Top 7 SEO Blogs

After seeing Adam’s list of blogs for creative writers and noticing an SEO blog, I couldn’t resist the temptation to put together my own list of must-read SEO blogs. Whether or not the industry has a bad reputation among bloggers, staying abreast of search engine news can give your blog a real edge over the competition. What can I say; I can’t help but defend my profession.

Here’s my rundown of the top seven SEO blogs (ordered alphabetically; it’s really hard to rank them against each other for such a broad category).

• Bruce Clay, Inc. Blog - Bruce is an old name in the industry. His blog is a great resource for SEO news and tips in general. What keeps me coming back, though, are the hilarious in-post comment wars he has with Susan. Think we could do something like that, Daniel?
• Marketing Pilgrim - Andy Beal’s got some great material on a variety of different marketing-related topics, including a lot of articles on SEO and blogging.
• Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO - There’s nothing quite like getting news straight from the source. Matt works for Google. He’s a great read to begin with, but you just can’t beat his blog for authority when it comes to the internet’s #1 search engine.
• Search Engine Land - Although the blog itself has only been around for a few months, Danny Sullivan has been an SEO bigwig for much longer.
• Search Engine Roundtable - If you want to stay abreast of conversations on the hottest SEO discussion boards (e.g. Cre8asite, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint, etc.) without, well, having to read them, this blog is your first stop.
• Search Engine Watch - This blog is definitely one of the oldest and most respected sources for search engine news. It’s a bit drier than the others; good for information, bad for personality, but still useful if all you’re interested in are the facts.
• SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog - Rand Fishkin and co. provide some great information. Be sure not to miss their whiteboard fridays.

The way I see it, as a blogger, you can hate SEO professionals for their methods or learn from their success. And since you can’t beat them (they rank too well for that), you might as well join them.

Update: This is Daniel writing. While the blogs that Stephen listed are certainly awesome, I think that there are 3 missing: PronetAdvertising, Search Engine Journal and SEO Blackhat. Make sure to check them out as well!

Source: Dailyblogtips.com

Improve Search Rankings with Internal SEO

Earlier this year I wrote a post about the stimulus package that passed Congress in February. I titled the post Government Stimulus Package because I thought the only thing it was stimulating was government. I got lucky with this, because apparently a lot of people searched for the phrase “government stimulus package” to learn about what was in it.

The post did ok on Digg and Reddit, nothing spectacular but it brought in some traffic. It may have gotten a few other links, but not a ton. A few days after the post was published, I noticed that I was getting some traffic the search engines. The post was on the front page of Google, around 6 or so for the keyword phrase “government stimulus package.” This is the first step in improving your SERPs.

1. Look at Your Stats

Find out which pages you are getting traffic to from the search engines and what keywords are being used to get there. This is where we need to focus. Improving your ranking for a term from 7429 to 43 takes your traffic from 0 to 0. If you can improve from 9 to 1, you will see a huge increase in traffic if it is a phrase that people are searching for.

Now that we have a few pages that are getting some traffic and the keywords they are getting it from, we have to do a little keyword research.

2. Keyword Research

The first step is to find out which phrases we want to target. Look at the keywords that are getting the most traffic and find out where you currently rank. You could use your web analytics program for this, and then check the rankings on Google.

At this point, you can also use a keyword search tool to find out how much traffic each of these phrases gets.

Now we want to focus our efforts on the terms we rank the highest for that get the most search traffic.

3. Internal SEO

Have you ever written anything similar to this before? Go through your archives and find where you have mentioned this topic before. Update the old article with a link to the new one using the keywords you are trying to rank for.

If this is a topic that people want to know more about, consider writing another post or two expanding on the first one. In each new post, link to the original article with one of the keyword phrases you are targeting.

Next, go back to the post you are hoping to rank higher. Is the keyword already in the article? Consider making it bold. Is there a section where the phrase would make a good header? Consider adding it. Don’t stuff the article full of keywords as you still want the people that come to enjoy your writing. However, if these changes can be made without affecting the quality, they may help improve your ranking a little bit.

These things do two things. They show the search engines what your pages are about (hopefully the keywords you are targeting) and they show them that they are important pages. The more links you have pointing to the page, the more important you are making it in Google’s eyes.

4. Watch your Rankings and Traffic Surge

I went back to my post and made the keyword bold when I used it. Then I went through the archives and found another post that talked about the stimulus package and added a link to the new post. I also wrote a few more articles in the following weeks that talked about the stimulus package, so I linked back in each of those as well. The result? I moved up to #1 in Google for the phrase “government stimulus package” before it passed. It brought thousands of visitors to my blog, and the week that the bill passed is my highest traffic week ever.

The part of this that is really powerful is that all of this was done several days after the article was posted. The regular readers had read it already, and anyone who was going to link to it already had. I was then able to move from #6 to #1 in Google simply by telling Google what the page was about and that I thought it was important. Never underestimate the power of linking to yourself internally.

I have since dropped behind irs.gov and recovery.gov, but that post has been viewed more times than any other. It also gave me a valuable lesson in SEO that has helped increase my search traffic to many other posts as well.

Source: Dailyblogtips.com

Using Blogs for Social Media Optimization

Blogs are one of six broad types of social media. This post will discuss how PR and marketing professionals can use blogs (even if you don't write your own) to increase brand awareness and credibility; the next will discuss all of the other tools of social media.

Blogs are a big deal; they are mainstream and competing with traditional media. There are a lot of them—Technorati tracks more than 15 million active blogs, and although the rate of growth has slowed, there are still thousands of new blogs started each day. Blogs help with SEO, whether you have your own or are generating links to your website from others. More than 60% of U.S. Internet users, and more 70% globally, have read a blog within the past 12 months. And blogs have become a key source of information for executive decision makers.

The first step in developing a blog strategy is understanding the landscape of blogs in your industry. You can search for relevant blogs using keywords pertaining to your business as well as searching for competitor names. While regular search engines can be used, that's a tedious process; it's much more efficient to use blog-specific search tools such as Google blog search, Technorati, BlogMarks, Blogarama and/or Blog Catalog. In addition, check out the blogrolls of the most relevant blogs you find.

The next step is to monitor blogs to discover what's being written about your company, product or other specific topic of interest. You can set up Google Alerts for free, although these won't catch everything (they're likely to miss quite a bit actually). Bloglines is a helpful free tool for monitoring blogs you've already identified; you can add their RSS feeds and monitor posts from one spot. If you have a modest budget (hundreds of dollars per month) for monitoring, try a service like WebClipping or CyberAlert. If you've got a bigger budget (thousands of dollars per month), you can step up to a professional-strength PR monitoring and current awareness tool such as Vocus, Moreover or YellowBrix.

Once you have a feel for the blog ecosystem in your industry, you can begin blogger outreach:

Commenting is a great way to start. Make sure your comments add something to the conversation and aren't simply self-promotional.

Contact the blogger as the next step. Contact should be personal (use the blogger's name, refer to the blog directly, act like you've been there before), compelling (tell a great story) and of course relevant to topics the blogger normally writes about.

Provide assets the blogger can use to enhance the post, such as original research results, images, video, or the offer of an interview with a key executive or other expert.

Writing a guest post is an excellent next step once you have a relationship of trust established with a blogger.

Promote posts when you get coverage. Increasing their exposure (and traffic) is a key incentive in getting bloggers to write about your topic.

And finally, follow up with key bloggers on your list. If they write about you, THANK THEM. If not, ask if it's okay for you to send them an occasional update on your firm/product/service and any interesting developments.

If you have your own blog, you can use many of these tactics to increase your audience through exposure on and links from other blogs. But even if you don't have your own, you can use these practices to increase exposure and build credibility for your company or product in relevant industry blogs.