Just thought I’d let you know that if you post more than 10 times on his blog and pass the editorial review you will get a clean link back to your site. This is a reward to those who take the time to participate in the community he has built around his site.

Another benefit of doing this is to reduce the amount of links on a page. After Matt Cutts recently announced that a Pages, PageRank is divided between all links on a page regardless of whether they’re followed or not, it makes sense to just completely remove links from comments – unless your going to do followed links. We even went as far to test if the GoogleBot would follow a URL that wasn’t linked and index it i.e. a link citation you might call it. So far all of our tests have indicated that GoogleBot doesn’t follow unlinked URLs in Content. Personally I am quite suprised by this!

I will probably implement something similar on this site shortly.

If you enjoyed this post and would like to learn SEO I would recommend starting on my SEO Guide that I am gradually writing.

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Will you benefit from it?

So much is being spoken about SEO these days that goes ‘right over the head’ of so many website owners, that some of them just abandon the idea of employing SEO techniques or employing an SEO Consultant to advise them, purely because they just do not understand what all the fuss is about. But there is no doubt that almost all website owners could benefit from it, employed properly and in a manner suited to their particular business.

Do you really need it?

Many small to medium e-commerce website owners are of the opinion that ‘if my prices are lower than all my competitors, buyers can see this if they compare them, why should I need to do anything other than keep my prices competitive?’ Or, ‘if I have found a niche in the market, or am offering the general public a service that no one else is offering, I am bound to succeed’. They are overlooking one basic – that is the fact that buyers have to FIND their website first, when searching for the products or services they offer, to be able to compare their prices with others selling in the same field.

It is a fact that more referrals to your website from search engines cannot alone guarantee more sales for you. And, that there are other Internet marketing methods that can be employed to improve sales that do not involve the use of SEO. But these will usually involve a lot of work and expensive paid for advertising. Utilised properly, SEO is an effective tool for most website owners wishing to improve not just traffic to their site but resulting sales from that traffic.

White Hat –v- Black Hat SEO methods

Statements from any SEO Consultant guaranteeing you that employing them will result in your website getting top ranking in Google are to be viewed with caution. Google, along with other search engines change their ranking algorithms and will not divulge detailed information of precisely how websites are ranked with them. No detailed discussion of these Black Hat SEO methods will be gone into here, as the main object is to discuss the Benefits of SEO when utilized properly, not to provide some sort of ‘School for Scoundrels’ where Black Hat methods are concerned.

What to look for in a good SEO Consultant

The aim of a good SEO Consultant (or a White Hat SEO Consultant) should be to achieve the most prominent listing of your website possible without the employment of Black Hat Techniques, but there can be no 100% guarantees – therefore the giving of such guarantees should be viewed with a certain amount of suspicion. And, they probably intend to achieve this by employing ‘Black Hat’ methods, there is a very real risk that, although short term success might be apparent, the methods they employ will probably result in your website being penalised and even blacklisted by the most popular search engines. Some very large multi national organizations have discovered this to their cost.

In other words, good SEO Consultants employ ‘White Hat’ SEO techniques. And they will take into account the size and scope of the website business they are dealing with and make suggestions accordingly. It is not one rule for all and not every website will benefit the same from the employment of SEO. SEO Consultants who promise you the earth very quickly should, in the main, be avoided.

Suffice to say, the techniques will include the basics of ensuring your site is registered with major search engines, and listed in the appropriate directory. They will assist with the writing of optimal content for your website, and recommend changes where they would be beneficial.

If you want to learn about SEO I would recommend reading these posts in order:

• How to Write Remarkable Title Tags – an SEO’s perspective
• Improving CTR with Meta Descriptions and bits on other Meta Tags
• Tracking your Inbound Links

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Smooch so far..

I signed up and created a profile, so far I’ve been quite impressed. Each user gets free messaging, the ability to see if messages have been read and to see who has viewed there profile. So far I’ve had two messages since yesterday! Although nothing that will turn into anything or at least I don’t think so..

Overall the features Smooch Provides for free are extremely good! On par with some other smaller dating sites. That said I’ve still had most success with Dating Direct.

So how do Services such as Smooch make money? Well interrior pages of Smooch contain Adsense which is supplied by Google. Everytime a user clicks on an advert the site earns a small amount of money. Much the same as you can see on the right hand side of this site. Please don’t just click it though.

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Here is a picture of it at the Alexanders Prestige in Boroughbridge before I bought it, it was delivered looking pretty awesome however it will shortly be needing another valet. Anyway enough waffle:

For those interested.. its a 2.0L petrol, top speed is suppose to be 130mph which I reckon is pretty accurate

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I frequently attend VW events and would usually be attending Run to the Sun but because its become infected with Chavs and completely lost focus we are going to this newer one.

So hopefuly will see some people there =D

Here is a picture of Skippy for those interested, Mum keeps mentioning new leather seats so I look forward to seeing them:

Skippy

Will be taking my Canon 40D to take some piccies, so expect them next week.

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There are several simple principles to stick to when writing that remarkable Title Text:

* Include a good call to action. This will provoke the user to click on you, over your competitors. For example:
“******* **** – Florist Sundries | Cheap Wholesale Florist Supplies”

Would be much better as:
“Get Florist Sundries Supplies at cheap prices from ******* ****”

Personally I would remove the “at cheap prices” but this shows how simply tweaking the keywords in the title creates something much more user friendly, meaning they are a lot more likely to click it.

* Whilst a Title Tag can be up to 80 amount of characters you should aim to keep it to 64 because Google and other Search Engines only display 64 characters. Missing characters of the end is not visually attractive in my opinion.

* Testing Click Through Rates. When the site is of a commercial nature, i’ts sometimes beneficial to test Title Texts use Pay Per Click, create a campaign, exact match it to your ranking term and rotate ads in order to work out the best possible text. This is measured by the Click through Rate and/or Conversion Rate of each Ad, depending on whether visitors or sales are your goal.

If you’ve managed to do all of that then you’re one step closer to a well optimised website.

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On top of that I work in part of a great team with Dan H, Dan M, Rory and David W!

Dave & Becky take us out all over, we’ve been on several nights out, to see Jimmy Carr and we have a day at the races organised for May. I’ve never been horse racing! So that should be a good experience.

In addition to that I’ve built my Dad a new website for Dolbears Garage, they are situated in Newton Abbot, Devon. I also have another much much bigger project on the go, but I’m a silent partner in that so I’ve got to remain silent .. hard for an SEO!!

Over the next couple of months I will be writing lots of new SEO tips and tricks in order to push my Rankings for UK SEO, I have dumped my SEO Exeter and SEO Devon targets (which I’ve had nailed for months) as they are useless to me now. Not to mention are showing up all the local web talent!

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I deffiniately recommend going and passing through the Red Light District, however considering the current economic climate make sure you take plenty of dosh. A pint will set you back Five Euros which is presently just short of five quid. It is commonly known in the industry that British SEO’s are the best drinkers our country has seen.

I did lots of wondering around, shopping, visited a live sex show (weird!), visited some sex museums, went in a cafe.. the works. Before anyone asks I didn’t visit anyone in there Windows. Can you answer this? Why are some of the Windows lit with Blue and Red? I know the answer.. its a shocker

Photos below:

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Unfortunately I wasn’t nearly prepared enough, I was in the Red on Diesel and my Camera died half way through. So anyway I did managed to take a few nice photos and I will probably repeat next week when I’m a bit more organised. Feedback welcomed

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