After 13 years of online publishing, 7 years of blogging for a plethora of blogs, being an SEO for six years and being paid for blogging for five years by now I finally am convinced that I know how it works.

What I learned about online publishing, blogging, SEO in more than 10 years you can now read in 10 minutes.

This is my list of 101 ways to make your blog more popular and successful. Most of it I tried myself, other measures have been taken by numerous other bloggers with success so I have to catch up on them myself.

1 – 5: Twitter

1. Get social on Twitter, the people on Twitter will support your blog if you do it right

2. Follow some people on Twitter who share your interests but not too many

3. Reward people tweeting and retweeting you, or say “thanks” at least

4. Tweet only good stuff, so people get interested in you and visit your blog

5. Add a retweet button like the one above to your blog posts or web pages

6 – 10: Niche social news sites

6. Target niche social news sites like SERPd, Earners Club or BizSugar

7. Become a power user at the one that fits you most

8. Tweet good articles from the niche social news communities

9. Use a striking avatar like the sombrero guy image I use

10. Socialize with other (power) users and add them as friends at Facebook or LinkedIn

11 – 20: Your blog

11. Add an unforgettable image or huge headline in your blog header

12. Use WordPress, as it’s the most widely used blogging platform and makes socializing with pingbacks easier

13. Use a great design or customize a great WordPress theme

14. Allow pings, trackbacks and real links in comments (dofollow)

15. Reply to your genuine commenters who add value in the comments

16. Link to other bloggers, most notably your peers, not only the well known ones

17. Create pillar or flagship content like huge lists, thorough tutorials, breaking or unique news

18. Be the first to say something: break news, uncover scams, debunk myths

19. Review and address other bloggers

20. Create a blogroll of blogs that are similar to yours and/or a good supplement

21 – 30: Other blogs:

21. Accept and support authorities in your field

22. Make a list of the top 10 blogs in your field and try being like them and better

23. Contribute guest posts on other blogs

24. Notify other bloggers if they have “Page not found” errors or their design is broken is some browser

25. Get inspired by other bloggers

26. Comment on other blogs, out of interest, not only for marketing purposes

27. Meet other bloggers in real life and connect

28. Submit other’s blog posts to your favorite social media or vote there for them

29. Do not expect other bloggers to like you just because you’re there, actively befriend them

30. Do not annoy other bloggers with IM, email or other means, only contact them if it really matters

31 – 40: Copy writing

31. Write about popular topics but not those everybody else already covered

32. Find a new angle to a story instead of mere repeating or linking

33. Use striking, funny, easy to remember post headlines like “The Day I was reborn, twice”, “I ate my iPod“, “10 Ways to become a Millionaire in 5 Weeks”

34. Do not write too short or too long posts

35. Write timeless blog postings not just yesterday’s news

36. Know your audience and offer it what it wants, not only what you think is appropriate

37. Be yourself, do not write like you would write for an employer, write as if you write a letter to a friend

38. Offend offenders

39. Do not offend people weaker than you

40. Ask questions and incite discussions

41 – 50: X/HTML and CSS

41. Use clean, lean HTML and CSS for website speed

42. Use headings, lists, bold, italic and other means of making a text readable

43. Use large headlines

44. Use the h2 tag for post headlines (h1 is for the blog name)

45. Use image replacement to make your headlines look better

46. Do not use fonts for headlines which are not meant for them and look ugly (Verdana)

47. Make your font size readable in your posts but not too big, your readers are not half blind

48. Use colors that contrast but not too much and not too many of them, black on white is still king

49. Be original but let people recognize that your blog is a blog, by using some well known elements

50. Use compatible CSS rather than CSS 3 tricks only newer browsers support

51 – 60: Images

51. Use images in posts

52. Use striking images in your posts, like collages, bright colors, images that metaphorically illustrate your point

53. Be original, do not just display the Google logo when you write about Google

54. Do not steal images without proper attribution

55. Use a list of images to attract large audiences, but don’t forget #54

56. Use .png screen shots or parts of them as images for your blog posts

57. Use pictures of beautiful women

58. Do not use pictures as the only content of a post if it’s not a list

59. Do not use images that are bigger than 100 kb, not everybody in the world has a fast connection

60. Use thumbnails for bigger images

61 – 70: Topics

61. Cover the most important things in life: Love, peace, happiness, community, freedom

62. Do not write about SEO (it’s too late for me)

63. If you write about SEO call it blogging tips

64. Write about how you feel

65. Interview interesting and well known people

66. Write about stars, people love stars: Angelina Jolie I love you!

67. Write about what you know first hand, what you have experienced

68. Concentrate on positive topics, do not just write how bad everything is

69. Do not write about your wife, kids, where you live, how much you earn or what you bought unless you’re properly armed or live in Sweden

70. Write you earned thousands of dollars by blogging to get known

71 – 80: Blog SEO and promotion

71. Contribute to blog communities like the ones on LinkedIn or BlogCatalog

72. Tweet your blog posts

73. Ping Technorati and Google Blog Search (default in English WordPress)

74. Use WordPress 3.+ as it’s already SEOed to the max out of the box

75. Link out to others to get linked, do not engage in link exchange, link buying or selling or any automated link schemes

76. Do not use keywords like “california real estate” as your name when commenting unless it’s your blog’s name

77. Don’t overdo conventional SEO on your blog, it’s in most cases counter productive

78. Do not write content – write articles, reviews, interviews

79. SEO is not Spam, Blog SEO is not trackback spam

80. Do not automate your blogging efforts

81 – 85: Getting Subscribers

81. Display a (big) orange feed icon where everybody can see it

82. Use Feedburner to enhance your RSS feed

83. Let people subscribe by email via Aweber or Mailchimp

84. Offer a full feed not just excerpts

85. Explain what RSS is for people new to the concept and offer a choice of the best RSS readers

86 – 90: Branding

86. Create a personal brand. Don’t blog as “admin”

87. Get a unique and remarkable name for your blog

88. Get a short and easy to remember name for yourself, Tadeusz Szewczyk = Tad Chef

89. Use your blog URL and/or avatar throughout the Web

90. Trademark your blog name

91 – 101: Miscellaneous

91. Do not offend people for being different than you

92. Be open minded, let anything and everything inspire you

93. Treat your readers and other bloggers like real people, with respect and compassion

94. Explain stuff that you know, there are always some people who don’t know

95. Be different but stay true to yourself, do not pose as somebody else

96. Do not overload your blog with ads

97. Do not use Google Adsense or Text Link Ads unless you have to or depend on it

98. Become an expert in your trade, be a specialist for your topic, don’t try everything at the same time

99. Do not try to do everything or be everywhere, concentrate on the stuff you like, prefer and are good at

100. Cooperate with others, altruism is the best egoism

101. In short: Practice SEO 2.0

I want to thank five bloggers who have inspired me to write this post: Smashing Magazine, Vandelay Design, Skellie, Social Networking Articles and this SEO blogger.

Originally published October 29th, 2007. V2 republished August 14th, 2010. Last updated July 3rd, 2011.

* Image: Spreng Ben.

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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!

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Moreover I’d like to encourage you to write a post with reasons to follow you as well!

First things first though. Here are the 10 reasons to follow me/SEO 2.0 on Twitter. You can:

1. Look at the biggest sombrero in Twitter town!
2. Read daily updates, not just a few times a week.
3. Get fresh SEO, social media and blogging links you in many cases don’t on SEO 2.0 and on my Delicious feed either
4. Find out who’s cool at Twitter and in the search and social media marketing sphere by watching me communicate with these people
5. Get some hard core rants: I’m fervently anti-Digg, wary of Google and I kick fake Web celebrities like Jason “SEO is bullshit” Calacanis in the butt
6. Enjoy my one of a kind humor while I ridicule bogus media phenomenons like the swine flu
7. Endure my limitless arrogance while I tell you what SEO, social media and the Web are about
8. Get some bizarre world views fueled by my diverse background in Eastern Europe, Hip Hop, media activism, vanguard art, web development etc.
9. Learn how to network with people you’ll never actually see or meet in real life watching me doing it
10. Experience the benefits of anti-SEO or SEO 2.0, me retweeting, stumbling and sphinning your links in case they’re worth it

Now think about yourself:

• What makes you truly unique?
• What do you tweet about people could really care for?
• How do you support your virtual social network?
• How do you contribute to your industry, subculture or community?
• What are the reasons you’re on the Web, into social media and Twitter in particular?

Take one or two of the best answers for each question and devise your won list! Tell me several reasons to follow you on Twitter. I might do it! Did I just convince you? OK, then. Follow me now @onreact_com

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CC: Santa chucks the finger by BoSoxBrent.

It’s this dreaded season again and all of us in the SEO industry will have to endure humiliations we have to face each year. To lessen the impact of the Christmas SEO woes I compiled a list of 10 holiday no-nos for SEO specialists to avoid at all costs:

1. Do not tell your relatives you practice “SEO”. Tell them you’re an internet specialist. If they want to know more, tell them you optimize websites. Then change the topic of the conversation. Remember, some family members will always want to know but will never be able to understand. Then all of a sudden everybody in the room will ask whether you work for Google, manipulate search results and whether it’s illegal.

2. Do not tell your girlfriend or wife that your PageRank got bigger or worse, smaller. Especially as she might get it wrong that your “paycheck” got smaller.

3. Don’t try to explain to anybody that Google rankings are not “natural”. You shatter world views! People either won’t believe you or they will become cynical and detached when they realize that Google is not God and rankings are not based on traffic or a website “being the best”.

4. In case someone asks whether you’re a computer specialist say you are not, you only use your computer like other people use cars. Otherwise they will make you fix their broken Windows XP machine. Don’t try it! You will spend hours and hours with it and give up in the end anyways. You’re an internet specialist, you have no clue how computers work.

5. Do not tell relatives that their websites do not rank well or are not optimized. In 2009 they will want you to optimize the meta tags or the PageRank, for free. Most importantly they will not want you to change the site or add some content because they love the site the way it is. “You just need to do some SEO, nothing else.” ;-)

6. Do not tell younger cousins that they should not post their private party images (where they are drunk or naked or both) on MySpace or Facebook. They will hate you and think that “you’re sooo conservative!”

7. Don’t try to explain to average citizens why you use Twitter. People will think you are crazy to tell the world what you have for lunch.

8. Don’t try to point out to your (potential) parents-in-law that the “search results” on top of Google are actually ads. You make them look stupid and they won’t like you anymore for the next 10 – 20 years.

9. In case the conversation touches topics like spam, blogs, hacking etc. leave the room instantly. Otherwise you will be the person to have to explain yourself why SEO is spam, comment spam and SEO hacking no matter how white hat you are.

10. Don’t criticize Google for anything. People love Google. So you telling them about privacy concerns, a monopoly or China will make them assume that you are a crazy conspiracy theorist.

I’m pretty sure that there will arise more problems like these. Try to generalize this advice and in case you do not want to take any risk, just say that you do research most of the time (you do, keyword research).

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Zero Harm by obLiterated.

Ethics often consists of unwritten rules. Those rules while not official state laws or beyond them allow us to live together in peace and prosperity. While laws and religions prevent us from inflicting the most obvious harms on others the deeper underlying ethics of civilization make us what we are, humans.

I often have been dissatisfied with the term ethical SEO for being a bad synonym for white hat SEO that only means “not cheating the search engines” website optimization.

Ethical SEO must be more than following search engine guidelines if we want to take ethics seriously.

In recent weeks and months I have been approached by numerous potential clients I was not quite happy to work with. Thy were not the usual online poker or escorts type of businesses that approach me quite frequently. The cases were a little more complicated.

I can’t retell the stories of all of them but I derived some of the 7 rules of ethical SEO you ignore probably as a white hat from them. Other list items consist of tactics that are perfectly OK with Google but are non-ethical nonetheless.

1. Don’t work for people who harm others like weapons manufacturers and those who work together with them
2. Don’t work for people who compete with your existing or former clients (or at least not shortly after)
3. Don’t keep on selling services that do not work anymore or are insufficient by now e.g. search engine submission, meta tag optimization, link exchange, rankings (instead of ROI)
4. Don’t offer social media mass submission (as people in social media frown upon it)
5. Don’t offer blog commenting as a link building measure
6. Don’t work for companies that exploit their workers or treat them them in a demeaning way
7. Don’t work for industries you do not believe in or are in your opinion bad for all people

So now the rules are not unwritten nymore. Abiding by them is very difficult and like with religion, everybody sins from time to time but you can at least try to abide by those 7 rules of ethical SEO.

Why should you?

I believe that supporting harmful businesses will sooner or later harm you or people close to you. Work for tobacco companies today and watch a family member die of cancer tomorrow.

With 6 votes this post is the winner of the latest reader poll.

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Spider, really your preferred audience? Source.

For years Google has been preaching building websites for humans not spiders. Nonetheless in reality Google still relies on webmasters to make their pages spider-friendly. To be honest I don’t like big Google and I don’t like spiders. I like humans very much though. That’s why I will explain the SEO 2.0 way of SEO for humans not spiders in 7 lessons:

Lesson one: Forget Google
Optimize as if no Google exists. Google optimization really cripples most websites. People have such a focused “fulfill Google’s wishes” mindset that they tend to overlook the people who actually use Google or the website they land on. Opening your mind in this way you’ll quickly notice that in many cases you don’t need Google for “traffic” aka visitors. My SEO 2.0 blog is proof of this concept with a meager 15% of Google traffic.

Lesson two: Look around
Identify the best traffic sources beyond Google for your niche. For blogs like mine (not only SEO blogs) the best traffic sources are StumbleUpon, niche social sites and other blogs. I get the largest portion of my visitors from StumbleUpon, I get lots of very targeted visitors from niche social sites like Sphinn and I get highly targeted visitors from my fellow bloggers. My colleague Steven Snell of Traffickd along other bloggers sends me highly focused visitors who don’t bounce off my blog.

Lesson three: Make people happy
In SEO 1.0 and SMO (Social Media Optimization) everybody was doing linkbait. In SEO 2.0 we rarely speak of bait as we do not treat people like fish. That’s why I’m at Mixx and not on Digg. Mixxed allowed me to build a community, a network of friends who recognize me all over the Internet and who support me by votes without asking and trading votes. In SEO 2.0 we’re not out there for the quick win, we’re in it for the long term bounty. We make people happy by giving them what they want or what they even don’t know they want yet. unlike advertising we don’t brain wash them into liking it we guess what they might like. That’s why SEO 2.0 is always a step ahead and is never spammy by definition.

Lesson four: Go for marriage not the one night stand
SEO is like going a one night stand. You get someone to visit your site via a search engine and you won’t more of these one night stand visitors. SEO 2.0 is like marriage. You get after repeat or returning visitors and in the best case subscribers. These people trust you. They will buy again and again. For instance I got one online shop where I buy my electronics stuff and another one for my books. I only use search to find out about the products and then I go back to my favorite shops.

Lesson five: Do SEO at the end
So can I dump SEO 1.0 altogether? No, you can’t. I try, but a commercial site can’t. You still need search traffic, especially from Google although there are myriads of other sources by now. Add the SEO 1.0 of tweaking titles, headlines, meta descriptions, categories and tags at the end when you’re blogging. So come up with a gripping headline first, think about what killer content you offer and then add some keywords when you’re done. Spiders may like “German SEO Blog for Small Business Berlin” but humans love “SEO 2.0″.

Lesson six: Content is NOT king
The ages old mantra of content is king is not true in SEO 2.0. Not all content is king. In fact the term content already implies low quality. Ask journalists whether they write content or whether they write stories. Ask artists and photographers whether they create content or not. In SEO 2.0 content is president. A president chosen by the people for the people. So content that nobody gets besides a few scientists is not president. Such content is just a local bureaucrat from Alaska.

Lesson seven: People over spiders
Ever since Web 2.0 went mainstream the people decide who’s hot and who’s not. Before only a few sites decided who to link. Now everybody has the power to link what s/he likes. Be it on MySpace, Twitter or StumbleUpon people decide what’s popular, not spiders. Socialize and do not only “target” people. Listen and learn to make people happy. Be part of groups, networks and communities. I the best case not only virtual ones.

So you see again, SEO 2.0 is not just another hyped term for SEO or SMO. SEO 2.0 is a paradigm shift. It might be Digital Asset Optimization like Lee Odden coined it but it’s certainly not only about “content is king” and SEO for humans not spiders. That’s solely white hat SEO 1.0!

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Vodka Stolichnaya (from the capital) by Wysz

You certainly know the metaphor with the glass and the water. It’s featured in lots of more or less uplifting Hollywood movies (like Groundhog Day e.g.), for those readers who live in India and do not watch American movies, it goes something like this: Two guys sit in a bar and get drinks served. When the bartender brings the glasses it becomes apparent that both drinks contain 50% liquid and 50% air. Now the one guy is convinced that his glass is half empty while the other guy’s glass is half full in contrast.

Now usually people don’t tell a whole story but just ask the question “is the glass half empty or half full?” to find out whether you’re a pessimist (half empty glass) or an optimist (half full glass). I do not bore you here for no reason, I want to offer you a full bottle and explain what it has to do with social media.

Let us return to the bar setting. The scene, two men sitting at the bar and drinking encourages already a somewhat pessimistic interpretation, you imagine them a little drunk and melancholic at best. Now imagine a bar

• full of people from all over the world,
• people with different apparel
• interests
• beliefs

We’re clearly not in a bar in Texas where you get weird looks for not wearing a hat or a Mexican sombrarro. We’re more probably somewhere San Francisco.

Believe it or not, for a long time I was more the “half empty glass” kind of guy.

One way to combat this shortcoming is this blog and my overall outreach to the virtual inhabitants of social media.

In a real bar setting in San Francisco we probably would encounter a group somewhere, not just men but also women, not at the bar but sitting at a table or on couches. Now this group, chatting, smiling and laughing gets their drinks served. They’re all half empty or full depending on your choice. Do you expect these people to analyze the drinks in order to find out whether they got served the correct quantity of liquid? I imagine them getting some alcoholic mix drink like White Russian (Vodka with Cream) e.g.

Although I rarely visit bars and I’m not a big drinker I have drank plenty of white Russians in the past. The funny thing about them is that no White Russian tastes the same although they consist mostly of those two ingredients mentioned above. Even the kind of glass varies greatly, from all kinds of cocktail glasses to average glasses you could drink orange juice or tea from. So you might get

So the bar

• is crowded
• the music is loud
• the girls are beautiful
• and the guys tell stories about their great adventures or achievements

A lovely scene indeed. To my religious Muslim readers from Iran and elsewhere: Just imagine the evenings during Ramadan where everybody meets in the streets to finally eat and drink something after sunset.

Now do you think the girls and guys will do more than just say something funny about the bar running out of drinks? Will they interrupt their conversation to muse about the drink or will they in fact say “chias” and toast? They will drink and laugh and be happy. Why? It’s because they are there together sharing. When you’re sharing with lots of friendly like-minded people you do not notice small annoyances. In fact in some languages the terms sharing and being happy have the same origin.

While I’m not a particularly religious person I’m still very impressed by some things Jesus did and said. In one case, metaphorically he did foresee the digital age. When the people of Israel were hungry in the desert he took 5 leaves of bread and two fish and fed thousands of people with it. In the digital or Internet age the more we share the more we have. We multiply by sharing. Jesus would love the Internet, he particularly would love social media.

Now let’s return to the bar again: Lets assume the group I described above gets a little agitated. In fact they notice that glasses are half empty/full and they want them completely full. One of them could for instance stand up, go the bar and ask for another bottle to pour in more vodka into the drinks. In the worst case all vodka is gone, sold out now s/he could just let the bartender offer an alternative and so on and so forth. The person who went to the bar could come back and offer even a better drink this time, even something they didn’t know before.

Social media brings you a full bottle daily. Your glass might be even half empty but the moment you start sharing with others you get more and more to drink.

Also, Jesus loves social media. I bet there are some Christian social news sites out there. Otherwise build one now!

I don’t have to teach my Indian readers how to share, their whole culture is based on sharing. In Islam you also have to share, even with complete strangers if they ask you to. We westerners have the biggest problem with sharing, we’re used to egoism. In social media it does not make sense at all. While sharing we do not lose anything, we multiply each time we share. Everybody can be Jesus on the Internet! Or at least behave like Jesus. So do not focus on your half empty or full glass, visit the bar, millions of potential friends wait there.

And do you know what? Social media even works without alcohol! On the other hand, no social site can make up for a missed evening or night at the bar! Just combine both. I do not only get clients via blogging and social media. People from overseas even call me up while in Berlin to go out for a drink. Then of course a half full glass is perfectly enough in most cases.

Btw. when it comes to Vodka do not buy some weird over-advertised ugly stuff. Buy the originals from Russia or Poland where I come from. They taste completely different and muuuch better. Vodka Moskovskaya and Wodka Wyborowa are good choices. Some Vodka brands use Russian names but they are not from Russia.

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• Firefox/IE7 inconsistencies
• unstyled forms (argh!)
• too large fonts
• redundant clutter 
  
• useless information (SEO 2.0 is not a group blog so it does not need the author displayed each time e.g.)
  

So I reduced it to the max and now my customized Press Box WordPress theme looks already really simple and neat. It still has some issues I want to deal with but it already makes me feel better after ther change was overdue. I really feel better. Also I decided to unclutter my own redundant stuff, I removed almost everything. All the widgets and boxes I used had some additional annoyances:

• The lijit search widget didn’t find many of my older posts due to using Google customized search. As Google deindexed my older post lijit did not find them.
• The Feedburner subscribers counter always annoyed me by showing the numbers of “readers”. Anyone new to this must assume that I have currently 775 readers online or something not subscribers. Also the fluctuations on weekends just show that the numbers are inaccurate: People do not unsubscribe over the weekend. People are just offline but Google Reader and other services prefetch RSS feeds while you are browsing, that means they make you subscribe without you knowing about it. When you end up one day in Guantanamo and they ask you why your subscribed to this Al Qaeda blog you know why…
• The Feedjumbler dynamic blogroll was nice but I had the impression that it didn’t work as intended. It was meant to encourage others to link to  my feed too but nobody ever did and the feeds of the other SEO bloggers just weren’t relevant enough or updated frequently enough. Adding others would require me to create a new feed group each time instead of just adding… Linking friends is nice, but only when they are truly relevant with a particular post.

I finally decided to tell Google that SEO 2.0 is a blog, a SEO blog. Google still fails to grasp that unless you write in big letters (h1 heading) and the title tag so I spammed both with the relevant keyphrase and voila I’m at #35 in Google.com for SEO blog viewed from the US. On the other hand I cleaned up my categories which were partly very specific as I also bowed to Google’s pressure there to rank but didn’t anyways although keyword combinations like financial independence are not that competitive. Anyways I simplified my categories too. I added findability and I changed:

• Financial Independence to just Independence
• Freelancing Tips to solely Freelancing
• Improving Productivity is Productivity now
• Reputation Building changed to just Reputation
• Self Empowerment is “only” Empowerment now

You can see the categories on the right of the single post pages, not on the homepage which focuses on the last 20 articles without displaying them in their entirety. Instead Press Box will display a thumbnail image and a teaser. I like that, less scrolling… but more clicking, let’s see if this increases the number of my pageviews…

Right now I’m wondering where I can add the about me etc. menu or section. Also you have probably noticed that the cool Mexican with the white hat is gone for a vacation. He might return to his newly renovated home though, I’m not sure yet where his room will be.

Now is this change or simplification OK with you? Can you live without the Mexican sombrero wearing guy on top? I already miss him somehow… On the other hand now neither Google nor you will have any problems with understanding that this is a SEO blog.

P.S.: I was also tempted to hide categories and archives altogether. They look so 2001!!! What do you think? Do you ever click them? They are only good for spreading PageRank, but my blog is about SEO 2.0 and not PageRank sculpting among other SEO 1.0 practices.

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shout by suneko.

Many search engine optimizers are still stuck in the past. They practice SEO 1.0 or less. These SEOs fail to adapt to the new Web 2.0 media environment and attempt to apply rules of the older Web to the new situation.

To encourage some self reflection of the people in the search engine optimization business I compiled a ruthlessly honest set of 10 reasons why SEOs fail on social media. Of course not all of them do, but still far too many. We can do better than that. So if you recognize yourself in some of these traits take a step forward and change your approach to social media.


1. SEOs love to automate
SEOs love to automate. Social media is about conversation, conversation between people. Now how you would automate that? Ever tried automating conversation with your wife or kids? You can’t automate conversation without annoying and ostracizing people.


2. SEOs are treating social bookmarking like web directories
Do you remember web directories? When was the last time you used DMOZ or the Yahoo Directory for research? People use del.icio.us nowadays. Although some people try to revive the web directory selling it as Web 3.0 “human powered search” directories are dead. Google thinks so, the users think so anyways. Many SEOs do not think so. Also they assume that social bookmarking sites are the directories of Web 2.0. So instead of submitting to 2000 directories they now submit to 200 social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking is not about the number of sites you submit to but about the number of users that vote for you on one site and the authority of one user who submits your site, especially if it’s social news or social browsing. You might sleep with 200 women but I guess none of them will love you just for the act. Your wife probably will love once you make a commitment to her. Also your friends will like it when you tell them stories but not strangers on the streets.


3. SEOs start yelling at people instead of listening
Hey you, want to buy SEO services? Imagine yourself shouting this sentence on the street. Shouting at people you have never seen before. People who are not interested in you at all. This is exactly what SEOs often do on social media. Again, imagine yourself and your wife or friends. Instead of listening you start shouting at them. Do you expect them to listen and fulfill your wishes?


4. SEOs do not share
When I went full time SEO in Germany in 2004 I was amazed by clandestine atmosphere of SEO. It was as if it was more like CIA not SEO. Information and links were scarce and everybody was stingy with them. Sharing information could give your competitors an advantage. So it was important to keep as much of your know how for you as possible. While the most successful SEO experts at SEOmoz or SEO Book are famous for the knowledge they share the German SEO forums are still full of people who won’t tell you anything. They will “reply” trying to scare you off or ridicule you instead of sharing what they know. Imagine yourself on a party and someone asks what you do for a living. You reply “I can’t tell you” because you’re afraid the person could get in your way as a competitor. Also hoarding PageRank was very important while linking out to somebody who does not link back a sign of idiocy. Why giving away your Google juice? If you do not give away anything, even things that do not cost money nobody will like you.


5. SEOs are sneaky
I am still amazed by some people in SEO. Their first thought on encountering a new service or medium seems to be: How can I sneak in and take away the riches? Imagine this in real life: Yes, it’s called crime.


6. SEOs concentrate on bling bling and fetishes not actual results
Enlarge your PageRank? Do you think the size of your pagerank, car or IQ makes you better than others? It’s very strange to see people in SEO forums talking about PageRank. They still behave like years ago when it was really important but even more so. They fetishize PageRank. It’s not only PR though. It might be the ranking in the SERPS or it might be the silly traffic numbers. They are all just signs of success, but signs that often are misleading. You can have a PageRank 8, be #1 in Google and have 100.000 visitors one day without gaining any real authority or making real sales. Now just think of a braggart like that boasting. Would you like and respect this person?


7. SEOs obsess about numbers instead of value/s
Even the SEOs who care about conversions and ROI tend to have only one value: Dollars. I assume that in western countries you at least share some core values like democracy, freedom of speech and movement, peace etc. Now how many SEO firms display any engagement on this issues? Also I assume that most people love art, music, literature and cherish nature. How many SEO companies speak out on behalf on the environment, support artists, sponsor concerts or invite poets to perform on their behalf? People on social media are real people. They are not interested in what you want to sell them most of the time, but they love the green grass, they love to listen to music, read great stories and look at beautiful or intriguing artworks.


8. SEOs treat “content” like filling or stuffing
When you read why some SEOs recommend blogging you have the impression that it’s about content that is only filling in the pages with keyword rich nonsense. Do they care if anybody reads it all? It’s like having stuffed animals in the park or ZOO. Would you like a park where the birds that twitter are recorded or a ZOO where the animals are displayed on large TV screens? If there is no life in the “content” nobody will want to look at it let alone read it.


9. SEOs don’t get design
Many SEOs still think that web design does not matter or means placing the keywords prominently in the content so that Google can find them. People just take a look at a website and leave instantly if the design is not appealing to them. Social media users behave even more like this. No great visual on the page means bouncing off it.


10. SEOs are selfish
Many SEOs do not give away anything that matters to others. They want to take without giving. If they take, they take for themselves. Social media is all about giving. Many people assume that giving and sharing is the only acceptable way to act on social media. I do not agree with that, because this way you would only work for free for companies who own this social media. You need to give to be able to take though. If the people know you, have gotten attention from you or something else that has value on the Internet like links, recommendations or feedback they are willing to listen to you and also to give.



Now who the hell am I to tell you these things? Well, I’m in SEO for more than 4 years now and I still don’t believe that SEO is all that I described above. These 10 reasons why SEOs fail on social media are aberrations. These are the mistakes people are making on the Web. Not only SEOs do them, I see plenty of people outside of SEO doing that. So just take a look at what you do online and then do not these mistakes again.

I’ve made some of these mistakes myself like obsessing with PageRank, traffic but mostly I was able to omit these as I was on the Web since 1997, meaning 7 years before starting with SEO so I knew how to act online without alienating people. Try to be a human being first and then a SEO on top of that. Do not approach people as a marketer on social media. This is the most important thing.


I’ve found a very good audio interview that deals with the same topic on Successfool, make sure to listen to it to find alternative ways of marketing on social media.

Also I want to thank some of my Twitter friends who provided some answers that enhanced this article: edelabar, tibipuiu, sweetsfoods.

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Image by CarbonNYC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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