Sensible Internet

Google Hummingbird Algorithm – What You Need to Know

tom — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:01:27 +0000

Image sourced from MrClean1982 on Flickr

Last week, google announced a new search algorithm called Hummingbird. This is the biggest algorithm change Google have made since Caffeine in 2010. So what's the deal? Is Hummingbird something you should be worrying about? Will your rankings drop? And is there anything you need to consider when it comes to your SEO strategy moving forward?

Hummingbird has been running for a month already, so if your rankings haven't been affected by it so far, it is relatively unlikely that Hummingbird is going to affect your rankings in a negative way. That doesn't mean the algorithm doesn't warrant some consideration however.

The focus of this algorithm update is on “conversational search”. That means Google are looking at the 'meaning' of what a user searches for rather than just matching keywords in the search. For example, a search like “where is the closest supermarket to my house?” is more likely to result in the results looking for (if Google knows where your house is).

It is difficult to say at this stage the impact Hummingbird should have on your SEO strategy. In my opinion, if this is the direction Google are going in, it stands to reason the more that Google knows about you the better you are going to rank. Local SEO and on-site optimisation immediately spring to mind. I recommend at this point, if you haven't already, it might be a good idea to look into schema.org. This provides a way of providing structured information that search engines can use to better understand your site.

Schema is not a new thing. It hasn't affected rankings directly in the past as far as I know, but that doesn't mean it won't in the future. I'm not saying it definitely will, but if Google are looking at making their algorithm answer conversational queries more accurately, it makes sense for them to use schema.org markup to better understand the web. What schema.org definitely is useful for is getting rich snippets like this displaying in the SERP's:

Rich snippets could easily help get more people clicking through from the SERPs to your website, and that is nothing new.

So is Hummingbird a good thing? Well, I think it will improve the quality of google's product. Improving the algorithms to understand semantics is a step in the right direction for the future of search in my opinion. How we need to account for these changes as SEOs only time can really tell.

SEO SEO Strategy Google Algorithms

Design Considerations When Designing a Website

tom — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:36:45 +0000

Image sourced from Baldiri on Flickr

Last week we talked about UX considerations with regards to web design projects. I can't stress enough how important those considerations are, so if you missed that here is a link.

Today we are going to talk about design specifically, and a few things you need to make sure you are aware of before finalizing any design decisions.

Design is a UX Consideration

Okay, so it is slightly wrong of me to separate UX from design, as they are really part and parcel. The reason I did that is to reinforce the fact that it is vital you are considering UX as a whole. There are countless examples of ugly websites that perform really well when it comes to conversion, and a ton of beautiful websites out there that do nothing for their owners. You need to make sure your website is one of the ones that achieves the desired results.

Pure Black and Pure White

Avoid them. Using slightly off shades will almost always result in a better look and feel. I think this is partly because these colours are so commonly used, but also because they are very abrupt colours to be using, so your website can end up looking quite hard on the eyes.

Light on White

A huge mistake many web designers make is using light colours on a white background (or dark colours on a dark background). The problem with this is that it makes it difficult to see (and especially, it makes text difficult to read. There’s a great resource at WebAIM you can use to make sure colour combination (for text on a background) comply with the W3 accessibility standards with regards to contrast. You can find it here.

Font sizes should be relative (IE you should be using EM or percentages). You should never set the font size of any text (other than small print perhaps) to be smaller than 100% of the browser default. This allows you to comply with accessibility standards and also to allows things to stay in line with user preferences.

Avoid Using Flash

HTML 5, CSS 3 and Javascript you can achieve pretty much everything that you would be able to using flash on a website. Couple that with the fact that flash is not supported by some devices and you can see why it is usually a good idea to avoid using it.

I hope this article was useful to you and that you have a better idea of how to approach the design side of your web design project now. Come back next time for the following article, where I will be talking about some important considerations when it comes to what’s going on ‘behind the hood’.

Design Web Design UX

UX Considerations When Designing a Website

tom — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:56:35 +0000

Image sourced from Long Zheng on Flickr

Last week I summarized the factors you should be considering when designing a website (in priority order) and talked about how your website should support your businesses goals (the highest priority). If you missed that, why not take a look now?

Today I am going to be talking about UX (user experience), which is extremely important when it comes to designing websites. I am going to go through some of the major considerations that need to be addressed when it comes to UX and give some advice on each, so here goes:

Goals & CTA’s

It is important that the user experience supports the goals you have outlined, or successfully communicates a message you are trying to get across. The single most important thing when it comes to your website is that it achieves the results you are looking for, period. It is also important to keep things simple, which I will go on to talk about now:

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)

It should be immediately clear to your visitors what you want them to do when they visit a page on your website. Keep the clutter to a minimum and try to only focus on one goal per page.

Navigation

Navigation is really important. You don’t want things to be cluttered, but as a rule of thumb any single page on your website should be accessible within 3 clicks. Sitemaps are a really good tool for humans and search engines that ensure people can easily find the pages on your site. It can also improve conversion rate if you omit navigation elements on landing pages (by limiting choice, you are increasing the chance your users will take the desired action).

Typography

Typography is also extremely important. For the main body of text it is vital you choose a font that is really clean and easy to read. This is another area you really want to make sure design doesn’t get in the way of functionality. It’s okay to pick something fancy for titles etc. if it fits with the theme, but readability has to be your main concern here. I tend to lean towards sans-serif fonts for web design (I think the readability is usually much better).

Accessibility

I’m going to talk about this in more detail next time when I talk about design, because it’s quite common for websites not to comply with standards due to design decisions, If you are interested in looking into the specifications more, take a look here.

Design for Mobile Devices

It is becoming increasingly more important to consider mobile devices when designing websites. You really have 3 options here:

Do Nothing: We can disqualify this one for obvious reasons.
Design a Separate Mobile Site: Usually, this isn’t going to be your best option. This has the potential to cause some SEO related problems, and also theres a huge variety of screen resolutions in mobile devices (even if we ignore retina displays). Designing a generic website for all mobile devices is missing the point in my opinion.
Create a Responsive Design: This is our best option. Responsive designs adapt based on the device which is viewing them, so we can account for computers, tablets, mobiles and even larger screens when designing our website.

If you already have a website designed and don’t want to redesign the whole thing, it can be a good idea to have a mobile site designed to avoid that, but usually I would steer clear of them. If you did decide to go for that, do include a link that allows you to view the website normally, so users with larger devices have that choice.

Testing

Test everything when it comes to the web. Make sure you have some kind of analytics software on the go (check out Google Analytics if you are not sure what I mean). Look at metrics like bounce, exit and time spent on page and see where you can make improvements. Also check the pages are actually doing what you want them to (if you are using Google Analytics, you can do this by setting up goals). I’m not going to go into analytics and testing in too much detail (it warrants a separate series) suffice to say it is incredibly important to test.

Most importantly, design should never get in the way of function. That’s really important. I’ll be going on to talk a little about design next week, so make sure you come back for that!

Design Web Design UX

The Ridiculously Exhaustive Social Media Design Blueprint [Infographic]

tom — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:45:15 +0000

Today I thought I would introduce you all to a really useful infographic (produced by Tent Social) for branding social media profiles. It goes through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Linkedin, Instagram and Youtube, giving the specifications needed to get designing! Check it out:

Having a great looking branded social media presence can really help you to stand out from the crowd. I hope this infographic helps you when designing for social media. Thanks for reading.

Design Infographic Social Media

What to Consider When Designing a Website

tom — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:12:19 +0000

Image sourced from Foxypar4 on Flickr

When it is time for a new website or a redesign there are a lot of factors you need to consider, and they might not be the factors you would first think.

Your web presence is like a tree, and your website is the roots and the trunk of that tree. Without the roots and the trunk I think we can safely say that there is no tree. Here is a short list of things you need to consider when it comes to designing or redesigning a website, listed in order of priority:

Strategy & Goals
UX/Usability
Design
Behind The Hood Stuff

Over the next month I will be going through each of these points and writing a short article around them detailing what you need to consider.

So first and foremost is strategy and goals. What are you trying to achieve with your web presence? How does your website support your business objectives? These are both really important questions that you need to be thinking about when planning a web design project.

I think the sad truth is that most web agencies won’t be considering your strategy and goals too much, so it’s really important you have a really good idea of what you want.

I think we can really boil things down to two really important questions. Who are your audience and what message are you trying to get across to them? When it comes to your website, everything you do needs to get those messages across and/or encourage a specific action that supports your goals.

Try to keep things simple and have a singular purpose for each page. Make it really clear what you want people to do next, and make it really easy for them to do it (we will talk more about this next week when we cover UX).

There is a big problem I wanted to address here however:
There are a ton of web design companies out there that produce beautiful websites and employ great designers, but these designers often have little idea about UX and Usability.

Don’t get me wrong, design is still very important when it comes to websites, but I think it can be overrated. Think about it: How often has an ugly website stopped you from taking an action it was designed to make you take? How many times have you not taken an action because you simply couldn’t figure out what to do or were not willing to spend the time working it out in the first place?

I can think of tons of occasions where I have stopped viewing a website because it wasn’t clear what I was supposed to do when I got there. Attention spans are short online, we are all subjected to information overload so you need to stand out and be clear to succeed on the web.

In conclusion you need to be making sure your website supports your business objectives, and you need to make things clear and easy for your users. To find out more about the latter, come along next week.

Design Web Design UX Web Development

A Link Building Guide for 2013 - Part 3

tom — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:01:03 +0000

Image sourced from Dullhunk on Flickr

Welcome to the final part of my 2013 link building series. If you haven't read the previous parts yet, go back to part 1. If you happened to miss the second part, there is a link for that here too.

Today I am going to discuss a few more things you can incorporate into your link building strategy. The methods discussed in part 2 should be your bread and butter, but the methods we will be discussing today can be really effective too if implemented well.

Online Advertising

Advertising online is another good way of getting eyeballs on your content. There are a ton of ways to do this, some of which get more limelight than others, but for the purposes of this article I am going to focus on Text Ads and Social Ads.

Text Ads

Google adwords and the like are a great form of advertising. Because we are targeting search phrases we are getting traffic that is actively looking for what we are providing them. That makes the quality of the traffic provided really high if we are targeting the right keywords.

Social Ads

Social ads are an excellent way to drive traffic to your content. Most advertising schemes on social networks are set up in a way that makes them great for promoting content, for example Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all have ways that you can promote your content and get it in front of a wider audience.

Advertising on Stumbleupon and Reddit is also a good way of promoting your content.

Other Channels

Any way you can get exposure to your content has the potential to help build organic links. There are some really great ways to get eyeballs on your content I haven’t covered in this article, like linking to your content into your e-mail newsletters. Not only does that get more people looking at your content, but if you do it right it should increase the value provided by your newsletter. You should be getting your content out as many places as you can.

But Surely There's Some Other Ways of Building Links?

Yes, of course there is, there are a ton of ways of getting links. In fact, take a look at everything a large portion of the SEO community are currently saying don't do, and then go ahead and implement those techniques properly.

I wrote an article recently on why press releases are worthwhile for SEO (if you do them properly) so why not check that out?

There are still some worthwhile directories out there. They are fairly few and far between. I think you need a few really good reasons to consider submitting to a directory nowadays.

Local directories (like Yelp and Yell) can be a good place to get listed too if ranking locally matters to your business.

Infographics are still a great form of content no matter what anyone says. The reason they do so well is that they are a good way of making information easily digestible in a visual format. That's not going away. Just make sure you are creating great content, your information is accurate and your methods of promoting them aren't spammy and I can't see you being punished for using them as a marketing tool by search engines.

Finally, I have a rule of thumb I use to decide on whether or not a link is worth going after:

If I can choose my own anchor text for an external link, I tend to run a mile.

I’m not saying every link on the web where I can choose my own anchor text is a bad link, but the vast majority are not worth bothering with anymore. They will do little good and can potentially cause a great deal of harm.

I hope that everyone reading has enjoyed this series and it has provided you with some good ideas for linkbuilding in 2013. Thanks for reading.

Online Advertising

Text Ads

Social Ads

Advertising on Stumbleupon and Reddit is also a good way of promoting your content.

Other Channels

But Surely There's Some Other Ways of Building Links?

I wrote an article recently on why press releases are worthwhile for SEO (if you do them properly) so why not check that out?

There are still some worthwhile directories out there. They are fairly few and far between. I think you need a few really good reasons to consider submitting to a directory nowadays.

Local directories (like Yelp and Yell) can be a good place to get listed too if ranking locally matters to your business.

Finally, I have a rule of thumb I use to decide on whether or not a link is worth going after:

If I can choose my own anchor text for an external link, I tend to run a mile.

I hope that everyone reading has enjoyed this series and it has provided you with some good ideas for linkbuilding in 2013. Thanks for reading.

SEO SEO Link Building Advertising Adwords

A Link Building Guide for 2013 - Part 2

tom — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:38:09 +0000

Image sourced from L.Bö on Flickr

In part 1 we talked a lot about content. Today we are going to talk about some of the best opportunities available to you when it comes to promoting that content and hopefuly building some good organic links.

There are lots of great ways to build links to your content. Having great content definately goes a long way, and you need to address that, but if it doesn't get in front of your audience, content is useless.

Before I go ahead and talk about promotion, I think there is one important thing to get out of the way:

Diversity

The diversity of your link portfolio is becoming incredibly important. You need to make sure that you are getting links from a diverse range of sources. It is also important to think about anchor text diversity. With most natural link profiles, the anchor text consists of mainly branded keyword phrases.

So it is important we realise that we should be trying to obtain links from a variety of sources, and also that we shouldn't be chasing after keyword rich anchor text anymore.

Outreach

Reaching out to bloggers and website owners is a great way to build some links to your content. Your primary method of communication here is most likely going to be e-mail.

It won’t usually be too difficult to get in touch with bloggers via e-mail. They often make it easy for people to get in touch. What you do need to remember is that bloggers get a ton of outreach every day, so you need to stand out and you need to be providing them with something they want.

Do your research. Take a look at the blog in question and find some articles you like. Start off your e-mail by telling them how much you enjoyed the content and why, perhaps asking them some questions about something in their article.

Blog Comments are also a great way to engage with bloggers. Whilst I wouldn’t be looking to get any direct benefit from the links in blog comments, building relationships with those bloggers is incredibly important.

Social media can also help with your outreach efforts a great deal, and I am going to go on to talk about that now:

Social Media

Social media can be used both to promote your content and to build relationships with relevant bloggers and website owners. There are lots of social networks, some of which are incredibly useful from an SEO perspective.

With social media, just like SEO, you always want to make sure that you are thinking quality before quantity. Taking shortcuts is usually a bad idea. It is usually going to be obvious to users and I think search engines will begin to introduce negative social signals (if they haven’t started to already) in the not-so distant future.

You need to do your best not to appear spammy. Posting links to your own stuff all the time is usually going to be a bad idea. You need to mix in some other good content that you find on the web and some genuine conversation. A lot of what I said about content applies to social media too, especially the fact you need to be thinking about your audience and not yourself.

First off when it comes to social media you need to find your target audience and get in front of them. On networks like Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest you can follow members of your target audience and a percentage will follow you back. You should also look for others who influence your audience and engage with them. Some of these people will likely be the very same as the bloggers and website owners you are looking to build relationships with.

You want to be getting into conversations with these people if the medium supports it (networks like Twitter, Facebook and G+ do, but Stumbleupon and Pinterest for example don’t lend as well to conversation.)

A lot of people don’t realise this but forums are also a form of social media. I think people don’t get that because they were around before the term was coined, but they can make a great addition to your strategy. I do think forums still present some value from an SEO perspective, but only in this context. You need to be looking to build relationships and treat forums just the same as you would any other form of social media.

PR

Getting press coverage is very beneficial when it comes to SEO for a couple of reasons:

At the end of the day exposure in the press is good for your clients’ businesses, and potentially your SEO campaign. Increased exposure can bring more people to the website. Some of that traffic might decide to link to the website organically.
Press websites tend to be incredibly powerful, and some of them link out. A great example is The Guardian. Guardian.co.uk has an alexa rank of 192. That means it is the 192nd most popular website in the world according to Alexa (who estimate website traffic).

Quality is extremely important when it comes to PR. You need to write really good press releases that are relevant to the journalists you are sending them to (i.e. the types of stories they would print). You need to make sure the spelling and grammar of the release is up to standard and that you follow the conventions for writing a press release as well.

Now you need to send out the press release to different journalists. If you can develop good relationships with journalists then you could become their go-to resource for information on that topic. The best way to do that is provide them with great information that they can use in their articles. That information doesn’t even have to be stuff you are putting out for your clients or yourself, building those relationships is vital when it comes to PR.

And remember your manners! Do remember to thank any journalists that feature you or your clients in an article.

There are also various services for distributing press releases online. Whilst these are no replacement for solid connections with journalists, they can be useful.

I hope all that was helpful, and please come back for part 3 next week, where I will be discussing some more link building strategies.

SEO SEO Link Building Outreach PR Social Media

A Link Building Guide for 2013

tom — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:06:40 +0000

Image sourced from Lanier67 on Flickr

The world of SEO is constantly changing. A lot of the stuff SEOs used to do to build links has now become either ineffective or could harm your sites in the rankings.

Search engines are constantly looking for ways to make it more difficult to manipulate their rankings. The best way we can work with this is literally by not trying to manipulate the rankings and instead get our sites ranking because they deserve it.

That’s not to say that there aren’t still some great ways to build links or that link building is dead at all. The way the game has to be played is just changing significantly.

Firstly there is one thing that all those responsible for link building need to get. I’m sure most people reading this probably realise this already, and I hate using this cliche phrase, but it really is fundamental to what we do now:

Content is King

Content is becoming more and more important when it comes to SEO and at this stage it really should be the bread and butter of your link building efforts. The aim here (from a link building perspective) is to create content that will naturally attract links and social sharing.

There are a ton of other ways content can help businesses, and I strongly recommend that the work that you do here forms part of a bigger content strategy that addresses some of those other issues too.

One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses making when it comes to content strategy is that they often talk far too much about themselves. It’s really important when it comes to content that you write what your audience wants to read and not what you want to write.

When it comes to content, headlines are incredibly important. It is the first thing people will see when they start reading your article. It is vital to have a good headline if you want to get the most out of your articles. I wrote an article a while back with some great tips for writing good headlines. Why not take a look?

You need to carry on building interest after the headline. You need to grab the reader with the first sentence of the article and entice them to keep reading. It is also important that you don’t give all the value of the article away straight away. You want people to keep reading your article so you need to be consistently delivering value throughout.

Targeting long tail keywords with your articles is another great idea. If we do a good job building some links to the articles initially then we can get them ranking for some phrases that are going to consistently drive traffic, and potentially result in even more inbound links.

Editorial calendars are really useful for planning what you will publish and when. In their simplest form they are a list consisting of titles of articles and when you will publish them, but you can obviously add new columns to account for things like keywords you want to target and images you would like to use.

But the most important thing to remember is that when it comes to content, quality is always more important than quantity. Putting the time and effort in that is neccesary to create great content makes a massive difference.

So I’ve talked a lot about content today, but of course that really is only part of the puzzle. Writing a ton of great content isn’t much use if no one is going to read it.

Key Takeaways

When it Comes to Content, Quality is Always More Important Than Quantity. (Tweet)
Content is Becoming More and More Important RE:SEO and Should be the Bread and Butter of your Link Building Efforts. (Tweet)
Headlines Are One of the Most Important Parts of Any Article. It is Important to Spend the Time Necessary to Get Them Right. (Tweet)
With Content it’s Important you Don’t Give Everything Away Straight Away. You Need to Consistently Deliver Value Throughout. (Tweet)
It’s Really Important That You Write What Your Audience Wants to Read and Not Just What You Want to Write. (Tweet)
Editorial Calendars are Really Useful for Planning What You Will Publish and When. (Tweet)
Writing a Ton of Great Content Isn’t Much Use if No One Reads It. (Tweet)

I hope you have enjoyed this article and that you carry on and read part 2, which will cover promotion. I leave you with this quote from David Meerman Scott and a great illustration (sourced from Intersection Consulting) of the point I found:

“Performing search engine optimization on a crap-filled site just makes it slightly less crappy.” (David Meerman Scott)

Thanks for reading, don't forget to check out part 2!

SEO SEO Link Building Content

Why YOU Should be Blogging

tom — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:56:29 +0000

Image sourced from Mike Licht on Flickr

I think that setting up a blog is a good idea no matter what you do. If you are in business, setting up a blog will help you to reach your audience and convert them into customers. Putting together a personal blog can also have some pretty big rewards.

Today I am going to introduce some compelling reasons why you should be blogging, separated into personal and business sections. Of course if you have a business blog there is no reason why you shouldn’t start a personal blog, so if after reading this article that is something that sounds appealing, you might want to give it a go.

If you are interested in learning more about blogging, or content in general, here is a list of the articles (sorted by most recent) on content you can find in this blog.

Why Start a Personal Blog?

There are a number of benefits to owning a personal blog. The gains may be small to begin with, but if you are prepared to invest some time into blogging it can be really beneficial for a lot of reasons, some of which I am about to talk about:

Providing an Income

Over time you can start to build a sustainable income through your blog -you could even get it to the stage it would start to generate money on its own, with no input from you.

Usually however, you do need to keep working at and maintaining your blog to receive a steady income. The site needs to stay active. If your site suddenly stops publishing its popularity is likely to decline.

Job Offers

There have been countless examples of people being offered excellent jobs on the merits of their blogging. Blogging gets you in front of an audience and is an excellent tool for promoting yourself as a thought leader within a subject area.

Blogging can also help people to relate to you on a more personal level. Most blogs (especially personal ones) are written in a way that shows a glimpse of the authors personality. This helps bloggers to form a connection with their audience, which of course can include potential employers.

Getting a Message Across to the Masses

If you have a blog with an established audience, then obviously it’s a medium you can use to get a message out to that audience. There’s a number of reasons people might want to get a message out, and having a personal blog can certainly help to provide them with that voice they have been looking for.

Why Your Business Needs a Blog

As I am sure you might be aware, blogging is an incredibly effective tool for businesses. In fact blogging and social media are having a huge impact on the way that business is conducted today. For many businesses, failing to understand and adapt to the changes brought about by blogging and social media is going to seriously impact their chances of survival.

Generating Exposure

Blogs can be used to generate lots of exposure to your business. By promoting the articles you publish, and through ranking for search phrases you can get your business in front of your target audience in a cost-effective manner.

Improving Customer Retention

By providing your existing customers with help and advice via your blog you can provide them with the information they need and help to make them feel valued as a customer, which will go a long way towards improving customer retention. This will also show your prospects that you care about your customers, potentially increasing the likelihood they will convert into customers themselves.

Branding Yourselves as Thought Leaders

Blogs are a great place to show off your knowledge and educate your target audience about what you do. You can really show off your expertise in your particular field and brand yourself as a thought leader within your industry.

A great tip for this is to go to sites like Quora and Yahoo Answers and find some commonly asked questions that are relevant to your business. Now write a blog article that answers those questions really well. Go back to the Q&A sites and answer the questions by providing a link back to your blog article.

Showing Your Human Side

Finally, blogs are a great way to show your businesses human side. This is becoming more and more important in modern business. Blogging can be used as a tool to help show the human side of your buisness. For some great reading on this topic check out Chris Brogan's Blog. His company (Human Business Works) specialises in helping businesses show their human side and he is a very engaging writer.

But That's Not All

I have given you a few good reasons why you might want to start a personal and/or business blog, but I certainly haven't covered everything. I hope I have been persuasive enough and provided some good reasons for you to go ahead and start blogging, and that blogging brings you a great deal of success and helps you achieve your goals. Thankyou for reading.

Content Content Blogging

Are Press Releases Worthless from an SEO Perspective?

tom — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 13:24:40 +0000

Image sourced from The University of Salford on Flickr

So there has been a lot of talk in the SEO community over the past few months about news releases being worthless from an SEO perspective, and I wanted to give my two cents on this, so I thought I would write an article on the subject.

This all came about because of an article Matt Cutts posted on his blog. Here is the offending quote:

“And I doubt Rand was expecting any direct PageRank impact from Avatar’s prweb.com press release.”

Lots of people are taking that to mean that news releases aren’t worth doing from an SEO perspective anymore. There are some major flaws with that conclusion.

For a start Matt has an agenda. He is the head of the Google webspam team and if there is something Google don’t want people to do, he is going to advise against it (and quite rightly so for the most part)! Usually it is not only in his professional interests, but also the ethically correct move (he is the head of webspam after all, his job is to skim the scum from the SERPs. In my book that's ethically correct.)

Matt doesn’t want people to think they can just get a link on PRWeb with some spammy press release and start ranking for it. Writing a spammy press release has always been a bad idea, that’s not something new.

Having said all that I wanted to get onto a major point. At no point does Matt say getting links from major news sites isn’t going to help you, and I can’t see him ever saying that. He also clearly states he doubts Rand was expecting direct PageRank impact. Come on, think about what a press release is and what you are doing it for (or should be doing it for) in the first place!

In fact Matt actually clarifies later in the comments:

“a legit press release can get you written up by reporters, or editors/sites may subsequently choose to link to your site. But the actual content of the press release itself doesn’t directly affect a site.”

So in summary press releases are a brilliant idea, and could help you with regards to SEO a lot. The takeaway is that you shouldn’t be releasing tosh and actually need to find something newsworthy the press wants to pick up, that’s the challenge! rubbish press releases won’t help you much (if at all), but good ones could help bucketloads. Hope that helps, and here is a link to the original article.

SEO SEO Press Releases

Sensible Internet

Google Hummingbird Algorithm – What You Need to Know

Design Considerations When Designing a Website

Design is a UX Consideration

Pure Black and Pure White

Light on White

Font Size

Avoid Using Flash

UX Considerations When Designing a Website

Goals & CTA’s

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)

Navigation

Typography

Accessibility

Design for Mobile Devices

Testing

The Ridiculously Exhaustive Social Media Design Blueprint [Infographic]

What to Consider When Designing a Website

A Link Building Guide for 2013 - Part 3

Online Advertising

Text Ads

Social Ads

Other Channels

But Surely There's Some Other Ways of Building Links?

Online Advertising

Text Ads

Social Ads

Other Channels

But Surely There's Some Other Ways of Building Links?

A Link Building Guide for 2013 - Part 2

Diversity

Outreach

Social Media

PR

A Link Building Guide for 2013

Content is King

Key Takeaways

Why YOU Should be Blogging

Why Start a Personal Blog?

Providing an Income

Job Offers

Getting a Message Across to the Masses

Why Your Business Needs a Blog

Generating Exposure

Improving Customer Retention

Branding Yourselves as Thought Leaders

Showing Your Human Side

But That's Not All

Are Press Releases Worthless from an SEO Perspective?