I do love going to conferences, but I must confess that the really valuable advice has been from attending “local” and FREE events with LondonSEO.

This Friday (3rd August) I’m going to the LondonSEO by the Sea Party in Brighton. I first heard of LondonSEO after writing a blogpost about the “UK SEO community” on my other shamelessly outdated blog.The masterminds behind LondonSEO , are the lovely hunkaburninloves at PartyPoker; Mike Nott, Ecky and Evilgreendonkey.

LondonSEO organised their first event (ha ha Jay you look about 13 in that photo) way back in December 2005, and have been organising regular events (ehm…parties really) ever since. Now this is not only a plug for LondonSEO (cause I do love those guys) but also a reminder that networking doesn’t need to be an expensive conference. If there isn’t a local SEO group near you, why not set up your own? All you really need is a blog, a facebook group, maybe send out some emails…vola…Bobs your uncle!

Get out there, I promise you will have fun. Not only do you get to share your experiences and learn more, you are also likely to make some really cracking friends along the way!

As much as it pains me to admit this, I think that we should all optimize for misspellings. I’m having trouble breathing right now. After being thrown out of the 6th grade spelling bee for misspelling “vacuum” I’ve always been somewhat rigid about proper spelling (even attempting to spell things in the proper British manner when speaking to those limeys.) I also think w is a vowel and would be happy to state my case for those of you who are also similarly nuts when it comes to the alphabet.

As you may know, most people are poor spellers. I think that a lot of this comes from not reading but with the popularity of John Grisham, it’s no wonder book burning is back. In any case, simply wishing that people could spell correctly isn’t going to make it happen, so in order to capture those morons, I mean users, you have to address them on their level. Dumb it down, as it were. Oh and before I forget, if you see any spelling errors in this post please point them out so I’ll cry again.

Many people simply mistype a word that they aren’t actually misspelling. The word “eat” can quite easily become “rat” but there isn’t much we can do about that without doing LOTS of analysis. The common misspellings, of course, are very different. I don’t enjoy helping serial misspellers enjoy any successes in life but I guess they ARE people too. With this in mind, if you don’t throw in misspellings on your sites or your paid ads, you are going to lose these people to someone who’s smart enough to cater to them. However, some people have issues that do not allow them to spell properly (dyslexia, most notably) so as much as I’m joking about all this, there really are serious reasons to include misspellings in your marketing.

I certainly don’t recommend that you include misspellings in your content where anyone with a dictionary or spelling fetish can see them, but it’s not bad to put them in the areas where they won’t be viewed quite so easily. They’re particularly useful in paid ads, especially if you have a misspelling that doesn’t show up in the actual ad itself. That kind of makes the misspelling monkey seem like he or she is doing something right, which is misleading but not anything that will get you slapped upside the head. It’s no worse than telling your mom that no, you don’t really mind her repeatedly pointing out that your hair gets extra kinky when it rains or pretending not to visibly cringe when someone puts Eminem on.

Note: for those of you who misspell out of some type of disability (and stupidity doesn’t count), please note that I really mean you no harm at all and I hope I didn’t offend you.

Here’s a list of the 100 most commonly misspelled words in the English language, which can be very helpful when you’re trying to come up with every possible keyword that would help your site.

The Keyword Misspelling Generator is also quite useful (and insanely addictive to mess with):

One of my clients, a conference calling company called Powwownow, has been doing really well in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for the last year. They have now expanded and started doing business also in the US. The UK site had two domains powwownow.co.uk and powwownow.com, now that they have a US website we have transferred the .com domain to their US website.

BUT it’s never easy is it? The US site is still ranking very high in the UK SERPs and the UK website is nowhere to be seen. As this whole site is about conference calling, all the ‘dial-in’ numbers etc are for US users (of course) but the problem is that UK users keep on signing up on the US site (freakin plums!!). In fact 30% of the UK traffic was being misdirected to the US site. So my client wanted to do geo targeting using IP detection and re-direct people with UK IP addresses to the UK website.

My first thought was; “feck no, that’s cloaking”. But my client was adamant that this was the only way we could bypass the problem whilst the .co.uk is getting some link juice and climbing the SERPs. So I sent out a few emails to some of my very helpful SEO friends (thanks Todd & Scott), and here is what I have learnt about the world of cloaking…..”it’s a BIG GREY area”….It’s all about intent. Which is hard enough for people to figure out, what the heck does a robot know about your intent?? It’s a bit like saying you don’t want to invite that girl in accounts to your party, as she said something in “that way” and looked at you funny…..

Ok let’s start with what we do know:

Definition of Cloaking: “cloaking is where you display different content to the search engines than you do to the user”

What Google says about cloaking: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355

Why it could be considered cloaking?
Because the googlebot would have spidered and indexed the Powwownow US site, whilst the user (if based in the UK) gets re-directed to the UK site from the SERPs. Although, nothing is as it easy as it seems, the example is technically cloaking, but if we look at the “intent” is it still cloaking? I’m sure we can all agree that the search engines primary goal is to give the best user experience as possible, and display the most relevant result to the user. Right? Now, Powwownow is not trying to deceive the user or search engine, they are simply trying to direct the user to the right place. If a person in the UK are looking for a “conference calling service” and the US site pops up in the SERPs, surely that’s not the most relevant result? And it is not “misinforming” the user as the service is the same, it just have different phone numbers to call. So is it or isn’t it cloaking? I say no, what’s your opinion?

What would make sense (and for all I know could be what actually happens) is that the sites that gets flagged as cloaking, will be manually reviewed on an intent basis. But then again this could be a ridiculous amount a day (as the evilgreendonkey is now freelance…). Matt Cutts, any comments?

Other posts about cloaking, that is worth a read:

Matt Cutts on Cloaking, with example of Webmaster World login/cloaking issue

The lovely Patrick Sexton from Feedthebot on Cloaking and re-directs

The very cool Todd Malicoat on Cloaking Euphemisms

Danny Sullivan’s great post on Evil and Good Cloaking

In case you happen to be thinking “how can Julie work a song by Gary Numan into a post?” here you go…the title is my favorite Gary Numan song (Gary rules! go watch his stuff on YouTube) and since I’ve been working over in London this week with some of the best people on the planet, I thought I’d address the topic of how easy it is to become insulated when you’re doing SEO.

If you wanted to, you could make good money doing SEO without ever seeing another human being. You can learn enough to get started by reading blogs, posting to forums, and communicating with other SEOs via email, instant messenger systems, or phone calls. You can write your content, throw up sites, run PPC campaigns, and provide clients with their reports all without ever meeting them.

Most of the interaction that I have with other SEOs and clients on a daily basis is conducted over IM and email. I have all my favorite blogs in a feeds folder in my mail account and I check a few new sites and blogs every day as well. I chat with colleagues about anything interesting that’s happening in the industry and I email in completed assignments and FTP new code. This is quite fun until I actually see all these people in person and realize how much you can miss by not interacting with like-minded SEOs on a frequent basis.

I’m going to drop names here because it’s my feckin’ blog and I’m proud to know these people who are brilliant at SEO AND amazingly fun and fantastic friends. I went out with Jay Young (the Big Kahuna of Str0ud SEO Consulting and my husband), my wonderful co-blogger and winner of the “feistiest Viking I know” award, Lisa Ditlefsen (just ask anyone who’s ever met), the very Byronic (and ironic) Jon Roy, king of high school pranks and Ruby on Rails programmer Tony Spencer, and the perfectly British angel Rob Kerry the other night here in London and in between a tiny amount of drinking (because we are very sensible people when drinking) in Southwark, we actually had some incredible SEO discussions.

I don’t get to see all these people very often since we live all over the world, but even though we’re all close friends and we can talk about everything under the sun, it’s still nice to discuss our passion for SEO. I’ve also been able to see my favorite Bulgarian, Anita Chaperon of PPCQueen fame (now Reviewlicious goddess), and her lovely husband the Super Affiliate Andre Chaperon (who is VERY tolerant of the giggling that ensues when Anita and I get together) this week, as well as the absolutely brilliant bringer-together of good SEOs Mike Nott and Mr. Hipster himself, Ekrum Ashgar (sometimes known as Mahoud.) Seeing them all in person has renewed my desire to pick up on a few projects I had recently considered, and I’ve spent the week getting back some of the excitement that I’d lost over the last few months.

There’s always something new in SEO, with new people to meet and new algorithms to conquer. This CAN be done online, but I doubt it will spark the same flame in you. I’ve said before how critical it is to go to conferences and network, but not everyone can do that. So what do you do? Find a local SEO whom you’ve never met (I actually met Esrun for the first time this week–god knows I love a blackhat SEO) and arrange to meet. Start a local SEO group or, my personal favorite, come out to the next London SEO (which happens to be THE most fun group of SEOs you’ll ever meet) and see why the Brits are renowned for drinking. Just find someone else to talk to face to face. If you’re lucky enough to work with other SEOs and they’re GOOD, go find some more and teach them something, mentor them, point out their mistakes and learn from them as well. Conducting your life online is convenient many times but in the end, sitting down and sharing some Thai food with like-minded people has some major benefits. Word of warning: Rob Kerry hates vegetarians so expect lots of heckling if you order tofu.

SEO Chicks Julie Joyce and Lisa Ditlefsen right before they got into a fistfight over cake.

The always adorable Rob Kerry, aka evilgreenmonkey, putting on a brave face after spending the entire evening with Julie and Lisa.

Lisa being forced out into the night while the rest of us talk bad about her and prepare to flee in case she can read lips.

Jon Roy and Jay Young discussing the merits of Julie’s musical taste, outfit, and general intelligence.

Tony Spencer smiling in hopes that someone outside will come in and rescue him from Lisa’s anti-Republican Viking rant.

Jon Roy not looking drunk, showing his utter disregard for the UK’s smoking ban.

In case you don’t know much about directory structure (or you’re just an idiot), the home page is the most important one on any site. It’s first in the hierarchy, it’s usually going to be what other inbound links point to, and it’s your chance to grab a visitor’s attention. If your homepage is a hideous deformed freak then it won’t matter whether the rest of your pages are like the web equivalent of the hot chick from The Raveonettes because no one’s going to bother.

Lisa (Viking chick, really cute and blonde, bit of a firebrand) and I had a great discussion the other night about ip redirecting and she’s going to post about that soon so I won’t get into it BUT it got me thinking about the homepage a lot. In doing link building it’s important to get some inbound links to your subpages but it’s still typical to get a much higher percentage of them to your homepage. Most directory listings for your site will point to your homepage as well. So you get that your homepage is critical I’m sure, but let’s break down what to consider in terms of having a good one that makes clouds parts and kittens start dancing.

First off is the search engine aspect of your homepage. When a link is followed into your site and the homepage is the first thing the bot sees, it needs to be accessible and well-coded or this lovely little bot might turn around and leave before finishing the tour. You can certainly get away with poor code (here is where I’d like to list a few I’ve worked on but I don’t want to get into any more trouble right now) but honestly, if you can’t write decent code you need to farm it out and let someone do it for you.

If you’re using software that generates a ton of code for you and you have some programming knowledge, LOOK at the actual code and see if you can tidy it up a bit because some of those programs throw in tons of worthless lines. If you have a lot of content on the homepage, try and work it so that it’s something the bots see first. Don’t bury your content at the end of 10,000 lines of javascript basically. Actually if your homepage has 10,000 lines of javascript in it, you have bigger problems.

Make sure your homepage links to critical subpages of your site. Technically speaking, all you’d need is a link to a sitemap that links to every other page, but this isn’t user-friendly and it also isn’t good for your most important subpages. Try and link to the other areas of your site that are your secondary pages in terms of importance. New site pages will usually get crawled faster when they are linked to from your homepage as well.

Don’t just put one giant image on the damn homepage either. This is something that makes me get so mad I start trying to run down old people and loose puppies on the street. Text is your friend. Text is like a gin and tonic with salt and vinegar crisps. Don’t try and be James Joyce though (look him up Rob, he’s quite famous.) These bots are hungry little beasts so give them something good (other than a coconut and mayonnaise sandwich–no spider will eat that crap.) If you have a site, you SHOULD have something to write on your homepage for god’s sake.

Secondly, there is the user-friendly bit to think about. If someone is unfamiliar with your site and hits it for the first time, unless said someone is insane or really bored, he or she will be looking for information of some kind. I’ve been to several sites that gave me zero clues as to what information they contained. This is trendy and hip for some industries, but it’s a nightmare for many others. Not all users want to have to work hard to figure out what you do. Most people use the remote to change the channel on the television when it’s right in front of them remember.

Put some links on there that are intuitive. If a page is about your site, don’t try and be clever and call it something like “Nuns!” because only those of us who are intoxicated will click on that with glee. OK that’s a bad example because honestly, I WOULD click on that link sober and I bet Lisa would too. A site has to be easy to navigate. You should be able to figure out how to get wherever you want within less than 30 minutes you know. Many sites aren’t using a sitemap and if you have a tiny site you might not think you need one, but some people enjoy going directly to those and navigating from that page, so it’s always a good idea.

There is much more to all this than what I’ve touched on but I’ve grown weary of this topic and I need a latte. Do some reading on usability if you’re redesigning your homepage. Generally speaking, if you follow usability guidelines you’ll be satisfying your users AND the bots.

With all the PPC and SEO talk around here lately, I felt the need to bring in a bit of Marketing talk to the mix.

The point I want to make is, that if you’re looking at starting your own business, or if you’ve already got one, you can’t afford to look at each item separately - it doesn’t work that way. You need Marketing, and SEO, and PPC.

I know of many excellent SEO brains, that know their stuff inside out, and can virtually work magic in the SERPS, but that alone doesn’t build a sustainable business. On the other hand, just focusing on PPC, can be a way to make big cash online, but it’s an incomplete business model, it’s time-consuming, and it has no exit strategy…

Marketing is the glue that sticks it all together - I say ;o)

Maybe that’s the reason why, very few people talk about it separately… Or maybe it’s just because it’s all regarded as a ‘dirty practice’.

A close friend of mine (SEO guy), actually cringes when I start talking marketing to him. And sometimes I don’t blame him - with the amount of hype that’s going on around…

BUT can you afford to ignore marketing altogether?

A big resounding NO!

So if you have your own business and you’re wondering how to take it to the next level. If you have the SEO/PPC skills, but you need the ‘glue’ to stick them into a nice little business. If you’re allergic to marketing, but you know you need to do it. And if you’d heard of the M word, and would just like to dabble in it a little…

Here is my Marketing / Business for Dummies Compilation

• Know your strengths - know which of your skills you’re the best at, so that you know what you can give.
• Have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) - know what makes you stand out - and if you don’t I suggest that you look hard and find out, because in today’s info overloaded world, mediocre is no longer enough.
• Know your customer - you know what I mean. We all have ‘customers’ - so know how they think, why they think like that, how often they think, what they think of and so on… Julie made a very good point a while ago - in her post Know Your Fish.
• Find a ‘hungry market’ - and only then make the ‘food’ to feed it. Many, many people who venture online, create a product they think is needed, and then they go looking for someone to sell it to. Sounds logical to do it the other way around right? Find a need, then create a product that the market wants that will fill that need. Which brings me to my next point;
• Listen to your market - it’s not enough to find someone that wants cheese. If you don’t find out what type of cheese and why, you may bring them goat’s cheese - and we all know how many people looove that!
• Think ‘long term’ with everything you undertake. One off quickies are tempting, and we all fall for those sometimes (stop the giggling in the peanut gallery please). But if you think long term, you will be thinking quality. And quality sticks, and makes money, and makes people happy.
• Choose one channel of marketing, and focus on getting it right, before moving on to the next, and the next. Or you can try and choose complementary marketing channels, to increase your chances. So here’s where PPC and SEO will make a good pair ;o)
• Count your pennies - no I don’t mean you should become a scrooge. I mean, know your numbers. You would have noticed by now that quite a few of us (if not all the chicks) are fond of our numbers. So know the ones that are important to your business. And then manage by exception - you don’t need to look at the numbers in great detail every single day (unless you’re Lisa or Rebecca :o)), but you should be able to see if things are looking ‘normal’ and if they are not - then you dig in.
• Network - aaah, here’s one we all love dearly. We love it to such an extent that we’ve now taken to going to events “just for the networking”. But it’s one of the most important aspects to having a successful online existence and business for us, as we don’t have text books to learn from.
• And last but not least - give, give, give. Give knowledge, give tools, give your time to your online community. Corny as it sounds (and again I can here the giggles in the corner), the more you put out there, the more you’ll get in return. Blogging makes a perfect example of that rule… nuff said!

OK, I’ll round up, before I get stoned off my pedestal of marketingdom (my term BTW).

The bottom line here is, that you can’t be a master of everything (and you shouldn’t try to), but you should be aware of the components that make the whole. Hopefully this will give you some grownding, if you were missing any, and maybe it would have cured some marketing phobics…

Well, I can dream, can’t I…

A short month after I was bestowed the auspicious status of SEO-Chick, I finally got let out of my SEOmoz cage and am thus just now authoring my first post. (Sorry Lisa, it’s been a busy month at the MozQuarters. Please don’t abuse me in yet another one of your drunken stupors.)

Anyway, one of the tasks I was busy with was putting together extensive site reviews for a couple of clients. One of the sections of the site review was an analytics overview, detailing what actions should be tracked, how to use your analytics, and specific action tracking recommendations. I’m sure a lot of you are rolling your eyes and thinking “You’ve got to be kidding me. This is all common sense stuff.” To that I say clearly you’ve never had clients, because you’d be surprised at how even the most basic stuff flies over their heads.

Not that analytics is basic, of course. All of those numbers, pie charts, and links can be pretty damn overwhelming, especially if you’re a non-math, non-business, non-anything analytics-related whatsoever major like me. Like anything worth getting the hang of, however, analytics can be conquered if you simply try, try, try. And by try, of course, I don’t mean log in once a month, poke around a bit and ooh and ahh over the purdy charts, and leave.

No sir (or ma’am), you have to get anal-retentive about your analytics. I’m talking obsessed. Like logging in every morning and checking your stats from the day before. Checking in every half hour to bask in the traffic bump from the Digg (or Sphinn?) Effect. Not noticing your non-SEO friends’ eyes glaze over as you spout on and on about referring links and search terms and reduced bounce rates. Once you get into the habit of checking regularly, it won’t matter if you studied home decorating in school–you’ll know what the hell you’re doing.

That is, of course, if you know what to look for. Any schmuck can log in every day and click around frantically like a coked-out bunny rabbit trying to hop across the freeway. What the hell are you supposed to focus on? Well, this e-commerceguide.com post is a good start. The article recommends keeping track of the following:

• referring search terms from search engines
• referring URLs
• your site’s most popular pages
• visits to the home page
• site overlay reports
• site bounce rate

To that list I’d also add anything that converts on your site–any call to action, such as an email link, any “Request a Demo/Brochure/More Information” link, add to cart links, checkout links, etc. Basically, what’s the point of having calls to action on your pages if you’re not keeping track of which ones work better than others? Also, be sure to pay attention to your analytics after you’ve made any changes on your site so that you can track whether or not those changes worked well.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you should essentially pay attention to any data or stat that can help you improve whatever your site’s inherent goal is, whether that be to sell products, increase sign ups, encourage user participation, etc. Also, don’t wet your pants over a sudden spike in traffic in the assumption that OH MY GOD it’s a trend! You need to watch your analytics over a larger chunk of time in order to analyze long-term results.

There ya have it. Get off yer ass and start obsessin’!

With a name like SEO Chicks, I think it’s obvious that we’re trying to capitalize on being female in this industry. As some people have said, we’re not baby chickens. Sure some of them are blonde, like Lisa, but still…

Here are three reasons why I think that’s completely okay (to capitalize on the girl thing, not to be blonde like baby chickens)…

1. We happen to be biologically female and therefore entitled to use that however we want or need to, even if it means that people envision us having tickle fights in cheerleading outfits once the conferences are over. For the record, that has only happened twice.

2. We’re currently a minority in this industry, even if that’s slowly changing.

3. I got paid $20k less than my husband did for an agency we used to work for and we did the same damn thing AND I HAD MORE EXPERIENCE.

That being said, I’d like to address the topic of being a woman in SEO.

There is currently a ton of great dialog out there on the issue of being female in our industry. I’d like to point you to two particularly interesting pieces on this that my fellow SEO Chick Lisa showed me:

Sugarrae’s A Note To My Fellow Women of SEO
Kim Krause Berg’s Finding The Women in Tech and Women in Search

Both of these are really well-written and quite on point about all this, and I have to say that I agree with both points of view. I do wish that women never had to think of themselves as needing to prove something, but I also think that only a very small percentage of women have never had to do this, have never had to work harder for less money than a man would make or to prove their intelligence.

I like Rae’s point about not being impressed by someone just because she’s female. I’m not either. I like Kim’s point about how many companies will grab women employees because they can pay them less money though. I LOVE the fact that we have women who write really well putting their opinions out there, most of all. Like Rae, I don’t respect these women only because they’re women, but there’s a part of me that is a bit more proud of that fact. So throw a tomato at me when you see me. I can’t help it. I’m also proud when Sparklehorse sells a song to Volvo for a commercial. They’re such underdogs.

This is a really difficult topic for me to choose sides on, so I’m not going to, because I seriously do not currently feel that anyone I work with at the moment has any less regard for what I can offer just because I’m female. However, I think that is in large part due to the fact that I work with some incredibly fantastic people (except for Rob Kerry and his “little lady makes a good cup of tea” antics.) In my current state of employment (I co-own an SEO consulting firm with my husband and work closely with some amazing people over in London) I can safely say that I’ve never once felt that anything work-related with them had ANYTHING to do with my gender.

In a previous job, however, it was a very different story. As I mentioned above, I was more experienced in SEO AND the leader of the team yet I made quite a bit less than my husband made, working alongside me. I never made a huge deal out of it because the money was all coming into our household and I didn’t want to create problems by seeming like I was whining.

I hope that things like this aren’t going to continue happening. With all the people I know in this industry, I don’t think it will. I don’t want anyone to give me anything because I’m a woman, but I don’t want everyone to ignore the fact that even though they may not personally be the victim of gender bias, it still exists. I’m sensitive to the idea that if women do complain that they’re treated unfairly, it sheds a poor light on them, and it should be a last resort. Things aren’t always about gender, but you can’t assume that gender plays no role either. I’m also sensitive about being mistaken for a midget, though, and if I could get more money by being classified as one, I sure as hell would do it.

[Note: being a good girl and not wanting to deeply offend anyone, I've edited this piece after initially publishing a nastier draft of it. Pointing fingers really isn't nice even if it IS deserved. ]

As you know, the Viking is still in Norway so I’m trying to keep things going while she’s gone…hence, my thoughts on what we can learn from the non-SEO world. And yes, I honestly am embarrassed by my own title.

A few years ago, back when every IT firm didn’t have an SEO team and most people had no clue what search engine optimization was all about, pop culture was not at the forefront of the SEO mindset. Many people, much like myself, were coming into the field from backgrounds in programming, database administration, and site design. I could not have pointed out a single SEO who didn’t know how to at least code html. Now, however, the field has evolved to the extent that many people in it come from marketing and advertising backgrounds, with little to no technical knowledge (comparatively speaking.) That’s not a criticism of anyone or anything at all…just a statement. There HAVE been criticisms of this influx though, which is the reason for this topic, but I think we can learn quite a bit from those who have traditional marketing backgrounds.

Here’s a perfect, if nepotistic, example: my cousin Joe Lawson is one of the writers behind the Geico Cavemen commercials. I can speak to the US market and say that it would be seriously difficult to have NOT seen one of these commercials, a billboard, SOMETHING. This concept is regarded (by all but the most unenlightened curmudgeons) as being one of the best commercial series ever aired. Without going into rapturous detail on the brilliance of this caveman idea, my point is that there are people out there in traditional marketing areas who are mindblowingly good at getting our attention. You’d be insane to not think that was relevant to SEO.

I was never formally trained in advertising or marketing but I was in programming. However, traditional marketing concepts appeal to me more that writing code does. They make sense to me, in the same way that some programmers can pick up a new language in an hour…you just have the intuition for things sometimes. In this same line of thought, I would never assume that someone who’d never taken a programming class could NOT learn to program. This is actually why I have always loved the field of SEO so much. It’s such a mind meld of technical know-how with creativity, innovation, communication, design, and humanity being thrown into a blender.

At my previous agency I remember the debate I had with my boss about how to best replace someone on our team. Should we pick a programmer and teach him or her SEO? Should we look for a writer, a graphic designer, or someone with a business background? As great as some of the programmers that I worked with were, I could never have imagined them “getting” SEO enough to do it well. It takes such a strange blend of talent and interest, and not to disparage anyone, but with a few exceptions, some of the best programmers I know are some of the least creative people I know, and their people skills can really suck a duck’s ass occasionally.

My point is that we should never get so wrapped up in learning just from each other in this field. There’s a lot more to good search engine optimization than talking about rankings and thinking about good link bait. We need to understand design, learn to write well, learn how to get a point across in less than the amount of time I have taken in this blog entry, take an interest in what’s going on in the world, keep up with pop culture even if you hate it, listen to a few new bands (particularly The Raveonettes or Say Hi To Your Mom), go to an art museum on vacation and don’t just shop the whole time, read something other than marketing manuals (I highly recommend anything by Philip Roth or Martin Amis), try sushi, be nicer to cats (note to self: stop making fun of cats!), and just never stop interacting with everyone and everything possible.

Perusing webmaster tools, as I am wont to do of a lunch hour, I noticed that del.icio.us seems to be giving us some links love.  Now, as loved as the B2B marketing, advertising and design site I work for is, it does not tend to attract del.icio.us bookmarks.  Imagine my joy on finding out that while they may not pass on much juice, there is love flowing from that piece of the Yahoo! pie.

While the thoughts started spinning through my mind about using all those del.icio.us accounts I had for some good (because I forgot my passwords… errrr… ya…), I had to step back and think for a moment – surely Google won’t be passing along much juice from this link…?

Whether Google passes juice on or not, as I’ve said in other* articles*, link building is about traffic, not rankings.  This method of linking also highlights title tags and how important they are.  While the title bar cannot display the heart icon I see in one users bookmarks, on her page that link stands out among all others.

Back in the day, it was just title tags and a URL in your search results.  As a search marketer you had to capture your audience in that small amount of text.  Those are good times to keep in mind when optimising now – think of del.icio.us and how you only have the title to hook and reel someone in.

How is del.icio.us working for you?

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