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

Graph: Yahoo Answers and Quora compared on Google Trends for Websites (plus Twitter and Tumblr for a better perspective)

Many people ask questions on the Web, especially on search engines like Google but also on social media. Even in cases where they don’t ask a question containing a question mark most queries are indeed questions as well, it’s just that people don’t enter the whole sentence in the Google search box.

When you search for [best smartphone] you are actually asking “what is the best smartphone”. Even a search for smartphone itself implies that you are looking for the best or at least most popular smartphone.

Right now we have a new frenzy on social media and the uber-hypebeasts Techcrunch and Robert Scoble are heavily promoting it. Pundits proclaim the next Twitter etc.

People have already written why such a hype is generally a bad idea and in the case of Quora particularly.

I’ve been on Quora for a few days now and have tested it so to say. Still there is Yahoo Answers, the number one Q&A site out there, the elephant in the room you have to beat to become the next big thing. Otherwise you’re just an also ran. I’m not a Yahoo Answers expert but I have advised small business owners to participate there in the past. Why?

Let me tell you again pointing out the reasons why. As Quora is so popular among early adopters now I’d like to compare them with Quora. Does Quora have the same or other advantages?

Who uses the site?

Q: Elite. Tech pundits, entrepreneurs, early adopters, bloggers, marketers, social media mavens.

YA: Everybody. John Doe and his wife and even kids.

Who is your audience?

Are you selling high quality services and goods for professionals and other businesses? Use Quora.

Are you selling large numbers of products or local services to average people? Use Yahoo Answers.

Who are you?

Are you an accomplished expert with lots of time? Use Quora. Otherwise you don’t have a chance to stand out. For instance every question about SEO gets answered by renowned SEO expert Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz. In other areas there are sometimes dozens or even hundreds of answers provided by highly skilled professionals. There is no room for you in case you aren’t a leader already. Although I’m pretty known in SEO circles I can’t compete with Rand who has a whole team of people working for him. He has the time to answer questions for free while others do the paid work for him. I don’t. Do you?

Are you the average business owner or freelancer like I am? Use Yahoo Answers, The answers are mostly so low quality that you can easily stand out. Real people aka potential clients read your advice and click your links. Of course you have to say more than “my SEO company is the best” but even some people get away with that low quality approach. You can perform better than that.

Are you after a good rep, authority and trust? Use Quora. Here you can build a reputation for yourself competing with the best of the best. You have to spend a few hours a day on it but it’s a long time investment. Then one day you can show that most people consider your answers and expertise to be worth it. Then you can earn money with it.

Are you after traffic, leads or even sales? Do you need to earn money right now? Don’t have the time to compete for days, weeks or months without getting something in return? Use Yahoo Answers. Here people are asking for things they need right now. They would pay for it. You don’t need to be the best expert on something as long as your answer makes sense.

I could ask question like these for a while but I don’t have the time. Also my impression is that I can’t cope with Quora.

The pace questions get asked, answered, liked etc. is too fast on Quora.

I’m spending most of my social media time on Twitter and I won’t build a new power profile from zero. Also there are other sites to consider joining which actually don’t cost so much time investment. Trunk.ly and Amplify actually save you time.

Btw. I even rejoined Yahoo to test Yahoo Answers again as I lost my two older accounts from years ago. Maybe I start using Yahoo Answer again. Judging from the replies to the SEO questions I could easily stand out in a positive way. Also Rand isn’ t there.

You can follow me on both Q&A sites, Yahoo Answers and Quora if you like but as I said I’m mainly on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. 3 Traits of True Social Media Experts
2. 7 Social Sites Every Business and Professional Should Use
3. 7 Business & Blogging Clues a Puppy Can Teach You

1. 3 Traits of True Social Media Experts
2. 7 Social Sites Every Business and Professional Should Use
3. 7 Business & Blogging Clues a Puppy Can Teach You

Jaamit Durrani and a cat that looks like Hitler at Think Visibility. This is how funny @jaamit was.*

T​hree months ago Jaamit Durrani had asked me whether I’m interested in the “head of SEO” position​ for Germany​. I was of course delighted and honored by this question (as it wasn’t even an official offer yet) but had to decline for personal reasons. I was particularly astounded by the trust Jaamit had in me as we haven’t worked together on any projects yet. I​ndeed I haven’t met Jaamit to this day and I’m very sad to say that I will never have the opportunity to do so in future either.

My communication with Jaamit was Twitter-only, I think we haven’t even emailed.

Jaamit has taken part in some of my crowdsourced postings for SEOptimise and we have sent a few direct messages to each other the from time to time. So we weren’t exactly friends. Still I felt devastated by the news that reached me on Friday. Apparently Jaamit has died in a train accident.

Jaamit really managed to make me like him very much just by sending me an occasional tweet or DM.

This is astonishing by itself. I was always afraid that Twitter communication was too shallow and a waste of time. I sometimes imagined that when I would die suddenly in an accident nobody would notice at all. Jaamit has not only proven that Twitter builds real communities he showed that you can build real life relationships using Twitter. Jaamit was a link builder in its truest sense, forging bonds between people. He was able to maintain a relationship with someone he has never met before only by very limited electronic means.

Today I want to try explain how Jaamit has managed to maintain a relationship like this to honor him after his tragic death.

I want to remember him as the cool guy he was not only as the poor guy who has has died prematurely. Already the term jaamit has a new meaning in my head: a jaamit is a very strong link, one that even outlasts the link builder.

In the past link building has often been marred by lack of trust.

You would exchange links with strangers you don’t trust. Soon many SEO tools appeared whose only feature was to check whether your link partners still link to you. Link exchanges weren’t lasting long in many cases. Your partners tended to forget to link back to you when they redesigned their site or moved on to other projects. So you had to either manually or automatically check whether the link is still there and send such a person an email when the link wasn’t up anymore. Many people in the SEO industry still practice this kind of no-trust link building.

Jaamit had the trust in me that I could become head of SEO for Germany just by reading my blog posts and tweets it seems.

So we see here the opposite: Trust in virtual space gained just by electronic communications. A new kind of link building. The link exists not between two sites but between two individuals. It’s a link of mutual trust that results in many links between websites.

Y​es, I trusted Jaamit as well. I’m not entirely sure why but I think the following aspects were crucial:

• relating
• returning
• sharing
• caring
• joking

A relationship is formed when you can relate. You can’t relate with someone when you don’t understand that person. Also you need some compassion to relate. When someone experiences a problem and someone else is trying to find out what the problem is or even to help. That’s relating. Can you relate? Jaamit has proven that he could relate. I have checked again the roughly only 30 tweets I send to @jaamit during the course of the last year. I got feedback from him more than once when experiencing strange issues either in the SERPs or elsewhere.

A relationship or friendship is not a one time appearance. You don’t form a relationship having a one night stand or during small talk at a party. A relationship has something to do with returning and communicating again and again. Apparently you don’t need to do it daily or in person but a short tweet is enough. Looking at the dates of the tweets in which I addressed @jaamit I noticed that we have had a conversation roughly every two weeks. Isn’t this amazing? You tweet once every two weeks back and forth to form a real life relationship.

Sharing is an essential ingredient of any relationship. Without sharing you don’t have much of an relationship, you just know the other person. You know s/he is there bot not much more. Jaamit was a person who shared his knowledge freely. He blogged for Freshegg and he shared his insights with me when I crowdsourced the SEOptimise posts. He also guest blogged on many renowned industry publications like Econsultancy. When he set up his own private blog SEO Insight (now defunct) half a year ago I subscribed instantly the day I found out he had a blog. I think I haven’t done that before always being very picky about the feeds I subscribe to. Just ego blogging is not enough. You have to really share to forge a relationship with your readers.

A relationship without caring for one another is not a deep relationship. Jaamit really cared. How do I know? When I declined his offer of becoming head of SEO for Germany I probably sounded arrogant. I mean who would decline such an career opportunity right away? Jaamit could easily get offended by this decision of mine. The opposite was the case. He expressed understanding for my reasons without sounding offended. He even inquired to know how “bad” it was so that I had to ensure that it wasn’t “that bad” but enough of a reason to decline. So it seems it’s not that difficult to care. You just have to ask the right question at the right time.

Without joking you don’t have a real relationship. Only humor and laughing together makes two people feel they really belong together. Everything else is more like working together. You don’t joke with people you don’t trust. Why? A joke can always backfire. Someone who likes and trusts you will either laugh with you or at least won’t get offended by a joke that backfires. I love joking like in saying funny things, not like telling jokes. So I will sometimes say or rather write funny things on the Web. Sometimes my jokes are probably way over the top I guess but that’s me. We were joking repeatedly with @jaamit it seems. Every now and then we exchanged humouros tweets. Humor is a major relationship building factor it seems.

Sometimes joking around is not a right thing to do though.

Now that Jaamit is not amongst us anymore I deeply regret a joke I made on Twitter shortly before his accident. In a creepy way I even feel partly responsible for his death. When he tweeted about his “flu-like” symptoms last week I joked that it was just a link bait and that he must come up with something more spectacular these days after the swine flu hype of last year. He wrote back asking “what about Cholera”?

I wanted to cheer him up and to belittle the flu symptoms to make him feel better. Instead I should have written something like “stay in bed for the next few days”. I don’t know whether he still was sick when he got killed by that train but he surely would have survived laying in bed trying to overcome the flu.

Also he indeed came up with something “more spectacular” which makes me feel as if I had contributed to his death. I mean

getting hit by a train is not your average death.

A road accident aka getting hit by a car would but getting hit by a train is truly an exceptional death. It feels ridiculous to write about it in this manner but I can’t forget my last joke.

I’m not a particularly religious person but in this case I can only come up with one logical explanation for this premature and otherwise senseless departure:

God needed a link builder in heaven.

Now that he even gets outranked by Go Daddy for his own name in Google Instant he needed a link building angel up there. Jaamit was probably one of the friendliest, most generous and funniest guys in the industry. Moreover just recently he was chosen one of the 30 most influential UK SEO specialists. He wasn’t even at his career apex yet I think. He just recently became head of SEO for OMD UK. He had a bright future. God knew that. He decided he needed Jaamit to help him out with link building. He chose Jaamit because he needed a true link building angel for his SEO department.

Link building like Jaamit is not the only lesson I’ve learned from this.

You have to mind your every word. It can be last one you utter or someone else hears from you. S/he might never return again to clarify. So you better be clear right now and you better be just right now. I haven’t always been just in the past. I had some feuds with people from the SEO industry right here on the blog and they’re still online. I have attacked

• Doug Heil
• Jill Whalen
• Barry Adams

publicly in postings or comments. I decided to finally remove them.​ I don’t want these words to be the last ones they remember. Also in case you have the flu or something else that makes you feel dizzy: Stay at home! You might get run over by a car or even a train. Don’t listen to stupid jokesters like myself who attempt to tell you that a flu is no reason to complain.

Last but not least think about this: Would God want to work with you on the divine SEO campaign? Or are you just a petty sinner like me? Will your links outlast you?

More tributes to Jaamit Durrani:

Jaamit

Jaamit Durrani Tribute « SearchTalk

A tribute to Jaamit

A tragic loss to the industry – RIP Jaamit | Holistic Search …

Jaamit Durrani, RIP | Econsultancy

We’ll miss you Jaamit – State of Search

RIP Jaamit | SEO Consultant Sunderland

* “Cute!”: Image by Steven Lilley aka sk8geek.

Related posts:

1. Death Threat by StumbleUpon Engineer
2. How Trust Made my Blog Triumph: 1000 Subscribers
3. Where to Buy Links? Turkey!

1. Death Threat by StumbleUpon Engineer
2. How Trust Made my Blog Triumph: 1000 Subscribers
3. Where to Buy Links? Turkey!

One of the most important factors of my success until now is the fact that I was never been content with following. I never liked

• following orders
• following trends
• following people

I always preferred leading. I’m not speaking of following on Twitter. Following is a general strategy most people adhere to. It has something to do with laziness. You follow a path people went before you because you are either afraid or too lazy to find your own.

Y​ou will never be the first to do something when you just follow others.

In business we speak of the unique selling proposition that enables your business to stand out. How do you think you will be able to have an USP when you just copy something someone has done before you?

I’​ m not talking about leading like in “being a leader” either. The German word for leader is “Führer” and you know who the most well known leader in Germany was. I don’t want people​ to follow me either.

Many of the Web celebrities have a business model of making other people follow them.

They can sell you affiliate products they recommend and make you spread their message on social media.

T​he people who follow me on Twitter or elsewhere are not followers of that kind. They are people who lead themselves. These people find and follow their own path.

It’s not easy to find your own way of doing things these days. You get inundated with information, choices and your desires are constantly played with. Almost the whole make money online blogging industry is based on the wrong leader-follower relationship.

I​n SEO 2.0 you get the optimal win to win situation when peers work together and support each other.

I can’t understand why people are following exploitative​ and deceiving individuals like Jason Calacanis, Steve Rubel or Kevin R​ose. You have to lead yourself instead of following false idols. I don’t want to be your idol. I don’t want to show you my way of doing things in order to be able to sell you products. I want you to find your own way.

* Image by David Spinks

Related posts:

1. Who to Follow on Twitter?
2. Hey Marketers on Twitter: It’s not a Link List
3. 10 Reasons to Follow Me/SEO 2.0 on Twitter

1. Who to Follow on Twitter?
2. Hey Marketers on Twitter: It’s not a Link List
3. 10 Reasons to Follow Me/SEO 2.0 on Twitter

I’m preparing a SEO 2.0 web directory right here on my blog as you might have noticed already. What? A web directory? In SEO 2.0? It sounds like a contradiction indeed. Aren’t directories either dead, spammy or low quality?

Well, not all directories are wacky. Some of them thrive and are indeed expanding.

Some of the most renowned web directories aren’t even considered as such probably because they are part of larger projects.

So today I will outline the anatomy of an SEO 2.0 web directory of the highest quality, one that I hope to be able to provide here in the future as part of this blog or rather the upcoming SEO 2.0 empire. The SEO 2.0 directory will focus on SEO services and companies.

So this is the actual anatomy of such a directory I deem high quality:

Not standalone but part of a larger website

A web directory without context is often useless. A directory embedded into a larger concept provides additional information your users seek in contrast. Users rarely seek a directory out of the blue. They need a directory to find and compare sites once they know what they are after or interested in.

Covering a very narrow niche

A high quality directory is not about technology, news or health but in a way a long tail directory targeting just one category of a topic. Nobody wants to enter a directory homepage like in 1999 and click several times until they find the sub-directory they actually need. People want to arrive already knowing that they are in the right niche and industry.

Very exclusive

A very high quality directory is the opposite of “free for all links” as Matt Cutts has put it in the past repeatedly. When everybody can get a link in a directory or the directory is just part of a linking scheme it’s low quality or downright spam. A directory must be trustworthy thus only really trusted sites should be able to enter it.

User friendly deep links

Old school web directories only list homepages so basically you have to do the same work twice, once you find what you seek on Gogle you just get sent to the main page of the directory and have to search for the actual resource you are after again. Thus a modern directory has to deep link to be useful. It must provide the information you need directly. It even has to link out to third party sites like Twitter or LinkedIn if that’s where the most current information is at. Also links to contact forms make more sense to users than just a generic homepage link.

User friendly anchor texts

A directory that links with the words homepage, click here or the actual address are useless. It’s a decade old usability lesson that you need to use an anchor text reflecting the actual content on the page you link to. Thus the deep links have to use some meaningful anchor texts to be user friendly.

Contact information

Some people do not want to click a link, they need the actual contact information, most notable the phone number or email address immediately. Thus a directory entry has to include contact data.

An honest third party review

Most directories to this day just let the people who submit their websites to determine the description of their own site. So you actually get what the webmaster or website owner thinks about the website not necessarily what the site is really about as the description. A high quality SEO 2.0 directory provides an honest third party review of a website and its purpose instead of self promotional fluff.

An accountable editor

Directories rarely disclose who actually is responsible for writing the entries. Some anonymous, low paid poor soul or a volunteer who hasn’t really a clue what the sites are about. The editor of a high quality directory has to be known personally and be held accountable for his choices and opinions.

All of these requirements demand of course some level of work to be done. I will do it myself of course, not an underpaid drone in India so it will be an exclusive paid directory. I’m quite optimistic though that most SEO companies will be able to afford it. You pay for Yahoo directory entry as well, don’t you?

E​xamples

Check out paid directory entry examples for Redfly and Datadial. Also take a look at a free entry for Search Engine People.

Now let me show you some very good directories in the SEO niche and beyond I respect and consider “high quality”. I will aim to become like them or even surpass them. I don’t want to be bigger than them, I want to be better!

• CrunchBase, The Free Tech Company Database
• Supplier Directory | Econsultancy
• SEOmoz | SEO Marketplace – Internet Marketing & SEO Company Directory
• Directory of SEO, Internet Marketing and Web Design Services

W​ant to be one of the first companies and other SEO service providers to be featured on SEO 2.0? W​rite a comment here below (it won’t get displayed if you don’t want it just say so in the comment itself) and I will consider your SEO services for inclusion. In case your company is already on my list to get included firms your entry might get fast tracked.

Who is already on my list to be included sooner or later? Any company or consultant I have saved on Delicious under the seo-services tag or added to my Blekko seo-services slashtag.

Everybody whom I follow on social media like Twitter, Google+ or Facebook, has been linked to from SEO 2.0 already or saved in my other Delicious tags or Blekko slashtags can apply as well. All the others: Say hello first and let me notice you.

* Image by Patrick J. Lynch

Related posts:

1. How to Get Links on SEO 2.0 and Other Blogs
2. Best SEO Website Design: SEO Companies Using Dark Backgrounds
3. SEO Company, SEO and Search Engine Optimization Google Results Are a Disgrace

1. How to Get Links on SEO 2.0 and Other Blogs
2. Best SEO Website Design: SEO Companies Using Dark Backgrounds
3. SEO Company, SEO and Search Engine Optimization Google Results Are a Disgrace

*

Two years ago I celebrated my first world usability day by pointing out usability mistakes usability experts commit. Fast forward to 2010 and what do I see?

World Usability Day is here again and usability experts still can’t even get their own website right.

Yes, the World Usability Day website sucks big time and I’m really ashamed for them. How can they make people believe that they want to support usability when their own site is not usable by any standards?

Here are the most obvious mistakes the organizers make on their own site:

Excessive Clutter

Both the worldusabilityday.org website and the UPA site are excessively cluttered. The site looks so bad I don’t even want to add a screenshot here not to scare away my readers. Find it at the bottom of the post.

Repetitiveness

Why say it just once when you can repeat it several times throughout your frontpage? “World Usability Day – Making Life Easy!” says the logo on top. Right behind the logo we read “World Usability Day has started!”. Looking down from the quite big logo we see another even bigger logo saying “World Usability Day 2010 – 11. November 2010 . Making Life Easy!”. In order not to forget where we are we can read right below it: “World Usability Day announces Honorary Chair for 2010″ and scrolling a bit further: World Usability Day is Today!
I won’t cite all the other mention or even the headlines containing that phrase or Google will penalize me for keyword stuffing!

Bizarre Typography Mix

While I myself use two different fonts on this blog: Arial/Helvetica and Verdana, worldusabilityday.org manages to use not only Arial/Helvetica in all kinds of different shapes, colors and sizes but Georgia as well although every novice web designer will tell you that you shouldn’t mix both serif and sans-serif fonts.

Blinking

I couldn’t believe my own eyes! Did worldusabilityday.org just blink on me? Yes, they did. They have a large blinking section in the middle of the site. What can I say? Why not use the <blink>-tag then?

Call to Action Overkill

While visiting worldusabilityday.org I was really overwhelmed! Not only by the clutter though! Several calls to action in a row shouted at me: I had to “get involved”, “sign our charter”, “visit partner events”, “register an event”, “donate to world usability day”, “follow us on Twitter”, “become a sponsor”. All of the even before I had the chance to scroll. I didn’t even count the “contact us” call to action and those below the fold.

Making the Logo Bigger

Did I mention that designers love to “make the logo bigger” on websites? worldusabilityday.org really gave them that opportunity. Lie I said above, the big logo on top appears as an even bigger aka huge version below. Great work!

No or Several Points of Focus

It wasn’t just clutter and the myriad of calls to action that made me dizzy on worldusabilityday.org – the site has no single point of focus. There are some many similar sized objects on that site vying for attention that I simply had to give up. My eyes were jumping like ping pong balls on a table on his site.

I’m just an

• SEO
• blogger
• former web developer.

I’m not a designer or usability expert myself. Still I see so many utterly obvious usability mistakes even without professional training.

Therefore I ask you: What is the purpose of the World Usability Day? Is this some kind of cruel irony? Give me a break from World Usability Day! I’m already fed up with all that “usability” and bouncing.

Usability experts still fail themselves so they aren’t in the position to teach the rest of us. Do you want to see the screenshot [600kb] yourself? It’s awful but at least it doesn’t blink.

* Image by clpo13

Related posts:

1. 7 Usability Mistakes Usability Experts Commit
2. 5 More Design + Usability + SEO Articles: The Clean Dozen
3. For Design, Usability and SEO Simplicity Is Key

1. 7 Usability Mistakes Usability Experts Commit
2. 5 More Design + Usability + SEO Articles: The Clean Dozen
3. For Design, Usability and SEO Simplicity Is Key

Diamond Skull by Damien Hirst. Image by Aaron Weber.

Recently a post titled “How SEO is breaking the web (and killing Google)” has garnered almost 200 tweets. While I assume that many of them were automated tweets from accounts retweeting everything about SEO and Google I guess there still were people around ignorant enough to spread this crap.

I even considered tweeting it myself to get my followers to ridicule the clueless guy but then I decided to just comment on that post. Luckily I wasn’t the only person to voice my dissent with this kind of polemic. Most people were clearly stating that it’s nonsense to denounce SEO as a whole. Still the post garnered around 3000 views. What did people think about this post though? I guess 2000 of the 3000 were just shaking their heads in disbelief. How can somebody who is sane still spread such myths?

Then Google Instant has been released and guess what, Steve Rubel, who has badmouthed SEO in 2008 already did it again: His “Google Instant kills SEO” nonsense got more than 1.5k retweets and numerous links. So does the “SEO is dead” meme still work? No.

“SEO is dead” is dead. Google itself offers official SEO advice at least since 2008 when the SEO starter guide has been published.

This time high profile Google personalities including Sergey Brin himself debunked the “SEO is dead” myth right away during the Google Instant presentation. Also Marissa Mayer and Matt Cutts stepped in to declare SEO alive and kicking.

SEO is alive but ignorance is as well.

Still the “SEO is dead” meme is dead. Who will believe Web celebs like Steve Rubel in the future when their misguided interpretations of Web reality get refuted within minutes after publication?

Get over it. SEO is here to stay. As long as there is search on the Web, websites will have to get optimized. Don’t behave like an idiot. The old stereotypes don’t work anymore. You just ridicule yourself ignoring the obvious and stating that SEO id dead. “SEO is dead” is dead and you will too on the Web as well in case you spread misconceptions like these.

Who is this Steve Rubel anyways?

While I still knew what the other celebs were doing who have declared SEO dead in the past I don’t even know what Rubel does. Likewise most people will know him as the idiot who declared SEO dead while even Google disagreed.

Related posts:

1. 10 Internet Legends Everybody Should Know
2. Matt Cutts Acknowledges SEO 2.0 Tactic of Linking Out as Ranking Factor (Nofollow is Dead)
3. How to Get Content and Earn Credibility with Old News

1. 10 Internet Legends Everybody Should Know
2. Matt Cutts Acknowledges SEO 2.0 Tactic of Linking Out as Ranking Factor (Nofollow is Dead)
3. How to Get Content and Earn Credibility with Old News

I confess: I’ve been lying to you all these years! I don’t wear a white sombrero like my avatar does. I wear a Panama hat instead. There is more to it than just the hat type I realized recently. It dawned on me that myself but basically all so called white hat SEO practicioners are in fact Panama hat SEOs. Let me explain.

The realization came while I read a new blog post by a very well known SEO blogger. She was linking back to her posting from 2007 to denounce the same person again for the same reason three years later. It was the everlasting white hat vs black hat SEO debate. She argued that black hat SEOs are better than clueless white hats. To be honest I’m not interested in that debate at all anymore. When I started out in SEO most people where more or less gray hat so I wanted to stick out by being whiter than white. These days most SEOs are by far whiter than back then.

I still want to be white hat and ethical, even more than others, but today it isn’t that surprising anymore. You rather rather stick out when publicly defending black hat SEO. This is probably one of the reasons this SEO blogger did it. On the other hand

there are no white hats or black hats if you ask me.

I aspire to be like my avatar, it’s my goal to wear a completely white hat but in reality there are no saints. We are just humans. Also in this ever changing Web landscape and SEO industry what is white hat today might end up black hat tomorrow. What is black hat today might become altogether illegal tomorrow, or worse it might be illegal already and you simply don’t know it.

Just look at paid links. They haven’t been officially black hat or rather outside Google guidelines from day one. People all over the Web bought text link ads like any other ad type and to this day some people outside of the SEO industry do oblivious that there might be a Google penalty for paid links.

In case you look long enough you might still find some comments of mine from around 2006 where I actually defended the practice of paid links, then known as text link ads.

I bought links myself! Yes, I’ve done that. I even used to seek out high Pagerank sites and to offer them assistance with getting text link advertisers. At first Matt Cutts has been denouncing paid links in his cat blog but what do I care for Matt Cutts’ cats? Finally paid links have been marked officially as outside the Google Webmaster Guidelines. By then I think I had already stopped using this technique. I have never used it on large scale or depended on it so I didn’t care much.

Every SEO serious about optimization for search engines has to know some black hat SEO basics at least to know what not to do. Also when you don’t use black hat methods it doesn’t mean your competition won’t either. You at least have to able to spot it. How else can you report them to Google?

So basically SEO is always Panama hat SEO. While you have to aspire to be as ethical as possible there will always be a black band around your Panama hat.

Stop arguing about white hat vs black hat. Take note that a Panama hat isn’t gray either. It’s what we call “nature white” or “natural white” over here in Germany. That’s it: Human nature is never white. Ethics are not really natural, they are mostly part of our culture. We have the ten commandments and Google Webmaster Guidelines that show us the path more or less but we are prone to error trying out new things.

The bible says “let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!”

Until then, while wearing your Panama hat, make sure it’s ethical. My Panama hat by Pachacuti is hand made in Ecuador and fair trade certified. Women can wear them too!

Related posts:

1. Guest Blogging Guidelines
2. Google Buys Links with Hidden Anchor Text
3. 7 Rules of Ethical SEO You Ignore Probably as a White Hat

1. Guest Blogging Guidelines
2. Google Buys Links with Hidden Anchor Text
3. 7 Rules of Ethical SEO You Ignore Probably as a White Hat

Balance by Liber.

Just yesterday i noticed that I entered the Adage 150 top marketing blog list at #143. Today I’m at #149. This might change quickly again so I’m not here to solely brag about it. The exact point in time SEO 2.0 has seen this surge has surprised me.

For those who don’t know the Adage 150 list, you can submit your site for consideration (I did a few months ago) and in case your blog really deals with marketing related topics you get listed. You probably will be at #500 or below though. Even the flagship blog for the British SEO company I write for most of the time doesn’t perform as good in the list.

So I kept wondering because I add two posts a week to SEOptimise and sometimes don’t write for SEO 2.0 for a week at all. In June I even paused for two weeks. Also the posts I’ve written lately, were, with one exception, not the typically popular list or how to posts you usually succeed with on social media. The Adage 150 takes its data from several sources. Some rely on sheer traffic like Alexa others on multiple metrics like Postrank.

For a while already I’ve been quite envious of blogs with high posting frequency like

• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine People
• SEO Design Solutions

They manage to post daily or even more often and the bloggers are often whole teams. Even Micheal Gray who is a lone ranger like myself blogs very often.

Then it dawned on me after reaching the Adage 150 that sometimes success lies in moderation.

Sometimes it’s better to do less and say less to succeed. It’s not just the quantity vs quality point. Moderation is about finding the perfect balance when doing things.

In business blogging and SEO 2.0 we tend to go for the most traffic, most social media recognition and most subscribers or links. Sometimes that’s too much though. When you have to ask too many people for a vote on a particular social media site or you have to spend hours daily there to achieve some modest results it’s too much. You have to try to do less of it to achieve your goals.

A few weeks ago for instance I decided that I don’t want to follow more than 700 people on Twitter.

[I actually follow 704 because as the number includes for of my own accounts.]  At the same time I didn’t want to unfollow hundreds of my followers lie some social media mavens do. I have followed thee people for a reason.

I don’t want to follow only 100 people just because I think I’m so important that i can’t spend more time with reading updates by other people. So I started reviewing the people I follow on Twitter on a daily basis. Whenever I encountered someone in my stream where I didn’t remember who that is or what website s/he owns or writes for I considered unfollowing the person. I only followed as many people as I unfollowed to achieve balance.

It worked. Lately I noticed that more often

I remember who the people are whom I follow on Twitter, I recognize the avatars and the people behind them.

Before, the number of clicks I got for links on Twitter was dwindling all the time. Now it depends again on the quality of the links. Whenever I share something that is really of value for the people I get many to click them. I got the attention of my Twitter friends because they got mine. I was able to reconnect with many.

Of course I could go on adding examples for ages but I decided to make my writing both more concise and valuable in future. The goal is less information more wisdom. I will try to achieve balance. Sometimes success lies in moderation. I want to make it happen more often.

Related posts:

1. Hey Marketers on Twitter: It’s not a Link List
2. Top 7 Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing Purposes Correctly
3. 10 Reasons to Follow Me/SEO 2.0 on Twitter

1. Hey Marketers on Twitter: It’s not a Link List
2. Top 7 Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing Purposes Correctly
3. 10 Reasons to Follow Me/SEO 2.0 on Twitter

LinkedIn Tattoo by smi23le

LinkedIn has been around for ages but finally the service matures. LinkedIn has gained critical mass and positions itself as an alternative or addition for both Facebook and Twitter. I’ve been on LinkedIn for several years but until recently I wasn’t serious about my LinkedIn presence. While I’m wary of social media and networking by now I will nevertheless use LinkedIn in a strategic way from now on.

At first I present you this LinkedIn marketing and SEO resources list. As a follow up I will write a post on how I do optimize my LinkedIn profile. Also take note that this list doesn’t not contain the typical LinkedIn SEO advice pieces where SEO is solely meant as Google SEO. In SEO 2.0 we deal with search holistically. Thus LinkedIn is treated as just another search “engine”.

How to Use LinkedIn & LinkedIn Profile Optimization

• How to Use LinkedIn
  
• Use LinkedIn Effectively
• How to Improve Your Linked ROI By Tweaking Your Profile
• How to Ensure Your LinkedIn Profile Is Effective
• 10 LinkedIn Tips to Optimise your Profile
• LinkedIn SEO tips
• Effective LinkedIn Positioning
• How To Rank Higher on LinkedIn in Your Niche
• How To Get More From LinkedIn
• How to be a LinkedIn superstar – Creating a profile for success

LinkedIn Marketing & Use Cases

• Ten Ways for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn
• Using Linkedin for online PR
• Effective Marketing on LinkedIn
• 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn
• 33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business
• LinkedIn Marketing Tips
• 7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn

Using Specific LinkedIn Features

• How to Successfully Manage a LinkedIn Group
• 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Leverage LinkedIn’s New Features
• How to Promote and Manage LinkedIn Group
  

Take note that I didn’t add all LinkedIn resources I know but selected them very carefully of the course of several months. There are not that many serious LinkedIn marketing resources out there. Most LinkedIn SEO posts are just short and often outdated tidbits. So it took me considerable research to pick these resources.

Do you want to know more about me? Well, you can view my LinkedIn profile. In case you want to connect with me make sure to tell me why. I don’t just collect “friends” for the sake of numbers.

Last but not least consider reading my social media hopping post on how you shouldn’t waste your time with social media and networking but use is to propel your business to new heights instead. I will explain how a balanced social media strategy should be implemented in a future post. You can’t abandon social media as a business person but you can’t work for social sites as a user generated content slave for free either.

Related posts:

1. 12 Awesome SEO & Internet Marketing Resources from my Blog Readers
2. The Best StumbleUpon Resources Outside of SU
3. Kevin Rose Explains How to Spam Twitter and Everybody Loves it

1. 12 Awesome SEO & Internet Marketing Resources from my Blog Readers
2. The Best StumbleUpon Resources Outside of SU
3. Kevin Rose Explains How to Spam Twitter and Everybody Loves it