We now refrain from using an SEO company as wefound that whilst the tactics employed did give results it was completely unnatural and often links came from spurious websites.

Blogging and blog commenting we feel are great tools for getting traffic directed to your website, it just makes more sense than any other form of link building! As Lyndon Antcliff says its an advert of perception about you and about your business. If you are adding well constructed argument to the conversation of a blog, people will take notice and you are likely to gain interest and traffic. Guest blogging on other websites allows you to showcase your expertise.

Adversely if your comments are just to gain a link and don’t bring anything to the table they are going to be transpamment!! and people just won’t click to view your site.

Something very tasty eh?
I’ve just had a pot noodle for lunch and that wasn’t very tasty. Perhaps you could, as they say, ‘fill the void’.

Jack, thanks for dropping by, I know you do a lot of quality work in the space.
My contention is that all online communication is content and all communication a business puts out is marketing. But that’s for another post.

Therefore, all the stuff done online is “content marketing”, it’s important to acknowledge this as it needs to seep into the business owners mindset and infect all aspects of online output.

Even down to the Privacy Policy.

However, I realise that what is being created by constant use of the term within the industry is that it is relating to specific methods of online communication such as blogging, social media etc. And I must use the term “content marketing” within the industry to be able to take part in discourse and indeed sell my “Kick Ass” Content Marketing Course ;)

But, it should always come with a caveat, just as linkbait should come with a long and detailed explanation about why it shouldn’t really be called linkbait.

What this does is allow a depth to your “content marketing” strategy. As we are indeed in an online communications arms race and whoever has the greatest depth to their strategy will win.

Those who simply crack their knuckles and state, “right, time for me to do some content marketing and knock out a blog post”. Are going to find their seed fall on fallow ground.

Interesting stuff though, semantic exactitude allows for a deeper level of thought on the strategy of online communication.

I like the conclusion and it makes sense. If you know the top 10 of something, you probably will use the list for personal use. I will start using these titles more often. Very good insight. Love it!

Cheers

Ingram

I would be looking to work with one of the most Zarjaz and Froody outfits in online marketing doing SEO/ online marketing, and use new language to apply old concepts.

Could you let me have an e-mail address, please? I would like to send you my CV.

Best

What would I add to that list?

SEO Pager. http://www.seoegghead.com/software/wordpress-seo-pager.seo

seems like we are turning into followers and just follow the crowd

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).