I’ve already talked previously about how Google page rank works and yes, this is based on linking. What I also said, (but probably not clearly enough) is that links do NOT equal positions. So many people think that in order to optimise their sites, they need to go out there an sign up to every social network imaginable and spam them to hell with links back to their site. Not only does this not help with search engines, but it hinders you with traffic, as you will become known for being ‘yet another spammer’ – causing people to ignore/block you altogether.

Having links will NOT get you positions, if you are already ranking for a key phrase based on other SEO elements, then yes PR may help you that extra little bit from Google’s point of view because you are considered to be an ‘important’ site, but again this cannot be achieved through spam links.

Where’s The Pitfall?

If you are doing the SEO, then the pitfall is that it will get you nowhere, you won’t see much benefit from it in the short run, and in the long run it may get you banned from certain sites, blacklisted, or even penalised by Google themselves depending on how extreme you get. If you are paying for the SEO, then the pitfall is that you are paying for a service that a 14yr old could accomplish, dropping links into random sites, and it still isn’t helping! Link building is NOT SEO.

What is Linkbuilding Then?

Linkbuilding is just that, building links. It should be named as no more or less than acquiring links from other sites, you should not charge or pay a premium for this service as there is no skill, knowledge, or qualification required!

But Then… What is SEO?

SEO is clean code, SEO is using the correct code, SEO is key phrase research, SEO is targeting your online marketing demographics through specific pages on your site, SEO is usability for both users AND search engines, SEO is coding and designing your website how it should have always been in the first place.

SEO does not mean tricking search engines having you rank highly.

Search engines work by looking for the best sites to rank highly.

SEO means IMPROVING your site until it’s good enough to rank highly.

More from the ‘Real SEO:’ series to follow… here

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The title of your page, be that a blog or any other web page, is the key factor to your SEO effort’s and the page’s popularity.

Take my article on how to get lots of diggs,

I could have titled it

• How I was successful on Digg
• Get 3000 Diggs
• Methods for Increasing The Number of Diggs on a Submission
• Get Dugg Fast!

None of which are particularly bad titles, but none of which are particularly good either.

When deciding on a title (or anything else for that matter) its important to look at the market trends and learn from other people’s mistakes. There’s no need for trial and error when it comes to internet marketing, everything has been trialled, all you have to do is research what worked and what didn’t. Based on this we know that the most popular title elements are

• How To
• Top 10
• Top 7
• Top 5
• Learn To

So lets take a look at the Title I used and break it right down

How To: Get 3,000+ Diggs in 24 Hours

What I needed to do was appeal to my two most important markets, Google, and Social Media Website users. Google likes key words, social media users like tabloid headlines.

‘How To:‘ is the ‘category’ of the article, it describes what type of article it is, and it appeals to both of the above markets, hundreds of thousands of Google searches each month start with the words ‘how to’ because many many people use the internet primarily to figure out how to do new things. It appeals to social media traffic because of the content which follows it, ‘How To: (insert something that social media website users want)’.

The next part of the title is the actual ‘body’ of the title, it quite simply defines the subject of the article and what it’s about. ‘Get 3,000+ Diggs‘
In this element I am appealing to Google with ‘Get Diggs’ as this is a valuable search term, and to users with ‘Get a Large Number of Diggs’ which is what all Digg (and stumble) users want! Adding the plus after the number is an important consideration, I could have said ‘over 3,000′ or ‘more than 3,000′ but I didn’t want to make the title too long. (You have about 5 words with which to capture your reader’s imagination before they get bored and stop reading, harsh, but true.)

The final part of the title is the sweetener, the extra little bonus that the reader will get from your article, and the little element that makes your article different from the rest. So in my case this was ‘in 24 Hours‘. The sweetener is purely for your users, Google has no interest in this as a key phrase of any relevance. What this does is set the article apart from all the other articles about ‘getting lots of diggs’ because I’ve added that extra variable of doing it in the space of a day. This adds and element of intrigue. When writing titles, ALWAYS think to yourself – if I saw that title on Digg (or similar) would I want to click on it? If the answer is maybe or no, then you need to rework it. You’ll notice that most of the popular articles on social media sites are really provocative, suggestive, and sometimes just downright wrong. This is because people want to know what content is behind the title!

The example that I’ve used is with a blog title, but you can do the same thing with the title attributes of your website – as they are what appears in the search engine results, and again, need key phrases, and to be ‘clickable’.

A Tip For If You Get Stuck

Pick up a copy of the trashiest magazine you can find, in the UK something like Heat or Zoo magazine is perfect. (these are very cheap women’s lifestyle and celebrity gossip magazines)
Have a look at the titles of the articles, particularly the ones used on the cover – take some inspiration, and apply to your own article/page.

These magazines don’t sell because they have great content, and they don’t sell because they have a ‘limited edition’ mascara brush attached to the cover. They sell because these companies are VERY good at writing titles that people want to know more about.

You may have noticed that this article has absolutely nothing to do with ‘7′ tips for writing killer titles – I lied, but you’re still here reading, and I still presented you the information relevant to the title.

Make your titles spurious to benefit you, just keep them on topic.

Got any other great title ideas? Drop me a line in the comments!

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Increasingly blogs are sold to companies not just as a part of their website, but as a legitimate SEO tool to be added on to their website and bring them additional traffic and positions. In order for this to happen however, they do need to actually use the blog, and use it well.

In the spirit of this, here are 5 reasons to subscribe to your clients’ RSS feeds!

1. To See If They Use Their Blog At All
Its all very well telling your client how much they are going to benefit from having a blog and how much traffic it will bring them, but if they don’t touch the damn thing then they won’t be getting much benefit at all. I have a dedicated folder for my clients’ blogs and when I see that a week has gone by and their name hasn’t turned bold in my list (an indicator that a new story has been published) I start sending emails. This may seem like more hassle to you than to them, but if you want to upsell them a higher SEO maintenance package in the future then you need to ensure that you get them results NOW!

2. To See If They Use Their Blog Correctly
I actually once had a client with a band website who on occasion would blog about the weather… Don’t even ask. Because I wasn’t subscribed to the feed, I didn’t realise until about a month later. Make sure your clients are using the right content for their blogs, remember, writing is not their strength and its not what they were hired for, so don’t expect them to know exactly what to write just because it’s their company. Ideally their posts should be an authority on their industry, and not sound too much like a press release, nor a personal opinion, rather an objective concise article employing a journalistic writing style.

3. To See If They Are Using Internal Linking
Too often clients will happily blog away like little rabbits, only for me to come along and find that they have not linked to a single one of the pages on their site. One solution to this (for wordpress) is to use the A-Links plugin, which automatically inserts a link when it detects the use of keywords that you specify. I’m not a fan of this technique as it can often make a good blog post look very spammy, but done correctly it can work ok. Clients often forget to even use their keywords in blogs, let alone links, so its a great thing to check for when you get a popup notification from your feed reader for one of your clients’ blogs.

4. To Asses The Current Affairs For Your Client
When it comes to doing monthly maintenance for a client, it always involves at least a small amount of external link building. Often finding a subject to write about or to link from can be a pain, especially if your client’s industry is one that you are not actively involved in. Being subscribed to their blog means that you will always have a fresh set of up to date news on what’s going on in your client’s industry (provided that they are following #2)

5. To Capitalise On SEO Opportunities Right Away
Sometimes I’ll see a really good blog by one of my clients come into my feed reader, really well written, great content, great images, and very social media friendly (diggable, if you will). Then I look at the title and my computer-screen-damaged eyes drop in dismay, another crap title! The title of a blog entry is SO important, probably more so than any other factor – hell I could write and entire other entry on blog titles alone! (and I probably will). Make sure your client’s titles are catchy, clickable, and use keywords, and if they’re missing any of those things then get in there and edit them!

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Social Media is one of the fastest growing marketing formats in the entire world, and is miles ahead of the competition with the way it can target mass groups of specific market demographics. ‘How?’ you ask?
You have (most likely) at some point filled more information on the internet than a market research company could ever ask for, and you did it out of free will!

In case you’re still wondering…

What is Social Media?
Social media is Facebook, social media is MySpace, its Bebo, its Hi5, its Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Sphinn, Slashdot, Technorati, Delicious, Reddit, Simpy, Newsvine, Furl, Spurl, MyJeeves, Google Bookmarks, and many, many more. Social media is absolutely everywhere, social media is any site where users congregate and interact with each other.

So How Does Social Media Triple Your Traffic?
Pretty easily. On a social media site; you register, you fill out your profile, and you start interacting people. The type of site that you’re on dictates the type of interaction that you have with the other site users. On Facebook for example, you create your profile and keep in touch with your friends, organise events, and share stories and photos. While on Digg you submit news articles and the rest of the community vote on them based on whether or not they are ‘news-worthy’. While finally on twitter, you post constant 150 character messages on your profile telling the world what you’re doing at that moment in time, and anybody who is interested enough to care that you are eating beans on toast yet again can tune in to your ‘twittering’.

Essentially, all these sites are ways of getting links back to your site, and not just random links, but links on pages that are already getting a high amount of traffic, so you have a higher chance of some of them clicking through to your site.

My previous post on How To Get 3,000+ Diggs in 24 hours highlighted just how powerful Digg can be, I would estimate based on experience that I generated the BBC over half a million page views based on my submission that day.

When I submitted my own article talking about how I got the 3,000 Diggs to this very site, it went mad on Stumbleupon, and I started getting 100-200 unique visitors a day. (not bad for a blog that was only 3 weeks old at the time) and so far just from that article this month I’ve generated over 1,600 visits and just under 4,000 page views.

Here are my stats for the first 10 days of March, 90% of which was down to Stumbleupon referrals.

My RSS Subscribers also jumped up by about 400% and have held pretty steadily since then. The best part is that since the large spike in traffic above, I’ve seen a consistently higher level of day to day traffic as well.

I should note in closing of this section that social media did not triple my traffic. It multiplied it by a factor of about 12.

So How Do You Get Started With Social Media?
Its quite simple really, if you don’t already have a MySpace or Facebook account, then go and get one! My personal favorites are Facebook, Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious, and Reddit. You will notice that I have all of these in a ‘Social Bookmark This!’ link at the bottom of all of my blogs. If you want this for your blog you can download the I Love Social Bookmarking plugin for Wordpress.

Remember though, if you use social media just to spam your links, you will get nowhere. Social media sites are picky and choosey and they hate spam, so involve yourself in the community and you will reap the rewards, but you have to put in the time and the effort.

What have your experiences with social media been thus far? Got any great social media sites that I’ve missed here? Drop me a line in the comments!

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Digg, as I’ve mentioned before, is a bit of a beast. Its very clicky, and there are certain very exclusive little groups aall over the place amongst the community. Naturally these little groups all Digg and Bury (the opposite of digging) the same stories, so offending one of these groups can be the worst thing you could possibly do. It should be noted however that while these groups have a bit of help in the form of eachother when trying to make a story popular, they are not the only people on Digg, you don’t need to be in a group to get your submissions on the front page, as I will demonstrate.

I have named this, the Bandwagon Method.

In short, you find a bandwagon, and make sure you’re the first to jump on it, and then take all the credit when everyone else jumps on too.

To start with you’ll need an RSS feed reader, my personal preferences are Shrook for mac, and SharpReader for windows. Once you have a feed reader you will need to subscribe to some blogs, Engadget, Gizmodo, and BBC Tech News are good places to start.

Once you’ve done that, you sit back, and wait for your bandwagon to arrive.

The beauty of the feed reader is that as soon as a story is published, you receive it (almost instantly, but sometimes with a few minutes delay) in your feed reader. This is where you sit and wait for the window of opportunity. What you’re looking for is a niche article, something that applies to many people, that is interesting, and that will be of concern to the average demographic of people who use Digg (17-36 yr old computer savvy internet enthusiasts). Once an article like this comes up in your feed reader, its time to pounce.

In my case the article that came up was from the BBC site, and was about Ebay banning negative feedback. This fits the above description perfectly, people who use digg are the same type of people who use ebay, so instantly I have identified that my product (article) was suitable for my target market (diggers). I quickly logged in to digg, and submitted the URL with a brief description.

And that was that, 24 hours later I had over 3,000 diggs.

I wish.

No, you can submit to digg as much as you like, but getting actual diggs is a whole different kettle of fish. Once submitted, I fired off a quick email to a few colleagues, and asked them to digg the story if they liked the article. Just from this I had gained about 6 diggs in 10 mins. It sounds insignificant, 6 diggs, but the first 25 diggs are the most difficult and most important to get. Once I’d done this I decided to ’share the article’ with my friends list.

On digg you can add people as your friends, much like myspace or facebook, except no one really knows anyone on digg. Too many friends and it becomes harder to get your story on the front page, too few friends and you have no one to help digg your submissions, but I digress, a more detailed article on the ins and outs of digg friends and how to optimise your friends list at a later date. For the time being I shared the article with the maximum number of friends that I could (about 60 I think). These shouts then appear on your friends’ profiles, and they see the story that you are sharing with them.

Admittedly though, the digg friend sharing extravaganza is very temperamental, and doesnt always help a great deal. I think I probably got another 4 diggs out of this.

Next I went to Tech Industry News (the category I had submitted to) clicked on upcoming, and then sorted by most popular. Think of this list like google, the more diggs you get the higher your rank is, once you go past number one on the front page of upcoming, you go into the mix with the stories in ‘popular’ (for that category) and once you reach the top of popular there you make your bid for the front page of digg.

14 Diggs in I was on the second page of upcoming tech industry news. I dugg a couple of the most popular upcoming stories to bump them up and get them on to the next list, helping me move up, and did a little more sharing with my friends. By now, it was time to leave the office for the day, so I packed up and shut down my computer (Ecofriendly egg that I am). I left work on about 36 diggs, on the front page of upcoming tech industry news.

I didn’t think much about the story for the next few hours, until I received a text from a colleague telling me that he had just ’shared’ my submission with some of his friends, hopefully this would make a difference! I logged on to check it out, and the article was on 92 diggs. Which was ok, but not great, so again I left it alone.

15 minutes later I returned to the article sitting on the homepage of all of digg, and with 472 diggs. Strange.

I think that digg has a tipping point, and once you pass that tipping point, (wherever it may be) and your submission moves on to the next page, whether that be upcoming, popular, or the front page, it is suddenly subject to thousands more people noticing it, and as such, many many more diggs. Clearly, I had reached this tipping point.

I sat in front of my computer in slight awe as I refreshed each minute to find the story up by about 12 diggs, every 60 seconds. Around 15 minutes later I was at over 600 diggs, and looking really prominent on the homepage with over 300 comments, the most out of all the stories there, even ones with over 1,000 diggs.

An hour later I was at over 1,800 diggs, and 400 comments. By this time I (sadly) was becoming less amazed, and more pleased with what was happening, so I didn’t bother refreshing quite so often.

The next morning I got up to check on progress. 2,675 Diggs. Incredible.

And finally, around the 24 hour mark the next day, I hit 3,000.

But

Why does it matter? How does submitting a BBC news article help my site in any way ?

Well, this particular one didn’t – I didn’t make any effort to manipulate the article or the submission to benefit myself, I just wanted to test my Bandwagon Method, and it worked. What my submission did do however, which isn’t completely standard for a big digg story, is it generated a lot of comments. Myself and the first colleagues who dugg the story started a brief scathing chat dicusing ebay and insulting dodgy sellers, and this became the foundation for the 600+ comments which ensued.

The value in using this method is if you can submit the story to digg, write your own follow up article on your site, and then post a legitimate link in the comments of your submission BEFORE it gets big.

If it is not a legitimate link, you will get burried so hard and fast that you’ll wish you’d taken up smoking years ago just to cope with all the abuse you’ll get. And if you try tagging a link onto a story thats already big, again you’ll be slated for being a spammer. In my opinion; the one way in which you can do it is by writing a good follow up article, with good content, and post it high up in the comments of your own submission. Then pray to the heavens for acceptance, for the diggers are both cruel and ruthless.

End result if you do it right? A fair amount of traffic, a little credibility, and a very strong feeling of satisfaction.

I would like to note in closing that I do not advocate in any way ‘rigging an article’ for digg, or using unfair practices jut to get your submission on the front page. This is merely an account of what I did, and how I think it worked. Use it as reference, or discredit it entirely, its up to you.

How long did it take you to get your first popular article on digg? Have you got an opinion or suggestion for other things that may help? Drop me a line in the comments.

The digg page as it is today

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Digg, for those who don’t know, is a ‘current events’ site which is very much like any other news site you might see on the internet. The difference of course is that it isn’t just any old news site, on Digg the stories voted either for or against by the users of the site, so the homepage news is always what the most people have voted for. Think of it like a very big democracy thats only a LITTLE bit corrupt, that sometimes succeeds but generally just flails about wildly, like an online version of George Bush, but without the support staff. More on the ins and outs of digg and other Social Media sites in another post.

So, when I first set myself up on Digg, it was primarily for link building purposes, to establish new links coming back to the site which I was optimising, and as such build the site’s inbound link campaign, etc. Soon however, I realised that Digg isnt just any old social media site. There are hundreds of sites LIKE Digg that try and use the same sort of marketing model, but 90% of them fail completely. There are hundreds and hundreds of submissions every day, but no one ever reads them, and they are pretty much just big sites with a whole lot of links. This is where Digg comes into its own, being the age that it is, Digg has established an actual community, a large group of members who talk to eachother and talk about Digg – this makes the site more inviting for new members to join and participate in the ongoing user activity, rather than just hit submit and click off the site. So Digg, actually gets traffic through its submission, and we’re talking a LOT of traffic.

Recently, a colleague wrote an article for his own site – discussing an important SEO technique and pointing out the pros and cons of overcoming certain issues relating to it. Once he’d finished writing this article, he went to hit submit on Digg, but rather than just pasting in the same title he’d used on the blog, we sat down for 5 minutes and discussed what the most ‘clickable’ title would be for the post, and went with that. By the time we left the office for the day, the story was on 53diggs, which wasn’t bad at the time. The next morning when we returned however, we found the same submission on over 500diggs and sitting nicely on the front page of Tech Industry News. We later discovered that the traffic generated by Digg had crashed the server in the middle of the night, due to 23,000 unique visitors in the space of a few hours.

The article made the font page of Tech Industry News, but that was where it stopped and in the following days it gained another 50 diggs or so, before slowly sinking down into the rest of the long forgotten digg archives.

But this is where my inspiration was rather abruptly kicked into action. 23,000 unique visitors in 24 hours, and I felt like we’d only just scratched the surface.

The power of Social Media Marketing had suddenly become far more of a reality than the distant rumor that I had previously perceived it as.

Next time… How To: Get 3,000+ Diggs in 24 Hours

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