Posted by RobOusbey Search Engine Optimization covers a huge range of tactics - all of which can bring direct benefit to a website. In this post, I've shared examples of different tactics used at different websites, and the effects that have been seen. If you're considering an SEO campaign for your site, or are trying to persuade someone else to invest in internet marketing, I hope this post will help demonstrate the potential of internet marketing.

Posted by RobOusbey This is a graph of organic traffic for a theoretical site - they might be in an industry such as print advertising, construction equipment or VHS rental. The decline in traffic is pronounced and serious. A critical distinction when looking at a graph like this is whether the site's performance is increasingly worse than the competitors, or whether the whole industry is in decline.

Posted by RobOusbey There are very few tactics which can guarantee success in linkbuilding. Executed correctly, giving something away is one that gets close to fulfilling that promise. This post covers competitions and giveaways; I'll share techniques and tactics you can use, and will include links to some interesting competitions seen online recently, and some that we've run for clients.

Posted by RobOusbey Links. We often talk about why we want them and how to get them, but today I'd like to go back to basics and look at the constituent parts of the HTML code behind them. This is definitely a post for the new SEO, or web-developer looking to expand their experience, but even experienced search marketers may want to comment the nuances of some parts of the humble anchor tag's attributes.

Posted by RobOusbey This week, I'd like to make suggestions for a ' reading list ' to help SEOs, and others who work online, particularly with website strategies. But this list isn't going to be blogs, post and online articles, oh no. These suggestions are entirely offline. We're going into dead tree mode with eleven books and two magazines. Some of these suggestions you may want to flick through, some you may want to read cover to cover.

Posted by RobOusbey To make a valuable impact, SEO has to be understood by more than just an organisation's search marketers. This post suggests how to explain the concepts, and get buy-in, from different people within an organisation. I've chosen some of the standard roles that you may find in a company or organisation with a web-presence and for each one have listed: Their role: a description of their position within the company and their responsibilities.

Posted by RobOusbey Amongst the add-ons I add to any new install of Firefox is the Web Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick. )Find the install links at the bottom of this post.( Obviously, this add-on is chock-full of features that are useful for web developers, but it really does make diagnosing various SEO issues much easier. This list gives the top seven tasks that I find easier when the toolbar is installed.

Posted by RobOusbey Introduction We'll often rattle off various metrics quite casually in conversation, but it's easy to forget that others )such as your clients!( might not know whether these are big numbers or small ones. For example: " We've just published a guest post on a site with Domain mozTrust 5.67. Mr_Gadget mentioned it to his 64 thousand followers, and it managed to get over 1,000 Diggs.

Posted by RobOusbey A useful indicator of SEO success is the number of unique keyphrases that send traffic to a website. An increase in this number is a reflection of increased trust in the site by search-engines. Google Analytics can show you the total number of unique organic keyphrases at a glance, on the Traffic Sources Keywords page. )Make sure you select 'non-paid' to exclude any CPC campaigns.

Posted by RobOusbey Improving on-site search functionality can benefit a site by contributing to a better user experience, and by reducing the barriers for users to reach their destination pages. There are a variety of tools that you can use if your site does not already have a search functionality; I won't second guess which search application will best suit your site.

Posted by RobOusbey Hi there - I'm a blogger. Could help me? I read that massive post about ' lessons learned from three years of blogging ' and I've been brimming with ideas ever since. However, I'd like to attract more views to each of my posts. OK, I can help you with that, by using one equation and five quick techniques to get you thinking.

Posted by RobOusbey A few friends have asked me recently about how they can get their personal or business websites ranking higher in Google. I've tended to explain SEO - and link building in particular - quite differently to how I'd talk about it to Internet Marketing pros such as yourself. In particular, there's one piece of advice that I've given so much recently, that I thought it's worth mentioning here.

Posted by RobOusbey Link building for small ecommerce sites can be amongst the toughest SEO challenges - but also the most common. I'd like to share a few bits of advice for anyone rising to the challenge - whether you're working in-house or as an agency. These are targetted at small companies, probably with limited internal resource or a small SEO agency contract,

Posted by RobOusbey We all like links from big sites right? Whether it's in an editorial article, a guest post, etc, it's great for sending some strength and trust to your site. However, the drawback of links from big sites, is that you might find it's on a small page. The newly published page will take some time to get indexed, much of it's strength )certainly initially( is likely to come from internal links, and it's unlikely to have a great crawl rate.

Posted by RobOusbey As diligent Search Marketers know, it's quite a good idea to get links from strong/trusted sites pointing to yours, and combine this with building a single link or two from a large number of smaller websites. For some people, this second part can seem the most daunting - whilst there is a person you can talk to if you want a link on every page of timesonline.co.uk, there's nobody you can call or email to get a link from every small website or blog.

Posted by RobOusbey At this week's SMX, Rand made a comment about two big brands that ranked at #2 and #3 for their industry's generic keyword, behind an exact match domain. Referring to SERPs Click-Through-Rate data , he suggested that you could calculate how much more traffic the larger brand could receive from the keyword by moving from position 2 to position 1. At the risk of getting a stern talking to, I'm going to have to ask: really?

Posted by RobOusbey I hope you read this post and enjoy it. I also hope you never need it. In the 'current economic climate' there is a chance that any company may have to 'restructure' or even cease trading altogether. These events are no fun for any employees involved, but I'd like to share some advice that will help you prepare for and cope with the worst situation if it arises. Negotiating Your Redundancy If you are being made redundant,

Posted by RobOusbey When Rand Fishkin managed to get engaged and generate hundreds of links at the same time, he realised that there might just be something in this RomanceBait idea. Since the partnership between SEOmoz and Distilled began, ideas had been floated for creating new linkbait along similar lines. After a late-night brainstorm, the concept of having almost simultaneous weddings on either side of the Atlantic moved into planning stages.