site sells, and catch some credit for doing it. If had to mash my current objective in one sentence, that would be it. The secondary goal is to gain some followers who may want to keep track of my other work.

So with that said … what’s the best (general) direction to go with for my content creating and linking?

Clearly lots of benefits for the webmaster, but what’s in it for the punter?

The more a search engine become dominated by big business the more I’d be tempted to try a new one!

1) The huge customer base to streamline Google+
2) The insane talent of its employees
3) An empty slate from which to build off of
4) Already unique ideas with more to come
5) Taking Facebook’s idea and starting by inviting an exclusive group of users

I previously work as a freelancers and faced different kind of employers and i firmly believe that this is a give an take relationship… other then money what is important is to understand that they are humans as well and they can get ill and other related factors plus respect for the country like (Pakistan and India) if you respect these people you will see some great favors from them (if they are serious and wanted to work on long term basis).

A colleague of mine who has an invite was showing me round the site and, I’m no google fan boy, I have to say it looked good.

There is always a place for competition in my opinion.

Not sure I’ll be using +1, just never really got into that kind of thing – Google or otherwise. Is there a way to switch it off?!

Reason 5 is pretty much the reason, IMO, that it’s going to do the Wave.

Personally, I laughed blood yesterday as every Tom, Dick and Harry (but especially Dick) wrote about Google plus, without ever having used it.

Of course alternative solution is creation of a list with 10 people on it, which really just filters out the noise.

A tweet isn’t a conversation. The only real conversation that occurs via social media unfolds over a matter of weeks, months, and years and is embodied by the things you provide that others find useful. Yammering, agreed, just isn’t in it. But a single tweet to someone specific about something specific is a hello, and sometimes a great primer to bringing someone important into your sphere. And this, over time, can benefit your quest for that “return”.

I seek functionality – to get a retweet and I know why this person would do it. Or get a @ mention because someone’s genuinely going somewhere with the comment.

What does information sharing look like on Twitter when it has a purpose and is between 2 or 3 people? I think that’s the core of what I want to do for my own situation. I think sharing that goes beyond that is a positive by-product. Am I on the right track with that thinking?

Using Google reader for RSS feeds helps me keep track of people I follow (not only n Twitter) and I use it as a searchable database as well.

I hope you write a follow-up to share how your strategy worked out for you.

My Twitter strategy is very similar to Chris’s. I Twitter-follow more people than I actively follow, but I use tools to process and summarize their feeds so I know that is buzzing on Twitter. I do like the option for the people I follow to DM me if necessary. From time to time I circle through all people I follow and try to interact with as many as I can.

I agree with 2 major things you outlined: make sure your social media strategy works for you; and do not let Twitter consume all your time. Looking forward to reading about results.

In the context you describe the word following automatically receives quotes; you’re “following” people. It’s not really following them though, right?

Do you opt to do it this way, instead of Lyndon’s way, to sort of compliment the people whose follow button you hit?

Also a big part of SEO is being able to read a market and analytics data, and this only comes with quantities of experience.

I look forward to your next article!

These concepts are ancient, it’s just the retelling of them changes to suit the sometimes jaded audience.

You re-sell an old concept simply by calling it something else.