Unless you lived under a rock for the last decade you already invest time and money in

• web design
• social media
• SEO
• link building
• analytics

services. It’s 2012 though and the social media and SEO landscape is changing at an alarming pace. What can you do about it? Invest in SEO services that bring you ahead of the crowd in 2012.

This a a list of 40 Cutting Edge social media & services to invest in now and in future.

To make it easier to you I sifted through hundreds of social media and SEO services offers to find you those that are reputable, where the descriptions are in-depth and make sense.

I tried hard not just to promote my friends from the industry so that I linked out to plenty of agencies that are lesser known but nonetheless trustworthy.

1. Online Reputation Management (ORM)
2. Mobile SEO
3. mobile web design
4. mobile analytics
5. Siri optimization
6. citation building
7. Google Places SEO
8. Google profile optimization
9. social media optimization
10. social media participation
11. social media monitoring
12. social media analytics
13. blogger outreach
14. influencer marketing
15. social media press releases
16. word of mouth marketing
17. viral marketing
18. infographic creation
19. video SEO
20. YouTube channel management
21. community management
22. Facebook optimization
23. Facebook page creation
24. Google+ optimization
25. Twitter ghostwriting
26. Tumblr SEO
27. UX (user experience design)
28. load speed optimization
29. conversion rate optimization
30. a/b testing
31. landing page optimization
32. conversion tracking
33. usability testing
34. business blogging
35. content strategy
36. content creation
37. content marketing
38. ecommerce SEO
39. shopping cart optimization
40. international SEO

Of course you can’t invest in all these services at once unless you want to spend millions. You have to specialize. Choose a set of similar services and focus o them.

The services linked above are in most cases those that have explained what it’s all about in the best possible manner.

I have considered also numerous other factors before I linked each company though. I don’t know all of them but many agencies mentioned are already established household names.

As you see I haven’t linked to all services yet as I haven’t found proper offers for some of them yet. In case you offer the above mentioned but not yet linked services and have an extra page with the exact description of the service add your URL in the comment section.

* Creative Common image by urbanfeel.

Related posts:

1. 7 Services of SEO 2.0 Companies – Submit Your Site Now!
2. 3 Approaches to Reputation Management: Which One Do You Need?
3. 11 Examples of SEO 2.0

1. 7 Services of SEO 2.0 Companies – Submit Your Site Now!
2. 3 Approaches to Reputation Management: Which One Do You Need?
3. 11 Examples of SEO 2.0

Image above: I’m only ranking at #113 for [seo] in “people and pages” but some of my best friends are around me

While everybody was writing posts what the new Google personal search aka “Google Search Plus Your World” means for SEO I almost started to write one about what Google Search Plus means for SEO 2.0

Then I decided to be more conservative and just summarized a few common sense hands on SEO techniques for Google Search Plus and personal search results.

Neither personal search or social search is new to Google. It’s just a huge leap forward this time after it has been a bit neglected in recent years.

Google+ and +1 are part of the main motivation behind this new move. Also, the so called link economy where many webmasters are buying links to game Google is the target.

Google wants to know who you are and what you like in order to ensure that low quality web sites do not get the attention they sometimes mistakenly still get on Google search.

We have to understand first that Google Search Plus has a two tiered approach. You get still in a way organic results where personal/social search results are mixed in prominently and you can click on the “personal results” link below the search box to see solely your own search results nobody else sees in that way:

Everybody who is logged in into one of the manifold Google services will see the the new personal search results sooner or later. Logged out users will get some very broad suggestions too. They mainly see suggested profiles on the right of search results:

To really use this feature you at least need a Google Profile and a Google+ membership

if you ask me. Then you need to have some people connect to you via Google+ or other services you are using with the notable exception of Facebook it seems. These services have to be linked on your Google Profile to count.

What more can you do?

Google Profile

• Connect other sites – Link all your other profiles and sites even less obvious ones like Friendfeed or WordPress.com
• Describe yourself – Your short “Occupation” description on your profile matters a lot it seems. Also your latest “Employment” seems to have a big impact. Mention your keyword here.
• Claim authorship – Use the new authorship markup by Google and link back to your Google Profile from your blog posts or respective bio below.

Images

• Use images on your blog – Images on my blog that are properly tagged show up in image results. Michael Gray‘s images do perform even better, they come in second even when I’m logged in
• Share images on Google+ – Images shared on Google+ rank as well quite obviously
• Upload images to your profile using Picasa – Your profile image but also other images uploaded to Picasa perform very well
• Practice image SEO – Consider common sense image SEO best practices like understandable file names instead of numbers.

Google+

• Use on topic circles – Create topical circles on Google+ – I write mainly about SEO, blogging and social media thus I created these three circles for examples (and a few more).
• Use Google+ actively and frequently – Activity counts, even feeding in Twitter updates automatically, pages and profiles by active people show up much higher
• Encourage feedback – Feedback like comments and shares is very important, some profiles with more controversial posts with lots of comments show on top
• Make many people add you to circles – The number of circles you are in counts, Danny Sullivan is in 300k circles so ends up being the suggested user for SEO despite listing at as only one topics he deals with
• Make sure you’re in the right circles – The names of the circles you are in counts as well so when you are selling SEO use the term to describe yourself not many others
• Let people link to you on profiles – The number of people who connect their profile to your site is  a factor thus make your employees link, this is one of the reasons the guys from Dejan SEO ranks so well.
• Participate in social networking – Socialize with relevant people who are on your level. I don’t expect Danny Sullivan or Rand Fishkin to +1 my posts, I will +1 theirs from time, but I focus on people who are into SEO etc. and have enough time to read my posts as well.
• Share circles – You can create and share circles with other people. They can add all of the people at once.

Blogging

• Use buttons – Add a +1 button to your blog postings. I use the WordPress extension by Pleer SEO.
• Write about Google+ – Blog about Google+ your profile, your page and what’s going on there.
• Use a badge – Add a Google+ badge to add you to “your circles” in the sidebar for example.
• Call to action – Ask people to +1 your postings with a little call to action in the last sentence and display the button below.
• Check shares – Monitor who shares your postings on Google+ using Topsy and add these people to your circles.

Google +1

• +1 quality and popular sites – Clicking +1 is a double edged sword. Your authority influences the things you vote up but also the sites you +1 are influencing your reputation. Vote up crap nobody else likes and you get less influential on Google as a whole not just Google+ They call it Agent Rank. I’m afraid by quality sites they mean mostly popular sites so you have to +1 main stream sources not only high quality niche sites.
• +1 sites you often use – To see the sites you really like on top you simply have to +1 them. The more you +1 them the more likely they are to appear on top.
• +1 your own sites – I don’t like this as I prefer other people to vote for me but it seems you have to vote for own sites and articles. It seems Google doesn’t dislike self-promotion unless of course your won sites are the only ones you push.
• +1 what’s on top – To get more exposure on other people’s results it seems you have to +1 what’s already on top in organic search. A woman I follow on Twitter linked to the Wikipedia definition of SEO on her private blog and now I see her on top of my search results. I had to look up who she is, she doesn’t even follow me back.

Google+ Page

• Add keyword to name – Use your keyword in the Google+ page description. Point Blank SEO ranks better than just Point Blank of course when it comes to [seo]. The Point Blank SEO team does not only rank because of the keyword, they have a hugely popular Google+ baiting post but it surely helps.
• Update frequently – It’s crucial to update your page regularly. You know Google loves content, it’s their business model that you provide free content for them so they reward those who do provide it. Also people like me do not follow empty pages unless they trust the source already.
• Socialize using your page – Companies can follow people on Google+ and +1 updates it seems. They can comment and share like any other user.

Other techniques

• Use keywords in titles – It seems post titles with the keyword mentioned more than once rank better in personal results.
• Use common words – You can optimize for common words again. When I search for car, house or even love I see personal results but most of them are not relevant, they keywords may match but in most cases the whole update may be completely irrelevant to me. So it’s good to provide a few updates using these simple terms if you care for them.
• Share off-topic – Do not only share work related content. Google+ is not like Facebook, you don’t have to share baby and per photos all the time but some occasional beauty and humor is great to make people happy and encourage engagement I’ve noticed. It’s better than just talking about SEO.

Thanks Niall Mackenzie for screenshots he provided for this post

These are just common sense SEO techniques for Google+, the SEO 2.0 part of it starts when engaging with people. This is a bit tougher and can’t fit in short list items easily. I think I will elaborate on it in the near future. I’m still testing and trying to find out myself what’s it all about.

I’m looking forward to it. I’m glad that SEO 2.0 has become main stream finally. You can’t ignore it anymore. Social media participation and outreach from now directly affects search results. It’s about time. I’ve got used to it in 2008 already when I added StumbleUpon to my search results. Google+ integration is even better.

You can’t be a bot anymore.

Get personal now. +1 this post if you like it and join me on Google+!

Also please share more techniques on how to optimize for the new Google Search Plus Your World in the comments.

Related posts:

1. 10 New Google Personal Search Blogging, Social Media & SEO Tactics
2. 12 Effects Google Personal Search Will Have on SEO, Blogging, Social Media and the Web as Whole
3. Image SEO for Photographers and Other Visual Artists

1. 10 New Google Personal Search Blogging, Social Media & SEO Tactics
2. 12 Effects Google Personal Search Will Have on SEO, Blogging, Social Media and the Web as Whole
3. Image SEO for Photographers and Other Visual Artists

Above: Not personalized search results for the query [content strategy mistakes]. I rank at #7. Look who ranks at #2 and #4.

While trying to assess the impact of stolen and otherwise copied content on my rankings here on the SEO 2.0 blog I’ve found an anomaly in the Google results I want to share with you.

A post from a popular web design blog, indeed a blog I like very much, Six Revisions outranks other far more relevant search results.

How does it do it? It succeeds by a single keyword mention below the posting:

and most importantly a category named after part of the keyphrase in question: “content strategy”:

http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/5-common-seo-mistakes-with-web-page-titles/

So the most significant onpage ranking factor seems to be the category keywords in the URL.

The site has lots of backlinks, the post itself as well. There are no incoming links with the keyword combination in the anchor text according to Blekko though:

Above: Blekko showing the inbound link anchor texts. None of them contain the term “content strategy”

Still it outranks other pages that really deal with content strategy mistakes while itself the post does only cover SEO mistakes.

What do you think? Is this an exception from the rule? Are category keywords in the URL a significant ranking signal now or does Google favor authority sites so much these days hat they need only slightly relevant content to outrank the competition that covers the topic at stake directly?

You may wonder why I rank so bad in this example. My blog has been “pandalized” recently during a minor Panda update with the number 2.5.2. I have been removed from the top 10 for all two word keyphrases I have been ranking in the top 10 for years. You won’t find my blog  anymore for phrases like

• [seo blog]
• [image seo]
• [advanced seo]
• [url seo]

anymore. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t rank higher for [content strategy mistakes]. I only rank for some very long long tail queries now.

Also take note that an aggregator called Scoop.it curated by a friend mine, Gabriella of Level 343 who cites my posts ranks higher than the post on SEO 2.0 itself. I have asked on Twitter whether other SEO people can confirm that keyword mentions in categories are an important ranking factor these days.

I know that the impact of keywords in URLs beyond the domains has been negligible over the recent years. Has Google changed this? Two SEO experts, Shark SEO and Mark of Guava have weighed in that there might be different reasons but were as well surprised by this example. What do you think?

P.S.: I didn’t link out to any of the sites or pages involved here in order not to skew the results.

Related posts:

1. StumbleUpon Adds SEO Category
2. Google Filters: Exact Match Anchor Text Links Are the New Meta Keywords
3. Matt Cutts Acknowledges SEO 2.0 Tactic of Linking Out as Ranking Factor (Nofollow is Dead)

1. StumbleUpon Adds SEO Category
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3. Matt Cutts Acknowledges SEO 2.0 Tactic of Linking Out as Ranking Factor (Nofollow is Dead)

For years I’ve been a proponent of using SEO for more than just making money. Even on the Web it’s “people before profits”. You can’t just do business as usual when the planet and humanity with it goes down the drain. Still it’s a rare occasion that you see SEO being used for activism.

Not every non-profit organization is automatically working for the greater good. There is one though that is beyond doubt in this case: Greenpeace. Also Greenpeace has used SEO for its Detox campaign in a way that inspired me to write this post.

One of the reasons I write about it is the lofty definition of SEO Greenpeace offers:

This is SEO, or “Search Engine Optimization”, and it’s one of the few fantastic activist tactics that are native to the web. It’s not the online version of something which people were doing already before the internet.

The SEO here is just a call to action to webmasters and bloggers to link back to the campaign site. This is of course the easiest and best way to do it. Also it’s quite inclusive. Not everybody can donate money or take part in actual protests on the streets. Also many people might feel that just giving money is not really activism.

Last bot not least many actions are just too far away for most people. On the Web there is no distance and attention is the currency. Links provide and channel attention. Of course I’d invite readers to share the campaign URL on social media sites as well. On the Web the people have the power to change things and to direct attention where it belongs.

The detox campaign is surely worth your attention:

Greenpeace is campaigning to stop industry poisoning waterways around the world with hazardous, persistent and hormone-disrupting chemicals. Launched in July 2011, the Detox campaign has exposed links between textile manufacturing facilities causing toxic water pollution in China, and many of the world’s top clothing brands.

I think I’m using products by at least one of the brands targeted in it:

• H&M
• Adidas
• Nike
• Puma

These are just those brands that have already reacted. Greenpeace has already forced Apple to become more environmentally friendly so I’m quite optimistic that they will be able to stop the water pollution by these and other global brands. We know they they don’t produce or even design most of their garments themselves. They are all made in

• China
• Bangladesh
• Philippines

The people in the countries suffer at least twofold, by ridiculously low wages and by environmental destruction.

These global brands do not have factories themselves. They even outsource the creative process. They only thing they have is their brand image. So in case they pollute the environment we can pollute their images with news about it. It’s that simple.

What can you learn from it?

You don’t need an expensive SEO agency to use SEO for activism.

Just ask and inspire people to link to you and spread the word on social media. Of course some advice from SEO experts is also sometimes crucial. In this case Gareth aka SEO Doctor has pointed pout that the campaign URL Greenpeace requested readers to link to has been redirected by a temporary redirect aka 302 which does not work for Google. So all the links using the short URL would have been wasted.

Does it work? Yes, Greenpeace is already at #11 for the quite competitive term [detox]. Ad some more links to your sites to push it up to the top 10.

Of course SEO is more than rankings. Personally I also doubt that people who are searching for detox are actually the right audience for this kind of topic. It would be better to optimize for the brand names of the companies that are responsible for the pollution. Once potential customers find out about the toxic pollutants their brands produce they may reconsider their purchase. This way the pressure grows.

Related posts:

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That’s why I was stunned and immediately infatuated with cognitiveSEO tools. As you might have read already, I’m blogging for cognitiveSEO tools for several weeks now. That’s one of the reasons it’s so quiet here:

The cognitiveSEO tools suite is still in private beta and thus free of charge. So you can apply for an invitation code and test them for free. I strongly advise you to test them as long as they aren’t ready. They might cost quite a bit later on. Why? Let me explain:

cognitiveSEO might be one of the most advanced link building tools already.

The early version that is online right now has only two modules that focus on two very common tasks: link management and inbound link analysis

Today I’d like to focus on the backlink checker feature because it’s probably the most feature rich such tool I have ever seen. It’s indeed a full fledged inbound links analysis solution, not just your average backlink check. The post will exemplify how to analyze your link profile with cognitiveSEO tools.

First you add a project or rather campaign to cognitiveSEO tools where you enter your website URL and then a few of your main competitors:

Then you can “apply” the backlink checker to any of the listed URLs. Along the obvious metrics like anchor text and whether the link is valid aka “active”

you have numerous filters at your disposal to find out just about everything about your incoming links. You can sort them depending on their MozRank, whether they are follow/nofollow, where on the site they are (header/body/sidebar/footer) and based on many other factors.

There are manifold filter to choose from. For example you can diplay just those links containing a given term in the anchor text:

That’s still just the beginning. When starting a new project you probably want to find out quickly why you rank below your competition or in other words why your competitors outrank you. For this purpose cognitiveSEO has a special feature called “Competitor Comparison“.

In the example below I have decided to compare links that are non-nofollow, non-xxx and where the website has at least PageRank 1 to sort out low quality links:

I had to cut off the menu screenshot as it was too long for my blog. This is the longest menu item called “Metrics” as it shows a sub-menu containing several of them.

In the image above “Alexa Rank (URL)”, “Inbound Links SeoMoz” and “OutBound” Links are missing. Below this menu you see the results as charts and a table comparing the five websites I have added to this campaign.

My site, the SEO 2.0 blog is first and you quickly see that I compare quite well to the competition for the [seo blog] query. Surprisingly I have more PageRank 4 links than all the others except SEOMoz:

You might wonder why there are so few links.  In the beta version there is a limit of 1000 checked links per site so the commercial paid version will show more. Initially Yahoo Site Explorer was meant to serve as one of the data sources but it was discontinued earlier this year. To be honest I never liked the quality of the Yahoo data. The data sources have to be paid as far as I know so that they will be probably better than Yahoo Site Explorer data.

One of the most outstanding features of the inbound links analysis feature is that you get a screenshot of every page you have a backlink from. It’s even highlighted. Just look at this example from a blog post about search bloggers by Komarketing Associates:

So do you like what you see? In case you want to test the cognitiveSEO tools for free you have a few weeks left. I didn’t even show the link management part of it. This is just a quick introduction of one single module. The post was meant to show how to analyze your link profile. Many more modules are coming up.

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Link building or attracting links is quite hard these days. Most people are looking for short cuts like paid links in spite of them being outside the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

While some big brands may get away with paid links at least as long Google buys them as well most average website owners have to sift through forums or trust clandestine text link ad market places. Most people new to SEO simply don’t know where to buy links. Your search is over!

I’ve found a place you can buy links by the millions without ever getting caught.

Where is the land of all links you can buy? It’s Turkey. It seems Matt Cutts has never been there and thus the site in question openly advertises their link selling business. The company is called Ülker and their scheme is quite ingenious! After buying the link you can actually drink it! Yes, it’s no joke. You can drink the link! It’ even prepackaged in cans or bottles. Also there are plenty of flavors.

Long story short: Buying links by Ülker is completely risk free. You won’t get penalized for them whatsoever.

Unless of course Google finds a way to crawl your intestines. So next time you ask where to buy links at least don’t ask Google. You may find dubious offers like this one. Also it’s like asking a police officer where to buy pot!

Related posts:

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3. Google Indexes Twitter Links

1. Google Buys Links with Hidden Anchor Text
2. Google Filters: Exact Match Anchor Text Links Are the New Meta Keywords
3. Google Indexes Twitter Links

This week I have written a post for the cognitiveSEO blog about the best link building blogs, experts and their most important postings from this year. It sounds funny in a way because I am the guy who has explained years ago that you don’t need link building anymore. In fact

according to my own SEO 2.0 theory you rather attract and get links instead of doing link building.

So how can I reconcile both? Do I contradict myself? Does SEO 2.0 not work as desired? Does link building still exist as an SEO practice in 2011?

Let me start with the bigger picture. What happened to the concept of SEO 2.0 as a whole? Is it still valid? It is. How?

Most SEO 2.0 techniques I have tried to spread since 2007 are common sense by now.

They are just called SEO nowadays. The meaning of SEO changed not the term itself.

At the same time link building has evolved and encompasses link baiting and getting links as well if you ask me. It’s the old term but it has a new meaning by now. Just consider the term “white paper”. Is it a paper at all these days? Yet people understand what it is.

Likewise link building has a new definition in 2011.

It may not be manual link building anymore. It may not even contain widely used old school techniques like

• directory submission
• article marketing
• press releases

Some of these techniques are obsolete by now others have changed as well.

There are still directories worth being included in, heck, I have one right here at SEO 2.0, article marketing has been killed off with the Panda update though and guest posting has replaced it. Press releases still get used but their SEO value is very low. They’re just good enough for getting a healthy link profile. Social Media outreach and blogger relations trump it by far though.

In my recent presentation over at Search Marketing Day I have used the term link building in the old school way. I mean the tedious, manual practice of contacting and bargaining with webmasters, trying to find link partners etc.

Even this part of link building still exists. Luckily we don’t have to rely solely on these tactics anymore in 2011 but the smaller and more conservative the niche or country you optimize for the less social media and bloggers are there to get links from. The more difficult is it to attract links naturally or to enhance the process of getting the links.

So at the end of day link building is sometimes the

• management of contacts
• overseeing the technical integrity of links
• planning campaigns that target influencers

to make them link to you.

Link building is the name of the game even though it might be an altogether different link building than just a few years ago.

It’s the same with SEO. It might be called search engine optimization but it may also cover social media and content creation. So it’s basically SEO 2.0 as I imagined it but the people prefer to use the word they are accustomed to.

This phenomenon is not just limited to search marketing. Just consider cars. We still measure “horse power” there even though we aren’t cowboys either are we?

So link building still does exist as a SEO practice but it’s not the same it was just a few years ago. Even link baiting has changed now that Digg is dead.

* Image by Darwin Bell

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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:

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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

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I was awestruck today when I noticed that the perhaps most important German blogging conference re:publica sells high PageRank links.

Paid links are forbidden by the Google Webmaster Guidelines since 2007

and Google has repeatedly asked webmasters to report paid links aimed at manipulating Google’s PageRank algorithm over the recent years.

The more astounded I was when I discovered that

Google itself, Google.de to be more exact buys a link on the same page.

It’s right there on the homepage. It has PageRank 7 and the links are easily identifiable as Sponsors.

So I took a look at the source code and was quite sure that my Quirk SearchStatus extension has overlooked the obligatory “nofollow” attribute you have to add to sponsored links to stay within the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

I mean after all, these people, the blogging elite of Germany are Internet savvy professionals. They have to know it.

The more I was dumbfounded when I discovered the actual source code. In it you can clearly see anchor text that doesn’t show up on the page itself. It’s hidden. You can see images only that is the logos of the companies buying links at re:publica.

In the source code it says though:


<ul class="sponsors kooperationspartner">
<li><a target="_new" href="http://www.sony.de/" title="Sony">Sony</a></li>
<li><a target="_new" href="http://www.google.de">Google</a></li>;

among others.

So not only are these paid links. This site and with it Google itself violate the Google Webmaster guidelines by using hidden text as well. It’s one of the oldest spam techniques there are on the Web. Here the site uses CSS to hide the text.

So what does this mean? Has Google revised its stance on paid links, now the it buy links itself?

I don’t know what to believe by now. In the past Google departments all over the world have been caught buying links but in most cases they a good excuse. What’s the excuse here? Will Google.de and re:republica get penalized by Matt Cutts? We’ll see.

This blog is probably not important enough to make Google.de and the German blogging elite revise their site so I hope some more important publications cover this story as well.

As far as I’m concerned I don’t think it’s OK to force the little guy with a blog to remove a few paid links on a blog that make a bit extra money while allowing huge corporations like

• HP
• Sony
• Google

itself to buy links with hidden anchor text to manipulate PageRank and search results.

It smells like double standards.

Btw.: re:publica sells links all over the site, not just on the homepage. There are dozens of them. It’s not just one of two.

Of course you can become a cynic and consider site that sell links to Google as a save haven from now. Whenever you want to buy links on high PageRank sites make sure to do it on sites that sell to Google as well.

P.S.: The webmaster of re:publica know what nofollow is. They have links on the homepage that use nofollow. They use nofollow on links from Twitter updates.

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