Just a quick tip but I’ve been pretty absent from my own blog so I figure it’s better than silence, right? Right?

Internal linking isn’t exactly a secret but many people fail to do it.  Beyond just linking to other pages or posts on your website, I 100% recommend linking from the post/page you’re writing to the same page.  Why? Scrapers.  You’d be surprised how many people may be scraping your content.

In one best-case-scenario example on an affiliate review site I was involved with, one of the manufacturers was actually scraping our content.  Fortunately, we included a link to same post in the opening paragraph of each review.  When the manufacturer scraped it and put it on their website, they took the link with them.  It was probably the highest quality link obtained with very minimal effort.

So make sure to include links in your posts and include them early as some scrapers will only take the first parts of your content.  I also recommend including links back to your site in your RSS feed since that is how many scrapers will access your content.  If using WordPress, WordPress SEO by Yoast makes this VERY easy.

You often read that links placed in sidebars or footers from irrelevant sites don’t hold much value.  You also hear that reciprocal linking is useless.  Guess what? They both still work and many SEO companies are putting their clients at risk.

Example: SummitDentalofLaMesa.com

If you scroll waaaaaay down to the bottom of their page (just below the fold, of course), you’ll notice quite a few suspicious, non-relevant links.  This same link footer is placed on most of the other small businesses that they are linking to.  If you want to do some real digging, you can even find out which SEO company is abusing their clients.

Granted, these aren’t very difficult keywords but most of the websites in this footer rank pretty well (I’m assuming their keyword is the anchor text in the footer).   Not only does this provide no long term value to a client (because these links will likely disappear if they cancel), the company providing this “service” for them is putting them all at risk if Google should ever decide to drop a bomb on them.

Moral of the Story: Spammy links still work if you’re only interested in the short term.  If you want to build and optimize for long term value, build a site people would want to link to and focus on higher quality link acquisition.

I don’t know if I’d quite call this an Easter Egg but if you’re logged in to your Google account and do a search for “me”, your Google Profile will show up on top.

I recently had the opportunity to attend SEOMoz’s 2009 Pro Training Seminar in Seattle.  The seminar has been going on for several years but this is the first year that I’ve been in attendance.  The focus of the seminar was tips, tricks and tactics and they definitely lived up to it.  Each of the speakers had very unique presentations and it wasn’t the same information you’ve seen at every conference or on a blog somewhere.   They left the audience with very actionable advice…I definitely came away with my own to-do list.

Here are some summaries of my favorite presentations:

SEO is Nothing Without Content – Rand Fishkin

Rand kicked it off and talked a lot about creating content and how to handle a user generated content site.  I’m not currently working with any membership type sites but that section of the presentation was very interesting.

Some of his tips for running a user generated content site and generating links:

• Vibrant Community – Create a top users list to encourage competition and participation.  Include points or percentage complete for profile completion.  Provide internal analytics for users.
• Link Generation – Copy and paste badges that users can put on their blogs.  Make information easy to share with links to Twitter, Facebook, etc.  Use humor, facts, controversy or ego boosts to bloggers to generate natural links.

Sustain Verticality for Three Rounds – David Mihm & Matt Brown

Local search is becoming a very popular topic at any search conference you go to.  It seemed like 75% of the Q&A session was directed to David Mihm and some great questions about Google Maps optimization.  Matt Brown also gave a great presentation about image and news search.

Top Local Take-Aways:

• Manually claim your Google Maps Listing
• Read Local Search Ranking Factors
• Use maximum number of categories allowed.  Use custom categories.
• Citation is the new link

We practice all of these techniques at OrangeSoda when working with our local clients but it was great information for anyone interested in the space.  I also enjoyed more of the detailed strategies like getting reviews, linking to your contact page and on-site factors to help your maps visibility.

Good vs. Great – Dharmesh Shah

This was a non-search related presentation but it was really awesome.  Dharmesh is the founder of HubSpot and has had a few other successful acquisitions.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take a lot of notes because he was pretty entertaining to watch.  I’m looking forward to the slides or video to see it again.

A few main points I remember:

• Don’t start with free products, charge everyone, get feedback
• Learn to say no – don’t complicate things for an extra buck
• Choose business name wisely – should be short and unique
• Don’t write a business plan, start a blog
• Don’t take funding unless someone shows up at your door handing it to you

Overall, his presentation was a great break from all the SEO stuff.  Dharmesh claimed to be nervous but did a killer job.

Social Media Investments that Bring Real ROI – Todd Malicoat

People were going crazy on Twitter about Todd’s presentation because he gave everyone a lot of great tips and tools.  I realized after that I didn’t take very good notes so I’m going to have to rely on the slides and video again for this one.  One of the tools he mentioned that I hadn’t used before and have used pretty much every day since  is QuarkBase.com

Conversion Rate Optimization – Ben Jesson

Ben Jesson from Conversion Rate Experts gave an awesome presentation about how they increased the sales of SEOMoz.  The process seems pretty intense but has obvious benefits.

• Long copy works – especially for complex products.  Example: Amazon product pages and SEOMoz’s page
• Don’t think about selling, explain the value
• Use testimonials and “what’s on this page” box that links to anchors further down the page
• Get user feedback and find common objections – “Nobody is too important to find out why someone doesn’t want to buy your product”

Building a Killer In-House Web Marketing Team – Conrad Saam

Conrad is from Avvo and talked about how to build a great team and culture for In-House SEO’s.  I’ve never worked in-house but a lot of this information could apply to agencies and working with partners.

• SEO isn’t a standalone department.  They need to be involved with PR, Marketing, Sales, etc.
• Focus on realistic keywords
• SEO isn’t solely an art, use data backed decisions and keep testing

The seminar was hosted at the Westin in Downtown Seattle and everything seemed to run smoothly.  The lunch and snacks that were provided throughout the day were great. Perhaps the most amazing thing that happened was stable Internet and power available to everyone.

Overall, the seminar was really good and probably the best value of any seminar or search conference out there.  They pack a ton of good information into 2 days. I know a lot of work must have gone into setting up an event like this and SEOMoz definitely delivered.

I always struggle when I’m talking about or writing SEO and whether it should have an “a” or “an” in front of it.  In my opinion, it seems to flow more naturally when pronounced “an SEO” but from years and years of struggling to stay awake in English class, I was always taught that it would be “a SEO”.

I decided to poll some of the SEO guys here at OrangeSoda and see what they thought:

Alex McArthur: “…probably should be “a SEO”. But I say “an SEO” because it just feels right.”

Luis Bonilla: “..if you spell out the acronym and say “a search engine optimizer,” you would use “a.” If you were to use the acronym, you would use “an SEO.” To me, grammatically it makes more sense to use “an” because you’re actually saying the letter “ess,” and it doesn’t really matter structurally what the “S” stands for, it’s how you actually pronounce it. In my opinion, that’s the reason why saying “an SEO” flows more naturally….”

Mike Cook: “I asked my teacher this same question in my writing for digital media class last semester. It’s “an SEO” because you say it “S – E – O” because S is spelled “ess” when spelled out. So you’re really saying “an ess e o”. Now if you actually sounded out SEO (like NASA, PETA, etc.), saying it “see-yo” or whatever, you would use “a SEO (a see-yo).” But you don’t.”

Claye Stokes: I read a few blogs arguing the issue and asked two English major friends, and the consensus is that it is optional (there is no formal grammatical rule dictating one way or the other) – saying “an SEO” sounds right, but on paper, “a SEO” makes more sense because the written-out phrase that the initialism SEO represents is “Search Eng…”. Another perspective: acronym vs. initialism. NATO is an acronym, which can form a new word (pronounced phonetically, instead of being spelled out). That’s the key difference from an initialism such as BBC or SEO, which does not. If SEO were an acronym, I think we would be required to put “an” in front of it, but as an initialism, it is just an abbreviated form of “Search Engine Optimization” and not a word by itself.

So there you have it…I’ll no longer feel foolish for being confused or using the wrong wording. As Alex so eloquently put it, “it just feels right” so I’ll continue saying “an SEO”.  Another productive day in the books.

I have a particular website that ranks #1 for a few different key phrases.  I compared my December keyword referrals to Google’s approximate search volume for December and was very surprised to see that they don’t quite match up….at all.

Keyword #1

• Google claims approximately 33,100 searches in December
• My #1 ranking only received 2,428 visits from that keyword (a mere 7% of searches)

Keyword #2

• Google claims approximately 14,800 searches in December
• My site ranks in the 1st and 2nd position (with sitelinks on the first) and received 17,651 visits (about 120% of the supposed search volume).

I’ve read various studies about what percentage of clicks go to the 1st listings but these two examples are all over the board.

Because of sitelinks and having the top 2 rankings, I’d expect a higher CTR (click-thru-rate) for that keyword but 120% is a little unlikely.  On the other hand, I would expect greater than 7% of the searches with Keyword #1 even though it is just a single listing.

So this obviously leads me to question any keyword research done with Google’s tool.  Anyone else ever compared your analytics to Google’s approximate search volume?

Although I may be MIA from my own blog, I keep a close eye on many of the popular industry blogs.  I always like finding new blogs or bloggers who write great posts though.  Here are some of my recent favorites:

Ann Smarty – Search Engine Journal

Search Engine Journal is a very popular blog but I especially like Ann’s posts.  They always have practical, useful information you can apply to your website.

Claye Stokes – New Shoe Media

Claye is a web designer and a great SEO.  Because of his web design background, Claye often writes how-to’s and tutorials about on-site SEO and SEO-friendly web design

David Mihm – Mihmorandum

David is a well-known local SEO blogger.  In addition to his blog, he recently launched a great local SEO tool at GetListed.org.

OrangeSoda Enterprise – Internet Marketing Blog

I obviously couldn’t leave out the new OrangeSoda Enterprise blog.  This one is just getting started but subscribe now because there will be a flood of great information.

I recently gave a VERY quick 5 minute presentation on SEO at Crunch Lunch. It was a really cool event where there were 10 presenters, given 5 minutes each to discuss their topic.

You can view my SEO presentation and check out 9 others about various business topics.

This was the first Crunch Lunch event but there was a great turn out.  I hope to attend or speak at more in the future and would definitely recommend it to others.

Thanks to Cary and all other other great presenters.

I occassionally check my spam filter (even though GMail is the most accurate email service I’ve ever used) and was surprised to find spam from Google itself.

Stop spamming me Google!

Just added my Google User Profile – should be interesting to see how they use these in the future.

Bryan Phelps on Google