Don’t cry! I’m still around, but have decided to go to a more professional domain, regain my blogging focus & try to start afresh.

So with that said, here’s where I’m still around:-

• For SEO/Social Media style posts (the kind you’ve seen recently), check out the website for Winwar Media. I’m writing a bunch of posts on the site.
• A lot of people over the course of my blog commented that I should write more personal posts. I’m posting it in my new personal blog – Rhys Wynne.
• Also, I’ll still be posting on Retro Garden.
• At the moment, I’ll still be having the WordPress Plugins & bbPress Plugins on this site (though this will change soon to the Winwar site).
• Be sure to check out my OIO Publisher Review, my most popular post in the last year, or read the blog archive.

I look forward to seeing you at one of those sites. I’ve enjoyed blogging here – this domain was bought by my brother – has gone from Blogger to WordPress, and saw me move from being a mere hobbyist blogger into something more permanent.

I hope to see you again soon!

Rhys

Super_Carly@rhyswynne … Internet (Google) cushion,  Google Lava Lamp, SEO Chick T-shirt…. (for me, not you)

JoannaButler@rhyswynne Free wi-fi AND electricity in all coffee shops for on-the-go nerding! Or a free SEO Dojo subscription.

DeanCruddace@rhyswynne a 12 bottle box of 1 litre Southern Comfort, thanks in advance

emiliebartlett@rhyswynne a wine cellar (cupboard) that never runs out, and a name that people don’t constantly misspell (IT’S NOT EMILY!)

littleladyjane@rhyswynne i want to be in it! ive ordered myself a 25th anniversary white carebear. ftw? http://tinyurl.com/2up7yyy

Mr603@rhyswynne a case of Chimay Grande Reserve would be lovely.

ismepete@rhyswynne Havana club anejo blanco – case would be good!

JestaThaRogue@rhyswynne Seeing as they’re all alcohol based, a case of Disserono and 42 cans of Pepsi Max

juliecheung@rhyswynne I want my teeth laser whitened for Christmas! And some base layers and waterproof socks for my BMF training

A mixed bag, I’m sure you agree. Question is, what are you hoping for for Christmas?

RetroGamerVXUploading my #r3play video now, fingers crossed it works

meanmachinesmagRT @Sega_Mega_Drive: Started on the #r3play write up for #meanmachinesarchive , enjoying putting it together.

Sega_Mega_DriveStarted on the #r3play write up for #meanmachinesarchive , enjoying putting it together.

rhyswynneIn case you haven’t seen this – the coolest thing I saw at #r3play: Twitter client on a ZX Spectrum – http://bit.ly/dqmrfCTue

Of course, with something like Blackbird Pie you can embed individual tweets into your site, which can be great for tracking & blogging the key takeaways of the conference from everybody else. Furthermore it lets your blogging community know the influencers, getting them some followers.

But how about events? I did this with my recent trip around Europe with the whole purpose of blogging it, but unfortunately (for reasons I’ll explain later) it didn’t work.

You can use hashtags to microblog events that you attend. I’ve been playing around with a small script recently (with a help of ODesk) that is designed to turn your twitter feed into a post on your blog.

What you do is use a hashtag that nobody else will ever use. For my trip around Europe I used the hashtag #rhysvseurope, and for the event I tweeted last night (Burscough FC vs. Colwyn Bay) I used #buscoughvsbay. Basically silly tweets.

You can then at a later date use the Twitter Search & Blackbird Pie to get all your tweets from the event.

rhyswynneRight I’m off to Burscough for #burscoughvsbay – wish us luck!

rhyswynneOn train to #burscoughvsbay. Awfully slow going ATM.

rhyswynneTrain is running a bit late for #burscoughvsbay. May miss kick off. I NEVER miss kick off.

rhyswynneHad trouble getting in. Not because I’m scum, Burscough has the world narrowest turnstiles. #burscoughvsbay

rhyswynneBurscough come out to music & an enthusiastic DJ. I know the tune, but only as Helmut’s theme from Street Racer #burscoughvsbay

rhyswynne#burscoughvsbay bit ping pong at the moment. Freezing ones bits off.

rhyswynne#burscoughvsbay ref is so biased towards Burscough even they notice it, referring to the ref as Uncle Jim. Lovely!

rhyswynne0-0 HT. To all intents & purposes Burscough should be 1-0 up. Bay playing average. #burscoughvsbay

rhyswynne15 mins into second. Bit ping pong again! #burscoughvsbay

rhyswynne#burscoughvsbay Burscough have 4 solitary seats in one stand. I’ve been told they were 4 seats short of minimum regs. Game is terrible.

rhyswynne#burscoughvsbay YYYYYEEEAAAAHHHH….DAMMIT! Goal disallowed for offside. Sheds knocked it over from 6 yards out. Open goal. Still cold.

rhyswynneFinal score 0-0. Off to get warm in the clubhouse. Pint of fosters extra cold barkeep! #burscoughvsbay

rhyswynneTrain cancelled. Anybody going from Burscough to Manchester in the car? #burscoughvsbay

rhyswynne#burscoughvsbay Right train not arrived. Taxi not arrived. Relying on two people who are taxi drivers. In pub for cheeky half.

rhyswynneTRAINS ARRIVED!!! #burscoughvsbay

rhyswynne#burscoughvsbay finally home. 3 hours after game finished, and a £12 cab fare lighter. Tomorrow’s job? Get #northernrailpaymycab trending

The issue I had – and the warning to learn? Don’t hang around! By the time I got around to blogging about #rhysvseurope, the twitter search had archived the tweets, making them unsearchable. I could use Google, but it’s not 100% accurate, so if you are to blog an event, make sure you grab the tweets as early as you can.

Nichola Stott – The Business Of Search

Nichola Stott, before co-founding theMediaFlow, was head of Yahoo!’s Commercial Search Partnerships, and in her talk she shared insight into why search engine’s do what they do as commercial entity.

Before plunging into a maths lesson – which are covered on her slides – she shared that certain searches have no commercial value for Google, information searches (for example, see this search for fleming’s left hand rule) don’t have any sort of Google Ads. Try it yourself!

From her figures, she worked out that Google has an average earning of around £22.55 per 1000 searches, which seems like a phenomenal amount, and the only way that is likely to increase is by improving the click through ratio in the search engine. To do this, you’d have to make search results:-

• Improving matching technologies
• Reduce search abandonment rate
• Improve total result relevance

In short, make searches more relevant.

Google does most – if not all – of it’s testing on the page 1 results of Google, so if you are on page one for your search term, you’re ranking will be a testing bed for Google’s algorithms.

What to take away: In order to maintain rankings at the top of the search engine, make your website incredibly relevant to the search term you want to rank for.

Barry Adams – Optimising for Google News

Barry Adams shared some of his insights during his time working at the Belfast Telegraph, particularly in how to rank in Google News. Google News results are now integrated within natural search results, and you can get some nice (if slightly intermittent) rankings for PR results.

There are three ways to get into Google News:-

• Start a News Site
• A Paid Advertorial
• Press Releases

Tips to Start Up A News Site

To get into Google News as a website, you need the following:-

• Original Content
• Multiple Authors
• Regular Updates: this takes two forms – new stories & updating existing stories, this can be updating current blog posts & updating new ones.
• Develop an editorial strategy & a niche – unless you want to be a generic news site. These are trickier to get into Google News.
• Make your images non-clickable.
• Have a Google News XML Sitemap

As you can imagine, this is a tough set of criteria to hit.

Tips to Rank in Google News

Google News’ search ranking algorithm isn’t as smart as Google’s search algorithm (with good reason, spam sites don’t get into Google News due to it’s editorial policy), so you can appear in Google News with a little bit of work. To do this, Barry shared some tips:-

• Write a good press release – simple really!
• Target high volume  keywords – again you can afford to be bold, as if they get picked up by the general news sites, then you will rank in Google Search for that keyword – do any search for a high volume keyword & you will see Google News results.
• Pick a good accompanying image – photos of relevant people mentioned in the press release work well, clipart doesn’t!
• Spread article far & wide with pr distribution channels, submit to news sites that accept pr & paid content – don’t worry about duplicate content.
• Build relationships with editors – it’ll make your job easier.
• Generate news regularly – but don’t spam.

What To Take Away: Using Google News as a channel for ranking content in your site can be done, but you need great press releases that get picked up by the major news sites. Or you can pay for advertorials.

Kelvin Newman – The Psychology of Link Building

Kelvin Newman gave a talk on how to help your link building. Thing is, websites don’t link to websites, people link to websites.

There are three factors that influence all of our link building:-

• Gut feeling.
• Habit.
• What Rand Fishkin says.

He then shared a bunch of psychology problems that had their own conclusions, these included:-

• The Candle Problem – This can be applied to link building in that people aren’t always cash incentivised for a link. You can get great links by being creative & thinking outside the box.
• The Trucker & Gate Problem – This can be applied that collaboration can work better than competiton. Working with your rivals with similar promotions, particularly with guest blogging, can still get results. If you work with your rivals, you both win.
• Social Identity Theory - Groups of people form instantly, this can be applied to link building by creating a community around your blog. Even more than that, give a name to your readers (or in my case, you little Gospelites), in that it creates a sense of belonging amongst your readers. Loyal readers are linking readers.

What To Take Away: Read Spring.org.uk. Religiously.

Neil Walker – SEO Forecasting

Neil Walker‘s talk on forecasting SEO was aimed more at individuals who had to sell SEO as part of a marketing plan. However, thanks to him having a lot of data to play with (over 166,000 keywords tracked), he has a lot of experience in forecasting results for SEO.

His presentation was hugely interesting, but hugely complicated, and he’s explained it a bajillion times better than I ever could. You should check out the SEO Forecasting the holy grail, if you ever want to work out just how effective SEO can be!

The After Party & Conclusion

Overall it was a great conference, a good afternoon away from work. I enjoyed it immensely, particularly the networking event after (bar the curry, which I felt for days after). It was good meeting Nichola, Dean & catching up with Kev and everybody else in Mancseo. In May it is Sascon – which is a 2 day SEO & Social Media conference in Manchester. I’m likely to attend, I suggest you do too.

Further Round Up

• A post on the Mancseo Page has the Presentations from the Mancseo Mini Conference.
• Attacat has a round up of the Business of Search, Psychology of Linkbuilding, Optimising for Google News & Forecasting for SEO Presentations.
• Dean Cruddace was Outraged at Mancseo.

When it comes to serious link building, a strategy that involves nothing more than social bookmarking just won’t cut it anymore.

If you have NO IDEA where to find good links this little article will help you to get started: you’ll find GREAT places for links, you’ll produce links that hold MORE WEIGHT AND they won’t be spammy. To boot, these links will help your rankings in the long run – unlike social bookmarking, they don’t just provide a short-term boost.

PLUS – There’s a FREE download with this post to keep you busy!<

So, let’s get started:

An important thing to determine first: Why bother? Why don’t we just submit to a couple of social bookmarking sites instead?

Well, a few years back social bookmarking lost its importance (in link building) because of spam. Now, social bookmarking is pretty useless for SEO (well, unless your page gets thousands of Diggs, or you’re optimising for the world’s longest-tail phrase). By bookmarking pages you’re just temporarily fooling Google into thinking they’re important. After a few days the ranking will drop and frankly, it just isn’t really worth it.

Instead, you should build quality links on niche community sites and show Google that people are engaging, sharing and commenting around your content.

This can lead to BIG RANKS.

Further, a niche community is a dedicated group of people willing to talk about your topic, it’ll bring targeted link sharers AND potential customers to your site. You’ll be able to build trust and authority PLUS <network with people in your niche who could offer you with great SEO opportunities later on.

To do this, you should try:

Posting quality news & articles

Let’s be clear: I’m not talking about starting up a blog. That’s SEO 101.

I’m talking about joining specialised communities/groups and posting interesting, relevant and useful content in them. And as long as the content you’re posting is valuable, the odd APPROPRIATELY placed link should be fine.

To get started, first join Gather and find groups centered on appropriate topics to the niche you’re optimising for. Now write quality articles and post them into those groups.

Example: Optimising for the term ‘pet shop’: Find a group about pets and post well-written pet care articles in the group. A single link to your (or your client’s) pet shop will be fine as long as they’re in context.

Some other places you should try: Instablogs, Snipsley, SheToldMe, Zimbio, Xomba.

Remember: the key is to write news about your industry and craft articles that people will be interested in, share and promote. Learn how to write great articles when you’re not too familiar with the topic by visiting my blog here.

Why not make your own social network?

If you can’t find a social network appropriate to your niche, create one. You can build a DIY social network for free. Usually they’re really easy to set up. I suggest spending A LOT of time getting the design and content just right. Make your social network attractive, interesting and appealing and people will join.

TOP TIP: Mail out past customers or subscribers and alert them about the new community. Their active participation will attract new members too!

To get started, visit Web Jam and sign up. Create a ‘hub’ of information, news and stories. This site isn’t fussy about how many links you use but remember: the idea is to attract OTHER people to participate in your hub.

Try these places too: Slinkset, Grou.ps, Spruz, Igloo, Social go, Grouply, Mixxt, Big Tent, Qlubb, Elgg.

How to find these great communities yourself!

If you’d like to find niche communities yourself, I have three top tips for you on my blog:

• Using Google’s advanced search operators
• ‘Sites like’ sites, and
• Tools including Google discussions and BoardReader.

You can read my Niche Communities blog post here.

Bonus: Free Download

Do you want loads of my social media links?  Hundreds of blogs, websites, communities and resources directly in your bookmarks folder?  If so, visit my website here and you can have my stash for free.  They’re neatly organised for ease of use too!

This guest post was written for my blog by Carly (AKA SuperCarly) who really doesn’t deserve any links in the bio because she snuck several into her post.  But because I think she’s so lovely she can have one to her blog anyway: http://www.supercarly.co.uk

Needless to say she wrote her own bio.

Unless you’ve been living under the bloggers’ equivalent of a rock you’ll know that page load speed is becoming ever more important as a factor in your site’s success.

Giving your readers a fast, clean loading page has always been a top priority on my sites. It’s all about the users’ experience.

Then, back in April, Google announced to the world that it was including page load speed in its search results algorithm.

So if it wasn’t important to you before, it should certainly have become so at at point.

Over this past year I’ve taken 4 major steps specifically designed to improve page load times. And on each occasion I got a step up in page views – by nearly 30% after the last step.

Faster site load times benefit you in all sorts of ways!

Optimise Your Images

Images are notoriously slow to load, so optimizing them for the web is a necessity – especially if you use a lot of images.

If you have Microsoft Picture Manager you can optimize them with one click, but you don’t get much control over size or quality. For more control here’s a useful tool:

Image Optimiser

Enter the image URL, or browse to one on your PC, click the Optimise button and select the quality level you need from the optimized results when they’re displayed.

Activate Gzip

Gzip works like WinZip except that it sits on your server and zips (compresses) the page files requested by your browser before they leave the server.

I’ve achieved reductions in the amount of data transferred for a page by up to 70%, just by activating Gzip – which greatly speeds up the page load time.

This works particularly well on Linux/Apache servers and is very easy to implement. Just copy this code:

# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

… and paste it into the .htaccess file, which you should place in your root folder.

When you’ve activated Gzip you can check that it’s working (and see the reduction in file size) here. Just type in your web page URL and click ‘Check’.

Make sure your styling is contained in an external CSS file

Putting all your styling into an external CSS file, which you link to in the <head> section of your page, means that the styling attributes for your site only have to be loaded once by the browser, instead of each time the page loads.

If you’re using one of the blogging platforms (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, etc) you’ll already be using external stylesheets.

Just make sure that when you’re customizing your site you make your changes to the theme’s (or template’s) style.css file rather than in the code of each page.

If you’re building pages with an HTML editor then creating an external stylesheet (rather than incorporating your styling commands into each page) will take a bit longer initially but bring noticeable speed benefits.

Put your JavaScript into an external JS file

The logic here is exactly the same as for putting styling into an external CSS file, particularly where you have functions that are repeated on several pages.

The browser only needs to load the JS file once, instead of for each page, and the content to code ratio on your page is improved.

Place your JS snippets into an external .js file and link to it in the <head> section of your page.

If you’re using WordPress review your plugins

There are some wonderful plugins out there that add all sorts of functionality to WordPress. There are also some shockers.

All plugins add overhead to your site and, in cases where the plugin needs to access a different server to do its stuff, they can really slow down page load times.

Critically review each plugin on your site and, if it’s not giving you a clear benefit, or there are other ways to achieve what it’s doing, deactivate and remove it.

An example of an alternative way of replicating a plugin’s function: I use RSS via TwitterFeed, rather than plugins, to tweet my blog posts to Twitter and Facebook.

WordPress again: Install and activate one of the Caching plugins

Having just suggested you review and remove plugins this may sound a little contradictory, but it falls under the category of delivering a clear benefit.

I recently installed and activated the W3-Total-Cache plugin on my site, and this is the step that brought a nearly 30% increase in page views.

It’s not rocket science: if your site is delivering a consistently good, fast user experience people are more likely to stick around and browse, bookmark it and return.

And, by the way, if you opt for W3-Total-Cache you won’t need to activate Gzip – it’s covered in the plugin.

Summary

It’s not difficult to speed up your page load times. The less work you can give the browser to do, and the smaller the amount of data that’s sent for each page, the quicker the page will load.

The benefits will be more page views per visit and an increase in search traffic – as long as your site is providing good content and loads faster than your competitors’ sites!

Martin Malden grew up in Zimbabwe and now lives in Hong Kong. He writes a blog on Internet Marketing Tips and Techniques.

Link Attrition = en masse links from as many sites as possible.

Well if you believe a link is a link then the attrition approach will be favoured over the quality link, yet we as SEOs already know that building a relationship or crafting a carefully thought out email to your link prospect will reap the goals we are targeting and that is only 2 of a multitude of ways to gain a valuable link.

Links by attrition are going to end in tears, I am not talking about naturally gained editorial links gained through great content, more links that are gained through forcing your content on others through your bots who seek out weaknesses in your WordPress install. Try turning Askimet off for 5 minutes to see what I mean.

Still the bane of any site we still have floods of spammy link attempts on our content. Why?

Lock it Down

You could very well remove the commenting system altogether within your WP install, a few bloggers do this already for varying reasons, but what if the food of your site is the comments and interaction of your visitors? Taking away the option to comment or respond to your articles does not become an option. So what are the alternatives?

A Different Commenting Platform?

A different commenting platform in the cloud such as Disqus or Intense Debate can be an option, but what if that services ceases to exist? What happens to all of the comments you have gathered?

WordPress Plugins to Tackle Spam

There are a number of plugins to take care of your persistent spam commenting bots (and users). Askimet comes as standard in every WP install but if you have just set up a commercial venture you may not be keen on paying the monthly while your blog is still a little fresh faced. In this instance I would recommend something like WP-Ban, robust and with enough options to tackle the most annoying spam bot. A recent attempt on my site yielded 144 comments before I stopped the rot through WP Ban, I let these trickle through because I have another evil plan for that spammer but that`s a story for another day, suffice it to say I have enough details about this aggressive spammer that I will use to turn the tables.

Why So Much Spam Commenting?

Spam commenting is still on the increase (Askimet Stats) yet we still offer up the ability for the easy link to the spammer through bad protection or even the unthinkable, un-moderated comments. Aside from the generated comments from a script that targets unprotected sites we have the commenter who thinks he can get an easy link from a site just by filling your comment form out with a probably copied and pasted sentence into every blog that does not use nofollow, Nichola Stott posted a great article on recognising comment spam back in February.

So How Do We Stop Spammers in Their Tracks?

1. Get protected with a decent plugin for your site/blogging platform
2. If their mother did not call them “Keyword in the URL field” then neither should you
3. Kill their cat

Dean Cruddace, when not praising the glory that is Darren Bent, can be seen at SEO Begin Ltd – a Sunderland Based SEO firm. His twitter handle is @DeanCruddace.

This blog isn’t going to stop though, as I’ve got some great blog posts to publish over the next two weeks, here’s the current line up (in chronological order):-

• Dean Cruddace (@DeanCruddace) of SEO Begin will kick off tomorrow with his look at Comment Spam, why people do it and most importantly, how to stop it.
• Martin Malden (@abledragon) of Wealthy Dragon will provide 6 hardcore tips of speeding up your WordPress Installation.
• Carly Wood (@Super_Carly) of Super Carly has given us a blog post on how to link build effectively using community portals & niche websites, as well as providing us with her bookmarking folder of 500 websites you can get links from!
• Murray Picton (@murraypicton) will post about how to create your very own WordPress Plugin, with an example of a simple one using very simple PHP.

Make them feel welcome, read & promote their posts. I will be doing similar if & when I can get online.

In one small piece of news, due to the success of the guest posting (the four posts above were chosen from about 8 that came in, of varying standards!), I’m going to open this blog u to more guest posts. So if you want to guest post for me, please read my Guest Post page. When I’m back from the land of chocolates & cuckoo clocks, I’ll add it to the top menu.

Don’t worry! I’ll still be posting regularly, after all, it’s my blog, but it’ll give me time to effectively promote this fine portion of the information superhighway.

See you soon!

With that said, I am now beginning to openly accept guest posts.

It’s a way of hopefully increasing both the quality & quantity of my posts, as well as giving some of you a platform for your posts.

All guest posts will be placed in front of an audience of thousands (1,500 RSS subscribrs), as well as mentioned within my blogging newsletter at the beginning of every month.

Furthermore, SEO wise it makes sense. This domain is 5 years old, and is a home page page rank of 4.

Interested? Have a look at the Guest Post Guidelines, and either comment here or contact me.

I was nippy, around about Tuesday night (2 days after the conference finished), going for length as opposed to speed (largely because Sunday & Monday were written off due to a stonking hangover). Sure I got a bit of feedback, but not as much as those who were quick off the mark, who shook off the hangover from the conference, and grafted their arses off to write a roundup post. These got the most buzz, links & comments.

It’s not just Think Visibility, I’ve seen this time & time again, hell I’ve been on the beneficial side of this: the biggest traffic day (by a country mile) in the last year has been My Take on the #thesiswp Drama – which went from concept to completion within 45 minutes or so. No more than 2 hours since the end of the actual drama that took place.

Then again, it could’ve been a rubbish post, but more and more I think if you’re offering an opinion (rather than fact) on a news event, then you should be as close as possible to the actual event.

But how do you provide insightful blog posts after an event? Well there’s a semi-cheating way I use for certain events to get my thoughts up even before the event even begins. I will share it in my next post.