Lately many influential bloggers have written about the end of the golden age of tech blogging. They say “tech” but in a way they mean blogging in general it seems. Some people were furious and asked whether “over” is the new dead. I didn’t really care.

Then over the recent weeks as I considered my own blogging “career” I realized that indeed an era is over. It’s the stone age of blogging that is over now. Also I recognized partially what replaced the Neanderthals of blogging and what’s next.

I want to summarize what really happened in the first decade of blogging.

Who am I to look back at a decade of blog history? I was quite late to blogging. I think I tried Blogger when it came out in 2001 but I was only reading blogs for two years when I finally started my first real blog in 2003. It was a private blog about art, design and activism. I had written it in German. I remember that at some point in 2004 I was even among the top 100 German blogs in two separate Technorati-like lists.

I tried to convince my very first SEO client in 2004 to establish a blog and even started one for him. In 2005 I finally started to blog professionally aka for money and clients. One of the clients back then was the largest union of the world. I created a whole blogging portal with dozens of blogs for the youth organization of the union. Ironically I worked up to 80h a week for the union or the “agency” that actually paid me. This union is known for the “35h work week” demand.

In 2006 I created my first full fledged blog for a personal client of mine. In 2007 I started this blog – SEO 2.0 and the rest is history.

I’m still one of the most well known bloggers in the SEO industry, mostly due to my contribution over at SEOptimise. From 2008 to 2011 I have written hundreds of flagship blog articles for them and made them the best SEO blog in the UK, both by the number one ranking in Google.co.uk and by winning the UK Search Awards. Sadly I wasn’t even notified or invited to the ceremony. The SEOptimise team has received the price instead of mine. I only got an email a few weeks later that they don’t need me anymore in 2012.

Meanwhile I have established and written for two flagship blogs for German clients. One of them is profitable for more than 2.5 years now. The other is the top ranking cycling blog in Germany despite me not really having the time to take care of it a lot. Additionally I have started a blog about science fiction in 2011. Last but not least I update a private Tumblr blog for two years now.

Internationally I have written for all kinds of SEO blogs and beyond like the Hubspot inbound marketing blog, Google Blogoscoped when it was in the top 30 of the most successful blogs worldwide. There many many more I can’t even remember. So indeed I know something about blogging despite being a late adopter.

So what has actually changed in the last decade, the time I consider the stone age of blogging?

The definition of a blog has changed itself

When you look at the Technorati Top 100 blogs these days and compare it to those from just a few years ago you will wonder why there are almost no blogs on the list or in other words how a blog is defined now.  A blog seems to be a popular corporate news site with a team of writers who publish items almost every hour. Real blogs like BoingBoing or Kottke are the exception. Even they have transformed or lost in popularity.

Blogging is a multimillion business not personal anymore

In the early days blogs were not much more than personal diaries. Over time they become more and more like corporate media until corporate media swallowed them or outmatched them on their own turf. The CNN Political Ticker is the #11 most popular blog these days. Some blogs were bought and sold for many millions of dollars. Others earn millions of dollars or venture capital by the millions. I rarely see personal diary-like blogs of importance now anymore. People still care for opinion but not for the person behind it.

Blogs are about topics and teams not bloggers

I was really astounded when AOL bough the seemingly anti-corporate activist site Huffington Post. When they sacked Michael Arrington, the original founder of TechCrunch I was still somehow shocked but when it happened to myself on SEOptimise I wasn’t even surprised anymore. Blog readers today don’t care anymore who writes the stuff they read on their favorite “blog”. It’s just a site or news source like any other. The unthinkable, removing the main blogger from a blog, is not an issue by now. Bloggers get hired and fired. People read blogs not bloggers. The teams are interchangeable as long as the topic stays the same.

Everybody blogs today but people do not consider it blogging

What do people on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter? They blog. When I started blogging a blog posts was the size of the typical status update of today. A short sentence with a link was a perfect usual blog posting for years. The flagship blog post aka huge well written article is a relatively new phenomenon. So in a way most people have embraced blogging but without the attitude attached to it. Today companies like Facebook or Google own your updates and they can remove them any day. They even decide what you are allowed to write about or what “profile” picture you use.

WordPress is a full fledged advanced CMS

When I first used WordPress I was late again. I think I switched to WP when it was in version 1.2. It was clumsy and ugly back then but still it was the most advanced, user friendly and popular blogging tool at the time. I didn’t like the backend code of it but I was glad that I didn’t have to code everything myself. Yes, I have coded my websites by myself! Today WordPress is a full fledged CMS you rather use for your whole site where the blog is just part of it. Many people do not use the blog “module” at all. WordPress is really advanced when it comes to features, extensibility and customization.

WordPress themes are high quality web design today

In the early years I hated all WordPress themes. I’d take a theme and styled it completely new until it looked a bit better. As I’m not a designer I just stripped most styles. Over the years the themes got better and better but most of them still looked like diaries for teenage girls and poor poets. I’ve recently been looking around again for a great clean and minimalist theme and I was overwhelmed be the sheer number of highest quality themes that look a design for a few thousands of dollars. Many of the best are premium themes but you also get outstanding free themes.

Blog writing is almost of journalistic length and depth

As noted above blogging in the early days was often like tweeting or writing Facebook updates today. Short sentences with a link were quite common. Adding images or even videos did not happen a lot at first. I remember that I rarely added images in the first months of my blog in 2003. Blogging and journalism were like two opposite sides of the same coin, they never touched each other.

Over the years not only journalists have embraced blogging but blogging itself has become more journalistic and in-depth. Some blog posts over at Search Engine Land are so long I rarely have the time to read them in their entirety. Also journalism itself has degenerated. Today most journalistic articles are just republished agency news reports from AP, Reuters or DPA. Blogs posts are often much better than actual newspaper articles.

Blogs are interfaces and hubs in a social Web environment

Without a blog a site is like a dead end. There is nothing really you can offer to make people used to social media engage with your  site unless you have at least a blog. Forums or communities are of course even better but a blog is the easiest one of them to set up and maintain. In a social Web environment people are not keen on reading your sales copy or pseudo-objective press releases and news articles. They want to know who you are and how you think. Blogs are interfaces between companies and customers. Journalists and readers. A site that doesn’t have such an interface is effectively dead. The blog is also a hub for all your media related endeavors. You cover or announce it on a blog. You get popular via your blog, the rest of the website is just the structure.

There is no such thing as a blogosphere anymore

I seldom hear the term blogosphere anymore. Do you know what it is? It was something I felt in the early days of blogging in Germany. The blogosphere was like a virtual family. Whenever you wrote a post you knew everybody else in that huge family will in some way relate to it, even by not reading or noticing it. When a post didn’t get linked by other bloggers, when it did not become part of the blogosphere everybody knew that it wasn’t really on point. When I started blogging in English around 2007 I didn’t feel really as a part of it but I felt that it was still there. Today I feel nothing. There are people who write for blogs they work for. There are many blogosphere if there are at all.

Every niche and industry has its own blogosphere and rules

Every niche, industry or topic seems to have a blogosphere of its own these days. When I started this blog I wanted to cover many topics at once, blogging, social media, SEO but also “make money online” topics or web design. Later I added usability, freelancing, self improvement. Today there is a whole sphere of blogs for each of these topics, some of them already imploded, for instance there are just a few good and active freelancing blogs left.

On the other hand I can’t “compete” with all social media all the time blogs anymore. Web design blogs are filled to the brim with resources lists I can’t match either. Every topic requires a different kind of writing, strategy and even design it seems. Self improvement blogs are clean and sell ebooks. Architecture blogs show off building by architects all the time instead of writing about architecture. Web design blogs do now describe the practice of web design either but they list tools and resources on how to design for the Web yourself. Every niches has its own rules of blogging.

Consolidation, a few blogs dominate each niche or topic

Every blogging topic has one or a few blogs that dominate it. Search Engine Land dominates search blogging, SEOmoz does it for SEO, Mashable for social media and Social Media Examiner for social media marketing. TechCrunch still dominates tech blogging even though the founder is gone. Nobody needs him, his new blog is nowhere as popular as his old one. There are few other blogs who still try to compete but unless you have a team of dedicated bloggers you can’t really compete for attention with them.

I follow people on social media who share SEOmoz articles every day it seems. I’ve followed those who did it with Mashable. I prefer to use an RSS reader for that purpose. I don’t need people to shove the most popular blog down my throat each day. Most other people seem to like it and use Twitter instead of RSS. So even a renowned figure like Arrington can’t compete with the giants anymore.

Commercial blogs that use blog software and are full of ads abound

There are not only the huge corporate blogs you have to compete with for attention these days. There also myriads of blogs that are technically blogs, as they use WordPress or Blogger but they are just a collection of keyword driven commercial content mixed with undisclosed affiliate links to lure  search engine users and make them click. Finding a real blog with a real human behind it gets more and more difficult. Either the authors are not really associated with that particular blog or you don’t even know who the “Admin” is.

Blogging is the new normal, nothing to talk about

What I have noticed about blogging in recent years that you don’t have to talk and write about it that much anymore. In the early years blogging was new, amazing and still unfolding. Right now blogs are the most common form of regularly updated publication on the Web. Corporations websites add blogs because people are used to read like that. Almost everything about blogging has been already said and written numerous times. That was one of the reasons why I didn’t even care for the “golden age of blogging” meme.

Blogging is about personal branding not writing anonymously

My first blog was anonymous in a way. I just didn’t mention my real name on it. It was like Tumblr today. Nobody cared for my name. Also I didn’t want people to expect certain kind of content and opinion beacuse I was a pole. Today blogging is personal branding. You are somebody if you blog. Or at least you should try to be somebody when you blog. Otherwise blogging will become frustrating quickly.

People won’t trust you as much as they trust bloggers with real names. Even Google won’t rank you as high as an author who discloses who s/he is. These seems to contradict same of my former points when I wrote that people do not care about the bloggers abnymore. They indeed don’t unless you make them. You have to highlight the fact that you write and not “Admin”.

These are the changes that came to my mind right now. I could write on for hours. What I want to stress is that as you see above some of the changes are rather positive, others can be viewed as negative, some are ambiguous. Overall they show that blogging  has evolved beyond the stone age.

We do not live in cages anymore. Indeed a new WordPress with a modern theme is like a condo compared to a cage of WP from a few years ago. I welcome this change.

On the other hand I do not consider AOL or CNN to be bloggers thus I don’t have to identify or even compete with them. It’s a bit sad that the categorization of weblog is a bit meaningless these days. It can mean anything and everything.

• So what’s next?
• Will only corporations blog?
• Will we just “blog” for corporations like Facebook or Google?

Remember that some things haven’t changed. What I have learned over the years is that bloggers care for other bloggers. Not all of them some will actually attack you just to position themselves in a better light but overall blogging connects.

I may not be a particularly gifted writer but people who like me, other bloggers, tell their friends and followers and thus my blog posts get shared. It’s as simple as that. I read and share postings by other whenever I can.

Half a year ago I wrote about what I called then “smart mob SEO“. The smart mobs of the early blogging era are still there. They might occupy public places but they also can form and support bloggers. Often when other bloggers link to me or I link to them we outrank huge corporate sites. So it’s possible. Real people are always better than mindless corporate drones or just employees who happen to blog.

I don’t want to return to my cage but I still like sitting occasionally around the virtual fireplace

and convene with other bloggers to change the world. Facebook and Google are not replacements for blogs, they just parrot them without the inherent meaning. For real bloggers Facebook and Google are only tools to promote their own blogs.

You can still or now more than ever create your audience. You won’t get as much traffic as the AOL blogs but you don’t need that much. You want a small but dedicated audience. The 1000 true fans who can feed you are not a myth.

* CC image by Roger Smith.

Related posts:

1. 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Me
2. SEO 2.0 Basics: WordPress URL Design
3. Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks

1. 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Me
2. SEO 2.0 Basics: WordPress URL Design
3. Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks

1. if – If this is true I’m probably not lying. Sentences starting with “if” sound awful but the “if” makes you sound strange even in the middle of a sentence. Why? Saying “if” means that you do not trust yourself. You are not writing the truth. You are not sure. The rest of the text only applies if…
2. tips – Did you mean ideas, techniques or advice? Tips means only shallow advice, low quality techniques and stale ideas everybody knows already. Why not being specific? Tips are for waiters not bloggers.
3. insane – What’s even more amazing than awesome? It’s insane! More and more bloggers try to outperform their peers by adding superlatives to their post headlines. Who wants to read about insane web design? Not me. When it’s great, outstanding or fantastic say it but don’t act crazy and call it “insane” just to sound better. Insanity is nothing to be proud of.
4. basic/s – Whenever you cover the basics or write about the basic this or that it’s either an excuse for not being an expert yet or just proof that you don’t believe in yourself. Telling your audience that something is only basic means half of them won’t read it at all. Nobody wants to share basics on the social Web. People you target with your basics would prefer to read “advanced blogging techniques” instead of “basic blog tips”.
5. daily – Do you really plan to blog daily, 7 times a week, even on holidays? Then don’t call your blog Daily something. Otherwise the first day you don’t publish a post you out yourself as a liar or at least unreliable.
6. Amazon – Many people on the Web do not notice but I and other Web savvy readers do, whenever you add a link to Amazon in a post I know that you are trying to sell something to me and the link is an affiliate link you earn money on.
7. Wikipedia – In a recent post someone on TechCrunch has written “according to Wikipedia”. Wikipedia is no source you can cite. Wikipedia is just the lazy bloggers’ source. Also, even in case the cited article is worth being cited, next week someone might have already changed it. Moreover it shows that you have no clue about that topic and had to look up Wikipedia. At least when googling do not click the first result and find another more reputable source.
8. expert – Do you consider yourself an expert? Maybe you write that you are a social media or SEO expert. In most cases you aren’t. When you have to proclaim yourself that you are you most probably aren’t one. Don’t call yourself guru, star or genius either.

Are there more words that damage trust? Tell me about them. I might add them to the post and will credit you as the source.

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks
2. The Dirty Dozen of Funny SEO Techniques for Lazy Bums
3. 3 Traits of True Social Media Experts

1. Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks
2. The Dirty Dozen of Funny SEO Techniques for Lazy Bums
3. 3 Traits of True Social Media Experts

• I +1 it
• share it
• link to it.

It’s not just something I have written about in my 101 ways to succeed at blogging flagship post. It’s not just a tactic or technique.

In late 2010 I was a bit disappointed. Many people considered this blog just another “dofollow link”. So I moderated comments even more strictly this year to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now I can reap the rewards it seems.

There are so many great bloggers reading SEO 2.0 and even commenting here or pinging me that I have to share their awesome resources.

I’m really impressed. These are bloggers nobody has ever heard of and who have probably just a few readers each but they deserve lots of them. I hope this article helps to grow their audience.

These 12 awesome posts are about SEO and adjacent Internet marketing topics, I haven’t even included my offtopic readers. I’m proud of you people, you are really getting it. You are doing it right. I see a bright future for all of the below mentioned or rather linked bloggers:

1. Measuring SEO Success
2. SEO You Should Know: Why We Blog.
3. How Does Google Panda Change the SEO Landscape?
4. How to Calculate the ROI on a Small Business Website
5. Where to Find Links That Build Trust and Improve Search Engine Ranking
6. How to Pitch SEO – #BrightonSEO 2011
7. Identifying “Low-Hanging Fruit” Keywords: The First Step
8. 4 Common SEO Errors to Avoid
9. SEO most effective for lead generation
10. Conversion optimisation testing – how does it work?
11. Copywriting myths: the 12 most persuasive words in the English Language
12. Social Media and Assumed Consent | LinkedIn Steps in it

I think I got used too much to reading the same sources over and over. After a while you just visit the same few sites. You lose out on the myriad of great bloggers who haven’t yet been discovered by everybody else but who nonetheless contribute really valuable resources for the SEO industry and beyond. I will be more open minded in future again.

Related posts:

1. Words that Damage Trust in Your Blog
2. How to Use LinkedIn for Marketing & SEO: 20 Resources
3. How to Overcome the Established Blogger’s Apathy

1. Words that Damage Trust in Your Blog
2. How to Use LinkedIn for Marketing & SEO: 20 Resources
3. How to Overcome the Established Blogger’s Apathy

It’s not a secret that I’m not as active on SEO 2.0 as in the early days anymore. I’ve turned out an “occasional blogger” over the years while publishing SEO related articles mostly over at the SEOptimise blog. I have been hugely successful with SEOptimise. It’s by now the number one and most popular UK SEO blog according to Google at least but it also has an impressive following and

some of my posts get shared by hundreds of people.

The SEO 2.0 blog is still modestly well known but not as widely acclaimed as it was once was. I get still some substantial Google traffic and even StumbleUpon sends me hundreds of casual visitors daily again. So everything is alright isn’t it then? Well, it bores me a little. Thus I joined a completely new SEO blog over at cognitiveSEO, a promising SEO software startup from Europe. Their blog was almost completely empty when I started to write for it.

While blogging here and on SEOptimise has become routine, both in a positive and negative sense on cognitiveSEO I have to rediscover the art of blogging in a way. I have to

experiment and find a new unique writing style once again.

As this is actually my third flagship SEO blog I develop it’s not as easy to become someone else for it. On the other hand I can’t just copy the blogging style I use on SEO 2.0 and SEOptimise. I don’t want to use the same types of posts, the same headline formulas. I don’t even like to repeat myself all the time.

In a way who else could start a new successful blog? After all I’m the guy who explained how to achieve it in 2007 and has proven ever since that it works. Still, it’s also a bit ridiculous. It’s the same person writing, the same topics (SEO and social media) and even the same Internet. My readers vary though. Surprisingly very different people seem to read SEO 2.0, SEOptimise and cognitiveSEO. At least they appear to be different as other people share the posts on social media for instance.

You could think that the audience follows the author, like with books.

On the Web the publishing house, here the blog, seems to be much more important though. People know a particular source to be trustworthy and they return to it again and again. A new source has to prove it’s worth it, even if the writer is already known from elsewhere.

Before starting to blog over at cognitiveSEO I considered writing again for Hubspot. I did a few times in 2007 but then lost touch with them. Now I did it again but it felt a bit weird. I didn’t really know what to write about. That was strange because Hubspot’s inbound marketing is largely the same as my SEO 2.0 philosophy. That lack of inspiration doesn’t really happen at the new blog. I think I know why:

A new blog is like a new love. It’s full of insecurities but it’s also exciting.

It’s exciting because not everything is routine and popular. You have to find out, you have to find your voice and audience. I love it. Call me a serial blogger. I love it despite the hard work it takes to get just a few shares on social media. That’s the joy and pain of starting a new blog.

* Image by Elliot in Wonderland

Related posts:

1. How to Overcome the Established Blogger’s Apathy
2. How to Analyze Your Link Profile with cognitiveSEO Tools
3. 7* Writing for Subscriber Heaven: More of the Same but Better

1. How to Overcome the Established Blogger’s Apathy
2. How to Analyze Your Link Profile with cognitiveSEO Tools
3. 7* Writing for Subscriber Heaven: More of the Same but Better

Over the years I’ve been outranking big businesses, well known brands and major news media. I’ve been successfully competing with whole SEO teams. I’ve even managed to surpass spammers and black hat SEOs in some cases.

Your competition on the Web is more overwhelming than ever these days.

Some SEO pundits already advise you to give up and try to offer something different than the big guys. I don’t. There are still ways to fight big business in Google and beyond.

Corporations have some vulnerabilities you can use against them.

IMHO the only true free market business is small business. Big business is often just about monopolies and market dominance. Just think Google, Microsoft or Apple. They always try to own a certain market and kill off competition using proprietary technology, law enforcement and media hype. Of course once they own the market they can dictate the prices.

In SEO we deal with a similar situation these days as you can’t spend the same amount of time and money on SEO a corporation or mews media outlet can. Even though many brands fail at SEO from the technical point of view Google favors large brands over no name small businesses so that your site can be technically better equipped, have better content and be more dedicated to customers and you will still lose against the behemoths.

What weaknesses do corporations have?

Corporations commit corporate crime on a seemingly daily basis but the people have no choice but to stay with them. Google might breach your privacy, Apple might make their workers commit suicide and Microsoft might abuse their monopoly but most people will still buy and use their products and services. The same is true with major media, they copy stories, can spread lies and propaganda and get away with it.

Corporations are too big to move quickly. I’ve worked for corporations myself. You can’t do anything by yourself. You have to ask several bosses above you, you might not even know who they are so you can’t ask them at all. In other cases you might have to wrestle with several departments, every one o them throwing their guidelines on you. Until you move several days, weeks or months might go by without any significant change.

Corporations do not care about anything or anybody, they are just looking at their bottom line. Even though sensible individuals work fort hem they are not allowed to follow their human instincts. They have to maximize profits and stick to corporate rules. In many cases they are not even allowed to mention their competitors or link out to them. At the same time each corporation has at least several websites if not dozens or hundreds of them so they are heavily interlinked.

Rebel with a cause

When there is a righteous cause like attacking a corporate criminal people can get angry and act together. The era of smart mobs has finally arrived with the Anonymous phenomenon. A “group” of people from all over the world congregating virtually to perform an action on behalf of a common goal. Their most apparent action was to the long term support of Wikileaks. Their most feared tactic is the hacking of websites by entities the group perceives as the target of their wrath.

Even before Anonymous people on the Web have used similar techniques to exert pressure on the powerful. In the SEO industry the most well known of these tactics was Google bombing. While Google has tried to limit the success of this technique you can still band together to push a website in the search results.

Sometimes it just takes a few dedicated bloggers and social media users to push a certain topic or post to the top of search results. The more abusive an entity the easier it is to make people contribute to such a campaign. I did that a few years back for a very spammy medical term after I got spammed too often by spammers selling it. So I put up a post that warned consumers of the side effects for it and many bloggers joined in after I asked them. I ranked at #1/top 10 for years.

Be faster

When Samsung introduced its first iPhone competitor to the German market I happened to be the first person to report about it. Google then ranked me on #1 as the original source for months. I even outranked Samsung itself who were awfully slow to put up a webpage about the particular smartphone. They learned their SEO lessons ever since but still this SEO episode shows how a fast blogger can take advantage of the corporate dinosaurs.

Be generous

Have you ever seen CNN link out the BBC or to Al Jazeera? They rarely do. Big media either try not to link out at all or they limit themselves to sources. Sometimes they just “forget” to mention the source or the mention it without a link. Here comes the blogger who does not have to abide by corporate no link policies. When you provide a resource with links to several news media outlets you will rank highly in Google as a hub. This works for a site like Drudge Report which ranks #3 for [news] in the US but also on an article level.

Currently I rank at #4 to #6 for [motorola xoom test] in Germany. Did I test it? No. I just provided links to articles from big media outlets who do. I am the only resource where readers can get a quick overview most test results right now. Of course the major media outlets do not link out to other test results. I got just one authority link for that post so it wasn’t really difficult. I outrank some of the biggest publishing German publishing houses.

I could have linked out to other bloggers to get pingbacks an in that case I would gain even more ground.

So you see you don’t have to give up yet. You need a blog though obviously and you have to band together with like minded individuals. it might not be activism but it’s certainly a just cause to survive in the face of competition by huge corporate conglomerates.

* Anonymous kid vs. Troy Collins, US national middleweight sumo champion. Image by John Watson.

Related posts:

1. 10 Commandments of Business Blogging
2. Platform Independent SEO & SEO 2.0
3. Google Indexes Twitter Links

1. 10 Commandments of Business Blogging
2. Platform Independent SEO & SEO 2.0
3. Google Indexes Twitter Links

Whether you’re spitting rhymes about gold chains and Adidas kicks, or shaping your web strategy, one thing is essential… “Keepin’ it fresh.”

Fresh content is unique and engaging, and Google likes that.

It seems nowadays, the Google team wants your website to keep content as fresh as organic veggies, by updating information weekly, if not daily.

It has been quite the year for search engine marketing strategy. What was a relatively stable way of doing things is now totally flip flopped. Ever since Google’s Caffeine update in 2010, it seems that marketers are constantly keeping one eye on Google, trying to understand what to do, and how to do it best. Currently, search engine optimizers must focus on restructuring their websites, producing better content, and disseminating this content on social media.

As the landscape continues to shift one thing is for certain, Google doesn’t like low quality material; and what was once a mass strategy to publish and disseminate as many pages as possible is now a systematic approach to index and push high quality material.

In April last year, Google unveiled its Caffeine update which allowed indexing in almost real time. It became blatantly apparent for search engine marketers after the Mayday update, how non-unique content is punished within their algorithms. In November 2010, Google Instant sent shockwaves through search engine land, as people proclaim, “SEO is dead.”
 
What Are The Experts Saying?

Truth is, SEO isn’t dead, it is just fragmenting as search engines find better ways to index and understand content. Here are a few of my favorite takes on our current search engine landscape:

“Maybe the problem isn’t the thin content that users detest seeing in search results. Maybe the problem is with SEO itself. The purpose of SEO is to achieve top rankings and visibility, maximum impressions and clicks in SERPs”- Adam Audette

“It’s the epic frenemy battle of SEOs vs. Search Engines that whittles the SEO techniques down to what eminently points to no other option but to have a great product. What is a great product? It’s a site that people want to go to, return to, share with their networks, email their friends, etc., (aka building natural links and “buzz”). Get it? Great content and natural links and buzz = the new SEO”- Laura Lippay

“Rules of engagement:

• Write meaningful posts.
• Help people.
• Solve problems.
• Promote these posts, socially and otherwise.”- Mark Jackson

How Prevalent are Google’s Changes?

SEO really isn’t anything to freak out about. SEO best practices really haven’t changed too much since 2010. High level strategy may have changed somewhat (emphasis on different SEO tactics), but the people who cut corners are often the ones crying when Google changes an algorithm. We all know that, even though Google’s algorithm will continue to adjust, quality content and best practices will remain current.

Everybody seems to think that Google is moving towards search personalization and social integration in their search results. However, something I found rather ironic and funny is the fact that Google returns only one site that has been published in the past year for the unfiltered search term “fresh content seo” (see screen shot below):

Regardless of this irony, to stay in the safe zone, and continue ranking for search terms on Google, shift your high level strategy to incorporate daily content disseminated through social media. Focus on solving problems with your content and promoting this on multiple different mediums and will be ranking for years.

This is a guest post by Matt Krautstrunk. He is a writer based in San Diego, California, providing insight on topics ranging from social media marketing to merchant services for Resource Nation. Opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the SEO 2.0 views.

* Image source: Urb.com

Related posts:

1. You Need Better Not More
2. How to Get Content and Earn Credibility with Old News
3. The Anatomy of an SEO 2.0 Web Directory of the Highest Quality

1. You Need Better Not More
2. How to Get Content and Earn Credibility with Old News
3. The Anatomy of an SEO 2.0 Web Directory of the Highest Quality

A business blog is not only a blog it’s also obviously a business. A business has to have some core values to be able to succeed in the long term. The market is volatile so that you need some stability.

A business blog often does not sell products and services or at least not directly, it provides first and foremost value.

What kind of value do you offer? To provide value you have to know what your core values are in the first place.

Today I considered my core values on this blog. As my regular readers know I write for several business blogs by now. They differ significantly, by topic, by language and by business model.

On the other hand the core values I represent on all of them are very similar and only the focus changes a bit. So ultimately it’s not just about your blog but the question also is: what do you stand for as a blogger and a person?

Empowerment

The most important core value of this blog is to empower people. I want my readers to learn how they can make their websites earn more money, make the people happy and save the world. Thus it attracts not only readers from the SEO industry but also self improvement experts or green activists. I even considered to redefine the SEO acronym as Social Empowerment Online.

Progress

Also I’m a firm believer in progress. I don’t accept everything that is new, especially in technology, as progress but I know that humanity can move forward in the right direction. Sometimes it’s back to the roots, when it comes to environment, sometimes it’s up to the stars when it comes to science. On a personal level I want that someone who has never been on my blog before can improve his website and search + social strategy in the long term in such a way that s/he can see the progress.

Ethics

I’m grounded in ethics as in its truest sense. I don’t mean white hat SEO as in “not cheating search engines”. Ethics in business and beyond is much more than that. I use renewable energy sources, buy organic food, even dink Fair Trade tea. I have a bank account with a small ethical bank that focuses on investment in sustainable projects instead of weapons manufacturing and nuclear energy like most other banks do.

Cooperation

Altruism is the best egoism. Even Darwin meant that the only the strongest (species) survive. By that he meant those that cooperate in the most effective way. He gets misquote all the time by egotists who who want to explain their selfishness. On the Web it’s so much easier to cooperate. It only takes a few clicks in many cases. the more you share the more you get. It’s like Jesus feeding thousands of people with two leafs of bread.

Freedom

I grew up in a dictatorship as a kid and then I had to flee my country of birth at ten. Thus freedom is one of the most important things to this day for me. Many people in the US or the other old democracies take freedom for granted but  I don’t. I know that you have to vigilant all the time and sometimes fight back those who want to limit your freedom. It’s one of the reasons why I’m not a Google fan boy.

Honesty

Honesty is very important to me, it’s already part of the ethics mentioned above. Still I want to point it out separately as bloggers must be even more honest than other people. You can’t be honest beyond a certain line though. It hurts people. Thus honest is not the first thing I care for while at the same time it’s crucial. Also you have to protect yourself and your privacy on the Web. You can’t give away too much.

Respect

Respect is the reason why you have to limit your honesty. Over the years I have attacked quite a few people personally on this blog. When Jaamit died I had to rethink this. I decided to add one more core value to my list, it’s respect. Sometimes respect requires you to limit your honesty. You don’t have to lie. You can refrain from saying something that might hurt a person. Always remember, this person could die the next day and then the last thing you said and s/he remembers is the vicious attack you launched.

What are your core values? I didn’t consicioulsy know until I considered writing this post here. You have to slow down a bit and listen to your heart to find out but then the words apear by itself in your head. Don’t forget: it’s not just business and blogging, it’s about you. What do you stand for?

* Image: Stand your Ground by Akshay Moon.

Related posts:

1. 10 Commandments of Business Blogging
2. Platform Independent SEO & SEO 2.0
3. Blog vs Dog 0:1

1. 10 Commandments of Business Blogging
2. Platform Independent SEO & SEO 2.0
3. Blog vs Dog 0:1

Image: Open 19 by Rupert Ganzer.

As a modern day SEO I deal half of the day with decreasing bounce rates. It means:

I try to make people visiting websites stay longer on them or stay at all and click.

The bounce rate is a weird metric though. It doesn’t even have the same definition everywhere.

1. Some people define a bounce rate as the percentage of visitors who leave a landing page immediately (that is often stay below 5 seconds on it) without performing any other action onsite.
2. Others define the bounce rate metric as the percentage of visitors who have just visited one page on a given site and haven’t done anything else there.

I prefer the first definition, where the person comes, pukes and leaves immediately. The other definition would mean that even in some cases perfectly content users would be considered worthless bounces. This way a one page microsite where all the information is condensed right there would have a bounce rate of 100%.

Asides of that it depends on the site and other circumstances what a bounce rate means and what a actually a high bounce rate is. For instance

the ecommerce sites (aka online shops) I have optimized for had bounce rates around 20% – 25%.

Why? The search traffic they mainly received was very highly targeted. In short the people got exactly what they wanted and expected, why bounce then? On the other hand

the blogs I write for have seemingly abysmal bounce rates of 60 to 80%. Why?

Are the blogs so bad? No, people reading blogs are casual readers, especially when visiting from social media. They check a post out quickly and decide whether they want to read it or not.

So depending on the context your bounce rate of 50% can be awful, OK or great.

Image: Market Place by Valerie Everett.

On the other hand the bounce rate is far from random and can give you crucial insights into your visitors expectations. A lower bounce rate can improve both the conversion rate and the return on investment. So you really have to deal with bounce rates half of your day. What sense does it make to get thousands of visitors when 90% of them just create load on the server without even viewing your site?

So there we are in the process of interpreting bounce rates. The right question is “what does my bounce rate really mean?

You can pose this question for each site and even on page level. A bounce on the homepgae is not the same as on a deep link etc.

Understanding the meaning of your bounce rate is the key to improve it. It shows you how you can improve it. To start even earlier it helps to find out whether you really need to improve it in the particular case. Instead you could even block some traffic sources or remove a page that just creates unnecessary load.

Image: Green Elevator by Олександр Виaл.

1) First determine your page or site type and its purpose:

• Is your site a one-page-wonder like the microsite above or like Seth Godin’s blog where you end up happy after reading one of his posts?
• Is you site an ecommerce site aka online shop where you actually sell stuff on the same domain (not redirecting to a third party shopping cart)?
• Is your site a news site or blog or other type of site where people seek information from it instead of regarding it as the end of their current quest?

2) Then find out what kind of queries lead to your site? Search engines are used mostly for thre kinds of queries:

• navigational ones (people type ebay, facebook etc. in the browser address bar or search input)
• informational ones (people seek general or specific information on a given subject
• commercial ones (people wanting to buy a product or us a service and who are informed already about it)
  

Depending on the query type most of the search users who find you use your bounce rate will differ significantly.

Navigational queries have often the lowest bounce rates as long as the people find what they seek.

In case you search for Facebook you want to end up on it when you type it. So Facebook has probably a very low bounce rate from these queries. One of my blogs ranks very high for Facebook and I get lots of people who search for Facebook on it. Most of them bonce of course.

Commercial queries have a low bounce rate in case the people really find the product or service they are after. In case it’s not 20% you may want to check whether the products you are selling are the ones people want to pay for in the first place.

Informational queries lead the most fickle users to your site. They often do not even know exactly if they really search for what you write about. There are often misunderstandings when queries do not reflect the users intent at all. For instance people searching for SEM do not necessarily seek search engine marketing advice but instead they may be interested in scanning electron microscopy.

3) After that think about the ways you want your people act on your site, do you really want them to stay long and read lots of pages or do you prefer a quick conversion?

Michael Gray of Graywolf SEO recently noted how for affiliate sites a click on the affiliate link is of a bounce. That’s true, a visitor who finds the product you recommend as an affiliate and clicks on the affiliate link has been converted.

In contrast a news site that earns money by ad impressions wants you to stay onsite as possible and to reload or click as often as you can. That’s why image galleries on such sites tend to show only one image per page. They want you to see 10 ads instead of one.

Image: Open for passengers by Luis Argerich.

Now that you know all these things you can start improving your bounce rate or you can focus on other parts of advanced onsite SEO.

• You can try to rank for more specific terms instead of the broad industry terms. Ranking for “seo” may bring loads of traffic but “local seo for travel” might be more effective at retaining visitors.
  
• You can add commercial keyword modifiers to make the purpose of your site clear so that people who just seek information don’t visit at all. [seo] might bring lots of people who want to find out for the first time about it but [seo services new york] might bring you both clients and people from your area who are more willing to deal with a local service provider.
• Branding efforts beyond old school SEO might make people more aware of your brand thus making them search for it next time (aka using a navigational query) and not bounce again in contrast to generic terms like [seo services new york].

So don’t forget to ask yourself: What does my bounce rate really mean before trying to improve it.

Related posts:

1. The 7 Simplest Ways To Lower Your Bounce Rate and Get More Conversions
2. 10 Usability Sins that Make me Bounce and Never Come Back
3. Are You After Traffic or Visitors?

1. The 7 Simplest Ways To Lower Your Bounce Rate and Get More Conversions
2. 10 Usability Sins that Make me Bounce and Never Come Back
3. Are You After Traffic or Visitors?

SEO for non-profits is by now a popular concept as I found out doing a little research on Google.

Some of the best industry names come up. There are several resources and examples that might be a good start if you’re from a non-profit and are looking for SEO services. Some consultants and companies even offer discounts or special offers for non-profits, but that’s not all, just check my list:

• Get your non-profit PPC campaign financed by Google: The Google Grants Program: Click Here For Charity
• The Charity SEO Book is a comprehensive SEO guide for non-profits by Aaron Wall, one of the most renowned SEO specialist (full disclosure: I am an affiliate of his site)
• SEO at Grassroots.org “a nonprofit organization that brings emerging technologies to communities across the world”: The Nonprofit SEO Guide
• seononprofit.com offers a free fundraising guide [PDF link] for beginners
• Mary Pierce describes SEO for the Non-Profit Organization
• Michael Stein has a similar focus in his non-profit technology blog: Organic Non-profit SEO
• apogee results outlines the SEO friendly information architecture for a non-profit site
• Virginia Nussey of Bruce Clay Inc. highlights a water related non-profit SEO project and its objectives she works on
• SEO.com, one of my favorite SEO companies (full disclosure: I recently joined their affiliate program) encourages engagement for non-profits in the SEO industry

So you see: SEO is not evil as people who hate SEO assume. Those people offend me even without checking out my site or knowing who I am. I already optimized websites about eco homes or solar energy. Currently I work for a big bike manufacturer selling 50k affordable bicycles a year.

First published September 17th, 2007. Last updated (complete overhaul, removed 6 links, added 5 new ones) October 15th, 2010.

Related posts:

1. SEO Activism: Detox Campaign by Greenpeace
2. The New SEO – Search Engine Organization!
3. The Best 10 Green Blogs

1. SEO Activism: Detox Campaign by Greenpeace
2. The New SEO – Search Engine Organization!
3. The Best 10 Green Blogs

Image: Node by Uqbar.

As both business blogger and SEO am I aware of both sides of “link building”. I get lots of spammy comments from Asian “blog commenting services” but

I also appreciate blog comments by fellow SEO practicioners, I mean real people with a name in the SEO industry. I blog for clients about other topics as well, topics not related to SEO and I’ve been blogging privately since 2003.

While SEO 2.0 has been around for years, many people still practice low quality link building techniques like worthless blog commenting for the sheer number of anchor-text rich links.

In SEO 2.0 we don’t build links, we get links.

That means that you don’t have to force your link upon others. Others give you a link out of their own accord. In fact they are often glad to link to you. That’s one of the most important differences between SEO 2.0 and conventional SEO.

You may call it social SEO, SMSEO, findability, inbound marketing or SEO 2.0 – the long term strategy these days is the same: Make people link to you.

You can’t make people link to you by being an ass or just ass kissing. You can, but that only works sporadically.

Getting links SEO 2.0 style is convincing other people that you are worth it.

Once you have convinced them they will link to you again and again. That’s the whole secret.

I have covered the basics of getting links a few times already. This time I want to focus on how to get links from blogs. I will use an example close to home, this blog here, SEO 2.0

Blog Commenting

Just add a meaningful comment here, saying something more than “thank you, great post”. Do it three times and your link will be “dofollow”. Add a link to an additional resource (not necessarily your own) and you get credited in the post itself with an extra link to your site. That’s not that difficult. It doesn’t work of course if you offer services like “200 links for 10$”. Then just f*#k off. Many bloggers are grateful when you add value in the comments. Some will even credit a whole post to you.

Pinging

In case you use a WordPress blog you can easily notify me that you have published a post that links to me. It works automatically unless you have switched it off. I consider to make all pingbacks dofollow. Some other blogs already do. Their comments are nofollow but their pingbacks (and trackbacks) are real links. Of course, like above, you can end up linked as an additional resource in the editorial part of the post itself. Moreover I will check out your blog and know about you. This might be a beginning of a link love relationship.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is highly popular these days. Some friends of mine even offer services for guest bloggers. I’ve written down my guest blogging guidelines just a while ago. Most bloggers either actively seek out guest postings or are open minded enough to publish them when approached.

Make sure to read the blog first and find out what favorite topics the blogger has, what kind of audience s/he attracts and how their writing style sounds. For instance some people want to publish posts o SEO 2.0 that explain SEO basics in an article directory style of writing. I can’t publish that.

People reading SEO 2.0 expect advanced SEO and a juicy language. They don’t want to get bored with another “content is king”, “what is SEO” or “on page optimization basics” posts.

Interviews

Sometimes an interview is the best way to deal with a certain type of news. I publish interviews whenever I can and I can more often than I am able to write a post myself. After all, for interviews I only need to write the questions. Just look at the people I’ve interviewed in the past: Patrick Gavin of DIYSEO, Steven Snell of Vandelay Design, Frances Mary Krug of Search Marketing Standard. They may not be the superstars of search, social media and blogging but they have dome something important and they are around for a while.

Be around for a while as well and when the time comes to launch something or a newsworthy event will happen I will be glad to interview you instead of rehashing the news everybody else has covered already.

Many bloggers do interviews. In the SEO industry SEO Book and Search Engine People do for instance. These are some of the best authority links you can get. Don’t approach me wanting to get interviewed when I have never before heard of you.

Doing Something Linkable

Do something linkable aka remarkable. Just think about architecture and green blogs. Architecture blogs write about new buildings built by architects mostly. Green blogs mention seemingly each and every project that is a hope for a more environmentally friendly future. Even the most obscure endeavor get publicity there. Te more bizarre the more attention it gets on social media.

I will feature more of such news aboout the growing SEO industry. In other niches it’s already common place as my examples show. Also doing somthing remarkable makes you a more interesting interview partner.

Creating A WordPress Plugin

Do you know the LinkWithin related posts plugin? It’s not even a plugin, it’s more of a widget. It has PageRank 7 so speak in old school SEO terms and an incredible amount of link. Just check it with your favorite tool like Open Site Explorer, Majectic SEO or Blekko. It’s not even good at finding related posts, they barely match the topic of each post. Still myriads of blogs use it. This is probably the best case study of how the SEO 2.0 way of getting links overtrumps the tedious “link building”.

Create a better one and you’ll get even more links. Many attempted this with social media buttons but this is already a crowded market. I’d use a good related posts plugin with image preview but haven’t found a perfect one yet.

Directory Inclusion

Some of the most important blogs out there, think TechCrunch e.g. have their own directories. You have probably noticed, I have added a directory section on SEO 2.0 as well. You can’t submit your site to it. It’s a very high quality niche SEO directory. I will only add SEO service providers I already know, trust and can recommend. Be it SEO companies, SEO bloggers, SEO software vendors or whomever fits in. I have added some of my favorite SEO companies to it already, many more will follow. There is a paid option as well for those who are eligible in the first place.

In case I know you already you may get a paid directory entry with highly optimized title, headline, description and contact info. It includes up to 5 meaningful links for users ans search engines alike no “click here” crap. Search for [Relentless Technology] to see their entry on #3 for their name. The basic entry is free but as I said I don’t accept submissions.

How do you know that I know you? Well, have I linked to you in the past here or on SEOptimise? Are you on this Twitter list or tagged best SEO website design here on Delicious? Do I follow you on LinkedIn?

Other search marketing blogs offer directories as well: just check out the SEOmoz, Econsultancy and Blogstorm directories.

What else can you do? Focus on getting links instead of building links. Getting links means you get them almost as a side effect. You don’t submit somewhere.

The best links are those you deserve not those you build manually.

Change your approach. As a die hard old school you won’t get links. It’s not 2004 anymore.

Offsite SEO is similar to having sex, either you do it yourself (link building), you pay for it (paid links) or you invest in relationships so that you’ll get it forever for free (getting links as in SEO 2.0)!

Related posts:

1. Guest Blogging Guidelines
2. Commenting on Dofollow-Blogs as a Link Building Strategy
3. 7 Stealth Publish for WordPress Uses to Consider

1. Guest Blogging Guidelines
2. Commenting on Dofollow-Blogs as a Link Building Strategy
3. 7 Stealth Publish for WordPress Uses to Consider