SEO 2.0

We interrupt our broadcast to celebrate reaching 50 members with our SEO 2.0 group at Mixx. Not only our SEO 2.0 group at Mixx has 50 participants we also reached 150 (by now over 160) submissions on the 26th of February.

Of course SEO 2.0 is not only about numbers and metrics, it’s rather about the soft factors you can’t easily measure but you certainly will notice.

So it’s rather the quality of the submissions along with the activity of the current members that is our greatest success. The success is even greater than you might imagine as we are in the traditionally more selfish realm of SEO as well as in the usually rather hostile (in the sense of anti-SEO sense) environment of social news communities.

Mixx and Mixx groups do not offer instant gratification via huge traffic bursts so you might wonder why high profile SEO, social media and other bloggers contribute on a regular basis.

It’s partly about community, yes, there already seems to be a nascent community of SEO 2.0 enthusiasts banding together. On the other hand I noticed 7 other benefits of this SEO 2.0 community within Mixx:

1. Acceptance of SEO 2.0 within Mixx: Mixxers grasp the concept of SEO 2.0 as being a beneficial one to the overall community. There is no anti-SEO hate among established users.
2. A post being submitted to the SEO 2.0 group is already a quality seal and allows to determine whether a submission is spammy SEO or really useful contribution.
3. Social media savvy membership to mingle with. You either get invited to join or you have to apply. Thus the 50 members are proven social media, blogging and SEO specialists or at least have displayed characteristics of valuable Mixx users in the past.
4. Currently only a few really well chosen posts get highlighted within the SEO 2.0 community. If you have a limited time budget like most of us, you get the most important SEO 2.0 related topics of the day served.
5. Your peers will most probably notice you, stumble and sphinn you too.
6. Your SEO 2.0 peers are more likely to link to you.
7. SEO 2.0 are not SEOs only so the group is not strictly about the SEO industry unlike at Sphinn.

How do we enforce the above mentioned high quality standards? It’s quite easy.

There is only one rule: No self-submission to the group.

This ensures peer review and a good stand in the overall Mixx community. While many new SEO 2.0 members fail to abide by this rule at the beginning, most of them come back later and play by the rules with even greater success.

In fact the SEO 2.0 group members do not only provide the most important SEO 2.0 content they also tend to submit each others post without the artificial stigma of voting each other up or vote swapping. Only the best content is highlighted regardless of the source.

This made SEO 2.0 the largest SEO group at Mixx, there are two others which also perform well but to a lesser extent.

What are my plans for the SEO 2.0 group:

• We will compete with Sphinn.
• We will further enhance user communications via the new Mixx tools like forum, messaging system etc.
• We will foster more corporations among members.
• We will establish more cross social media ties on different networks.
• We will make SEO 2.0 group member badges for bloggers and website owners.
• We will take action on behalf of members as an industry pressure group.
• We will conquer the world.

Apply now for a membership in the SEO 2.0 group at Mixx.

As a very active social media user, some would probably say power user already, I notice the same mistakes over and over made by new users on social media sites.

On the other hand it’s very easy to boost your social media credibility with very simple measures. So I collected the 10 simplest ways to boost your social media credibility from the start and with little effort:

1. Use a unique name or nick name which is truly a name! Do not use keywords as your name. Hello Realestate California, how are you? If you are not in it for the quick Google traffic but for long term reputation building change your name in order not to appear to be a spammer.
2. Use an avatar! On most social sites if you do not use one you will get ignored altogether. On StumbleUpon your stumbles won’t even be displayed without an avatar.
3. Submit your favorite sites and blog posts! Do not submit your own postings! Especially if you are new to a community do NOT submit your own website or postings as your first action. You’re dead on arrival this way.
4. Introduce yourself. Say something about yourself on your profile. Do not just start out of nowhere. Let people relate.
5. Do not vote for everything, vote for the good stuff. Nobody will respect you on social media if you just vote for anything, even crap just to become a power user. Quality beats quantity.
6. Add other community users with similar interests as your friends. Do not add only top users or dozens users at once.
7. Socialize across different social media sites. Add your existing Facebook or Twitter friends at the new network you enter. Do not overdo (see #6!)
8. Add your submissions in the morning or during daytime but not at night. International social news sites like Digg have largely US traffic so if you are in Asia or Europe do not submit at night where nobody reads it.
9. Submit real life or stories that matter for the broad public not just “blogging, SEO or make money online” only.
10. Be yourself. Behave like a human being not like a bot or salesperson. Do not sell people anything, give them something for free.

Once you master these ways and it works for a while, you can start thinking about personal gain.

I do not advocate self-exploitation on social media sites. I’m all about give and take but without giving first you can’t take on social media, unless you are not in it for real social media credibility and reputation building.

So use these 10 ways of boosting it and when people start appreciating you will be able to take as well.

More on similar topics elsewhere:

• 10 Basic Rules of Social Media Marketing — Esteban Panzera
• 9 Ways to Build Your Reputation as a Blogger
• Now Is Gone » Social Media Content Creation Process
• Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Interview with Jonathon Colman: Social Media Secrets from a Green Geek
• Freelance Bloggers: 12 Tips to Promote Your Work With Social Media
• Social Media Will Change Your Business
• Every Social Network is Different for News Consumption » techipedia | tamar weinberg
• Local and Global Popularity: Successful Blogs | extreme webmaster evernerve
• Part Two: Why Use Yahoo! Answers » Small Business SEM

SEO 2.0 is not my invention neither did I coin the term. Many used it before and many do without having read this blog. While my SEO 2.0 definition is still a little fuzzy it takes time to grasp the major shift that is gong on all around us. So I am always interested in what others say. I search from times to times for the term SEO 2.0 myself to find out how others define it. In most cases I like what I read and see. In other cases I am quite disappointed though.

The upcoming SMX West in Santa Clara features a panel called “SEO 2.0 For Web 2.0 Sites”.

Although I am delighted by any attempts to make SEO 2.0 known I am deeply disappointed by the definition of SEO 2.0 given here:

Let’s say SEO 1.0 is about ensuring that 1990s-era web design techniques such as tables and frames are adjusted to minimize search engine ranking issues. Well, now the Web 2.0 design world is firmly upon us, bringing with it CSS, AJAX and other dynamic design techniques that can give search engines fits. SEO 2.0 is all about ensuring that Web 2.0 sites are as search engine friendly as Web 1.0 sites.

It sounds like jumping out from the frying pan into the fire. Taking obsolete and search engine “hostile” (or at least not “friendly”) web development techniques and swapping them with new, even worse one.

Just a week ago I mused about writing an article on SEO for Web 2.0 applications. I abandoned the endeavour because basically SEO for AJAX web based software often does not make sense at all, you don’t want to appear your office documents on the Net in most cases or if it does it’s similar to Flash: You must mimic a real web page to optimize it for search engines.

Taking a look at the speakers you notice that in one case it’s understandable that they never heard of any other SEO 2.0 concept as one of the speakers is “Nathan Buggia, Lead Program Manager, Live Search Webmaster Central, Microsoft” who most probably does not read SEO blogs. Maybe he should google SEO 2.0. The Microsoft results are not that good BTW, this blog is not even in the top 10. In the case of the other two speakers I was a little more surprised but still they might have missed it for other reasons, one speaker is from Copenhagen in Denmark so he probably does not read English SEO blogs that much.

The third or based on her competence rather the first speaker is Shari Thurow, the acclaimed author of Search Engine Visibility one of the SEO books with both mass appeal due to the broad perspective as well as a high level of expertise. Her appearance on that panel makes me quite happy in the end as I do not expect her to proclaim that “SEO 2.0 is replacing frames with AJAX”.

For those of you who want a quick overview of what is needed to optimize AJAX applications for search engines make sure to take advantage of these 6 best practices:

1. Decide where your website ends and your application starts, as stated above, it does not make sense to make spiders crawl your Google Docs drafts, but the documents made public and archived instead
2. Make sure you have a URL for each “page” you want to get spidered and indexed
3. Load the basic contents containing the keywords at the beginning in a non-dynamic way
4. Cache dynamic pages and serve them as static ones, you could even take snapshots of “pages” which contents change all the time and publish the snapshots
5. Menu items, links and other crucial structural aspects of a site should work without AJAX and/or JavaScript, make them “degradable”
6. Do not use AJAX for effects but for extra functionality that truly enhances the user experience

The moderation is done by two experts who are most probably familiar with a number of broader SEO 2.0 definitions which not only cover on site optimization: Rob Kerry aka evilgreemonkey who is also a Sphinn moderator and Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts one of the not only best designed SEO company websites but also more important SEO companies.

AJAX websites are in fact SEO -2.0 as you take at least two huge steps back.

The panel takes place on the second day of SMX West, at Wednesday, starting at 3:15pm. You have to scroll down a little to find it.

Will you participate in this panel? You might want to write down what you heard and what your impression was in a guest post on my SEO 2.0 blog.

Image by CarbonNYC

The perhaps most important factor at work, independent of industry or kind of employment, is pride.

You have to be proud of what you do in order to create value and be happy.

Zen Buddhists and other beings not of this world will tell you that pride is not good though. Politicians will tell you that you should be humble and be satisfied with what you have. They will insist that you should be proud of your country instead even if you get treated like “human resources”.

There is one kind of pride which is indispensable though, the “you are what you do“-kind of pride.

Many people for instance approach me with prejudice or sometimes even some kind of disgust for what I do, mostly of out their own ignorance. While others regard SEO as some kind of dirty work, yes even SEOs themselves do it, thus they call themselves black hat SEOs, I don’t. The hats are black so that you don’t see the stains.

At the end of the day they might be able to buy more than I can but when their kids ask them what they do to earn money they will cringe or outright lie.

When my 5 year old daughter asked me what kind of work I do I explained to her with pride that

I help people finding stuff or being found on the Internet which is so huge that otherwise people would get lost.

So I ask you, are you proud of what you do for a living? You can ask yourself the following 10 questions to determine that:

1. Do you hesitate when asked at a party what you do for a living?
2. Do you use a job title that does not really reflect what you do?
3. Do you want to tell others what yo do by yourself?
4. Would you write a blog about what you do professionally?
5. Do you define your status a) by the things you do or b) by the things you buy?
6. Do you want your kids to do the same job you do in future, can you recommend it to them?
7. Do your friends (real friends not virtual ones) recommend you as a specialist in your trade?
8. Do you want to explain your trade to others?
9. Are you so proud of your achievements that you want to display them?
10. If you could choose your profession again, would you take the same a second time?

The right answers are no, no, yes, yes, a), yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I hope you have at least 5 correct answers.

So this week I was approached by an international company from Scandinavia. The CEO (not SEO!) approached me by himself. He was in a constant hurry, I guess many CEOs are. So we talked very soon and he told me that he likes my style of presenting myself and he looks for a SEO who is 110% white hat. I told him that I’m 200% white hat, which is true and that because of this I am the right man for him.

The he told me a few things that made me suspicious though:

• He works with 20 other SEO companies all over Europe and elsewhere, well, nice to meet someone who knows what SEO is about [I thought]
• He will send me his contract, well, OK with me
• He wants me to review the contract and reply ASAP (meaning next day, as he understood it), I will as soon as possible but that doesn’t mean instantly
• The contract should be OK “for a white hat SEO”, well, so no problem with me here or is it?
• He wanted me to work parallel or together with another German SEO company, well, others wouldn’t but I’m more into cooperation than competition
• He wants to make millions after one year while he wants to pay me by the hundreds, well, hmmm, I’ll have to take a second look, sounds strange
• He wants to pay 15 hours but he wants me to work 30, 50 or 50 hours in the first month so that he can see results, well, hell no, I won’t do that, sorry, I told him

So today I reviewed the contract and what did I see?

For the little money I would have to guarantee a full refund for almost any circumstances of not working according to fuzzy “industry standards”, while the contract reserved almost no rights for me.

I wasn’t allowed to let anybody help me to do the work, I had to return or delete any data after the project ended. I would have to work clandestinely and wouldn’t be even allowed to mention the client in my portfolio among other cruelties.

I had already collected two pages of annotations to this “contract” when I realized that I was furious as how somebody can even approach me in such a disrespectful manner.

What’s most ludicrous: Basically the cost to let my lawyer rewrite this contract to fit even my most basic needs would probably excel what I would earn before taxes for the first month.

Pride is also the most important factor in gaining respect and becoming an authority.

Nobody will ever believe you in you don’t believe in yourself.

I learned to be proud of myself the hard way but in my thirties I know who I am and I’m proud of what I do so you can’t approach me in a condescending manner.

If you treat me like a dog I will bark at you. I will even bark so loud that all the other underdogs will hear me.

As nobody knows on the Net that you are a dog though you don’t have to behave like one. Be proud of what you do or change it. Do not let people disrespect you out of low self-esteem.

I don’t care who you are when you approach me. I want to know what you do and how you do it so that I know if I can be proud of working with you. I do not want to hide working for you and I do not want to be treated like “human resources”. Treat me in a respectful manner so we will both prosper.

In fact I reject probably more clients than I work for in the end and I will reject even more in future as I get renown beyond Germany recently. If you want human resources go to SEO India, if you seek SEO Germany don’t offend me.

It’s also not about the money you spend. The other day a sound designer called me saying that he only has 100 Euro (approx 150$) to spend. I told him no problem I can sell him some consulting on the phone to enable him to optimize his site himself, as he masters HTML or I can set up an XML sitemap etc. for “search engine submission” for instance.

The chance that you can work with me is even better for small business as I wouldn’t work for most corporations anymore anyways, for ethical reasons.

If I can’t be proud of what I do I won’t do it. Are you proud of what you do?

It sounds like a conspiracy theory but all the 3 services seem to be broken at the same time.

Technorati has eaten my authority of 330+ and does not display my blog altogether anymore. This way you also won’t notice on Technorati that I linked you.

Feedburner has has swallowed more than 100 subscribers (504 on February 20th, 393 February 21st) so the current state equals that of 6 weeks ago. When you look closely at the numbers you notice that only the Google Feedfetcher numbers plummeted almost exactly by the number of lacking subscribers. Yesterday I had 278 Google Feedfetcher subscribers while today only 153. I checked it in Google Webmaster Tools and 153 is the number of RSS subscribers. They have ignored Atom subscribers and other URLs (slightly different feed URLs like http://seo2.0.onreact.com/feed/rss or http://seo2.0.onreact.com/feed/

[Update February 22nd: Feedburner has been fixed, the subscribers are back to normal at 527]

StumbleUpon does not send me any traffic after an initial push of ca. 300 visitors after the first stumble aka discovery of my latest article about reputation management although 8 people (me included) reviewed the post and all in all 20 stumblers “liked it” until now. This is not the first time, SU reacts completely unaccountable for over a week now, posts with a few stumbles get much more traffic than highly popular posts for instance.

The Web 2.0 makes you rely on third party services which are not reliable or trustworthy.

On days like this you realize that you are very dependent on them. What alternatives are there?

• How do you measure your blog success aside from using Technorati, Feedburner and StumbleUpon?
• Have you also been hit by these bugs, outages and inconsistencies lately?
• Do you rely on free third party tools for crucial tasks?

I wonder if I was too naive using the above mentioned services. AideRSS seems to be a neat alternative to find out how your blog performs out there. It focuses on comments, del.icio.us bookmarks and Digg votes. I boycott Digg but the other two are good indicators. I’m waiting for such a mashup with Sphinn and Mixx votes.

Already a while ago I acknowledged that reputation management is part of SEO 2.0. I never mentioned it again though since then. Reputation management is a relatively new term in SEO and it is hot. Really hot. Some social media and SEO specialists really focus on it lately or even start to sell reputation management services as their main offer. I already noticed a stratification of the reputation management definitions or rather the approaches to it though.

Thus I identified and categorized the 3 approaches to online reputation management I perceive:

1. SEO approach
In one sentence: “We have to rule the top 20 of Google for our name”.

2. Social media approach
In one sentence: “We have to monitor all instances where our company is mentioned and react to them”

3. SEO 2.0 approach
In one sentence: “We will proactively build a reputation for ourselves by engaging in online communications”

I use all three to some extent for myself and most renown SEO experts do too it seems to me. It’s a different thing for clients and companies though. I often witness reputation management gone wrong. Some of the worst practices are:

• Spamming social sites and blogs
• Setting up of fake blogs
• Orwell like monitoring of the Net
• Pr people denying any wrong doing by companies with unsubstantiated claims
• Lawyers fiercely intimidating bloggers

None of these really work, in contrast, they aggravate the reputation problem in most cases.

There are good examples though.

• Contacting bloggers and/or commenting on their blogs in a responsive manner
• Setting up of own communities
• Fixing problems and being outspoken about it

While these examples work and are appreciated by the public in he SEO 2.0 they are still not enough.

It’s not enough to manage an existing reputation that is in a way independently being forged by others.

In SEO 2.0 we concentrate on long term reputation building.

We engage in online practices that shed a positive light on us. These can be

• Socializing with experts in an industry
• Altruistic participation in online communities
• Non profit projects that are not directly tied to overt advertising

This is only a very short introduction but I think it enough to get started with reputation management online or better reputation building.

Many of you probably wonder how I can be active on at least 3 social media sites, write for my blog, and still earn money (as I do not make money off my publishing directly). I do not waste time elsewhere.

Thus I collected 8 ways to save time by dropping some time wasting habits most people do not even notice.

1. Cut out the commuting and other unnecessary ways
   As a freelancer I can decide where I work, be it at home or in an office placed where I need it. If you got a job you have to commute to consider moving in the vicinity. Just half an hour back and forth means one hour lost each day. Also: Why go to Walmart 20 miles away? It’s cheaper? If you need an hour to go there in which you could earn 100$ otherwise you can go to the local grocery pay a little more and chat with the Indian shopkeeper.
2. Do not watch TV
   At least not alone. Watching TV is not only wasting time it’s also alienating from yourself and humanity. While on the Net you are at least communicating with virtual friends TV is a one way street that leads to nowhere besides the asylum. Who wants to watch 50 murders every day anyway? Watch a movie once or twice a week and make it a really a nice evening with your friends or family, but skip senselessly zapping and watching just anything.
3. Do not read books before going to sleep
   In fact a book is a medium to really enjoy. How can you enjoy a book in the evening shortly before you falls asleep? You can’t. You’re too tired anyways. Stumbling websites or scanning text online is much easier. I read books on vacation or on the weekend.
4. Quit smoking
   Use your breaks for communicating with people, at least online insetad. I never smoked in my life, but I know that it’s difficult to quit at once. Quit every day a little more by smoking a little less. Reward yourself each time you don’t smoke. Stumble some art websites on SU for instance. Smile at someone. Eat chocolate
5. Do not read news first hand, read what the crowd has chosen
   The information overload is unbearable for one individual. You can’t check all the news-sources so quit it altogether. When the Russians will drop the bomb you will know anyways. On normal days just trust the wisdom of the crowds or the algorithms of social browsing services.
6. Do not use forums
   Forums are problem oriented. If you want more problems use and read forums. If you like solutions read blogs. If you like the best solutions just read the best blogs or let the crowd wisdom decide again. I do not use forums anymore and I do not miss anything. For solving problems I use Google and Technorati.
7. Do not check, read and answer email
   Do not check your email all the time. It can wait. Imagine yourself going to your real mailbox 20 times a day. Nobody would do that. Some normal that is non-geeky people check their email once a week. They are still alive! More than you probably.
8. Switch off Skype and other IM software if you do not expect a call
   While Skype is a great tool I hate it when somebody contacts me via Skype chat and expects me to reply instantly as many pople do. Switch off Skype if you do not expect someone important to call you for more than idle chatter. Most types of info are not suitable for Skype or other IMs anyways. Don’t be like the youngsters who try to write love letter via SMS. The medium is the message. Use Skype like email, twice a day. Chatting is chatting, share information instead on social media.

Of course I do not manage to do all that all the time. Right now Skype is still on I know it works though. You can use your time creatively while sharing instead wasting it.

Now you can waste use the precious time you saved by excessively overusing social media.

On the other hand you could go for a walk. You choose.

Soon I will truly redefine SEO. Not just upgrade to version 2.0, I will redefine SEO as a whole! Thus I want to know how well my propaganda and brain washing techniques have worked until now. So I want you to define SEO 2.0 in one sentence in the comments.

Please refrain from funny but not very helpful cliches like

• SEO for Web 2.0
• A blog
• A Mixx group
• A cult
• SMO
• Linkbait
• A scam
• A conspiracy
• It’s just SEO, nothing changed
• Spam 2.0

Also, do not just cite my posts. Please formulate it in your own words. The best ones will be republished in a second best SEO 2.0 definitions post. As SEO 2.0 is really democratic I can imagine that I’m not even as close to the real definition as some of you. I’m no genius, I’m just a regular guy spending way too much time on the Net.

So help me define SEO 2.0! Write down your own definition of SEO 2.0 now! It should be self-explanatory at best Remember I’m the only funny guy here.

For my SEO 2.0 blog I tend to use images only as a nice to have add on due to the fact that my time for blogging is very limited. Last week I added images to all posts, this week I didn’t but in future I will as often as I can. Why?

Why should you use images even if you blog about topics which rarely yield any significant imagery beyond screenshots?

An image

• catches attention
• stirs curiosity
• illustrates a topic
• makes you relate to the subject
• helps you to memorize
• looks good and thus makes an overall positive impression on the reader
• is great for being found at Google image search

It’s not easy to find images, especially free stock photos you can freely use on your blog without having to pay, if you don’t what I know: There are stock photography search engines!

So I won’t offer you an overwhelmingly large list of sites to find stock images on. I will recommend 3 stock photography search engines I use:

1. Yotophoto | Find free photos… fast!
2. everystockphoto - searching free photos
3. PicFindr: Free stock photo and image search

I seldom use more than one of these 3 as it’s easy to find images to illustrate your point with a few clicks using one of these stock photo search engines.

In recent weeks or rather months I have been testing some new webmaster tools, services and products useful not only for SEO purposes. Although most of them were more than useful I didn’t manage to review them thoroughly enough to really write about them. Nonetheless many of them are too good not to be mentioned and you should try them too.

Thus I want to recommend the following 7 new webmaster tools, services and products I tested recently:

Link Diagnosis [Free]
The Link Diagnosis tool allows you you to analyze who links you and how. This is great not only for your ego but also to find out where like minded people who you can cooperate with are to be found.

Raven SEO tools [Trial]
If you’re in the US this tools allow you to monitor your search engine rankings on a weekly basis and find out lots of other details relating to your website in order to optimize or popularize it. The Raven SEO tools are not just for SEOs but they compete with the already well known SoloSEO web based SEO tools suite which I am an afiiliate of. Make sure to check out their blog for additional know how transfer.

Powerset Search Engine [Closed Beta]
If you like Lexxe (I do very much) and are annoyed or scared by Google you will love Powerset. Powerset is the leader in “natural language search” by now. What does that mean? You can already ask it complex questions like “Who painted the Mona Lisa?” or “Who wrote On The Road?” and unlike Google it won’t find instances where others have posted the same questions at best, but Powerset will find instances where the answer is to be found. Powerset basically understands your questions! Lexxe also replies often correctly, but Powerset is even better.

Live Search Webmaster Tools [Beta, Free]
The Microsoft (MSN) Live Search webmaster tools allow you to find out additional info about your URL. I like the additional data about links you can get using them.

Web Design For ROI book
Now this book will you make angry, sad and frustrated as after reading or even skimming through Web Design for ROI you will hate your current website. You will realize that you have done almost everything wrong with your website. So you should rather buy it in advance of a relaunch or redesign of your site. It encompasses all the most important factors of SEO 2.0, design, usability, SEO which enable you to create a site with a user experience enhancing it’s overall success. The fine folks at Closed Loop Marketing send me a copy already months ago but I hoped to able to keep this secret know-how to myself. Not anymore, even Darren Rowse mentioned it.

RankSense SEO Software [Trial]
Now this piece of software by renown SEM expert Hamlet Batista represents a whole new generation of website optimization software. Either you’re an expert already or it will make you one. The interface is completely different from what you’re used to so at the beginning you will have to get used to it. It has very powerful functions I haven’t seen in any other webmaster or SEO software hitherto.

Keyword Remix [Free]
Keyword Remix is a great newcomer on the web tools scene as it creates a great and unique overview in the keyword analysis dialog while it also gives you an idea about what your URL is worth in the domain analysis part.

Now use them and start rocking!

Suggested StumbleUpon category: Internet Tools.