Posted by Tom_C Paywalls are a hot topic online at the moment. In the UK The Times has recently put their whole site behind a pay wall and in early 2011 the New York Times is set to also go behind a pay wall. Both of these sites are part of the News Corporation empire and join sites such as the Wall Street Journal which has been behind a paywall for some time already.

Posted by Tom_C Wouldn't it be great if you could somehow spot those SEO opportunities on your site which were low effort and high value? Well this post gives you a few ways you can do that! Sweet. I'm going to be digging around in the recently released search queries report in Google Webmaster Tools: Step 1 - Gathering The Fruit The first thing we need to do is gather all the fruit )aka keyphrases(.

Posted by Tom_C Howdy mozzers. Since a lot of people in the search space are geeks, it naturally follows that there are plenty of single SEO guys and gals. Therefore this post is for you! Actually, it's more of a collection of random SEO tips and tricks I've picked up recently that I decided to hang together by applying the tips to online dating at the same time! Disclaimer: I'm going to reference OKCupid throughout this post. They are not a client,

Posted by Tom_C User Generated Content pretty much rules the web these days. If a website isn't including comments, blogs, reviews, thumbs up or polls then frankly it might as well be a book instead of a website. Lame. So this post is all about how to squeeze the most SEO benefit out of your user generated content. Remember folks that even if you don't have "classical" user generated content these tips are applicable if you put out a large amount of content,

Posted by Tom_C I'm no business guru. I've never run or owned a business. But from what I've overheard from smart people who do run businesses, developing a Unique Selling Proposition )USP( is crucial to succeeding. It's the essence of being remarkable which is what Seth Godin talks about a lot . It's one of the first questions that I ask clients when they come on board - "What's your USP? Tell me why you're better than your competitors".

Posted by Tom_C There's been some talk recently in the SEO industry about 'crawl allowance' - it's not a new concept but Matt Cutts recently talked about it openly with Eric Enge at StoneTemple )and you can see Rand's illustrated guide too(. One big question however is how do you understand how Google is crawling your site?

Posted by Tom_C I was at a recent client meeting for a new project and we were brainstorming ideas. After considering all kinds of wacky schemes, plots, techniques and tactics we came up with what is, in essence, a very simple linkbuilding technique. In the interests of openess I wanted to share it with you, I'm just nice like that. :-( This idea works best when you are working in an industry where the value of the items that you are selling is high,

Posted by Tom_C This post was inspired by Rand. If I'm honest, I'm not sure how many of my posts aren't inspired by Rand... Specifically however it was this tweet which set the wheels in motion )if ever so slowly(: The link that Rand twittered was this one to the Financial Times . It's a story about checklists. Yeah, *yawn* right? Well not quite - you see these checklists, used by all kinds of people from pilots to doctors,

Posted by Tom_C So it's a new year )doesn't 2010 feel like the future?!( and it's a new you. As Pete blogged last week plenty of new year's resolutions are being set. For many this may involve getting a better or job or getting paid more money. This post is for you. Hopefully by the time you've read this post you'll have some ideas to turbocharge your career. First, I present you with a brief personal history.

Posted by Tom_C This past week saw the launch of Google's real-time search and quite frankly everyone flipped out. And justifiably so, it's not often that our SERPs get torn up so much in a new way like this. Questions I'd love to see the answer to are things like: What triggers real-time one-boxes? How long do they last? Are they tied to a geographic location? Are they tied to a language? Unfortuantely I think it's a bit early to have answers to questions like this,

Posted by Tom_C There are literally a bazillion SEO tools on the internet )literally!(, this post discusses just one such tool; Xenu's Link Sleuth. Many people in the SEO industry are already aware of this tool but many people I've spoken to only treat the tool as a broken link finder. It's so much more than that.

Posted by Tom_C Here's a directly actionable tip that any large brand should probably start doing right now. In fact most people should already have started doing it. Hopefully after reading this post they will. Take a look at these two searches: Promo Codes )US keyphrase:( Voucher Codes )UK keyphrase( Out of all those brand searches across both the UK and the US not a single brand ranks number 1 for their own brand keyphrase. Yes, I was shocked too. In fact,

Posted by Tom_C Howdy Folks, Unlike most of the posts that I've put out recently which are more strategy based this post is a from-the-trenches-tip which I've recently come across that I thought I'd share. I'm going to talk all about using the Google Analytics API but I'll show you how anyone can do it, you don't need to be a developer! All you need is a Google Analyics account and Excel.... Introducing..... Excellent Analytics! Excellent Analytics? Am I just bragging now? No,

Posted by Tom_C One thing that you'll hear over and over again in the SEO industry is "make sure that you embed SEO in your business". I know I've said it a lot at conferences and in client meetings but what does it actually mean? Well this post is chock full of tips to help you actually embed SEO in your business. Since I've not long come back from the Seattle SEOmoz Pro Training Seminar )which was totally awesome by the way!

Posted by Tom_C While brainstorming potential blog post topics I decided that keyphrase research doesn't get enough love here and I merrily agreed to write a post on the topic. Little did I know that this would result in a morning of maths. Monday morning to be precise. Monday maths morning. I might make that a recurring theme. This post is going to be all about the adcenter Ad Intelligence plugin for Microsoft Excel . For those that don't know what it is,

Posted by Tom_C Google Authorization is a topic which crops up a fair amount in our day-to-day search wanderings. Not really because clients are asking if we're authorized but more because they always claim that previous SEO companies they received pitches from claimed to be Google Authorized SEO consultants. Unfortunately )fortunately?!( no such certification exists so we have to set them straight. In addition to that,

Posted by Tom_C Hello hello, today I'm going to talk a little about Google Local. The things I'm talking about aren't necessarily new or ground-breaking, but I think it's important to expose them to the Moz readership as Local isn't something that's talked about all that often on here and there are quite a few intricacies which you should be aware of when dealing with local optimisation,

Posted by Tom_C While answering Q&A the other day it occurred to me that a lot of questions we see are basically the same question asked over and over again in different formats. In answering these questions we often end up re-using the same responses time and time again so I thought it would be a good idea to create a bit of an FAQ based off some of the most informative questions and answers which we've answered over the past couple of years.

Posted by Tom_C Hello, my name is Tom, you've seen me guest blog here before but today I'm blogging and ill. So I'm going to dispense with the usual chit-chat approach and lay out the facts. Some of you may even like it that way! Shame on you. Still, here's the content. Google Base aka Google Shopping aka Google Products What do you know about Google Base?

Posted by Tom_C The inspiration for this blog post came to me when I was lying on my sofa reading the Guardian newspaper over the weekend. I was at home and so didn't have any of the following to hand: iphone pen regular phone internet Now, you might think they're not really essential tools for reading a newspaper but you'd be wrong. While reading the paper I was struck, time and time again, by the use of TinyURL to encode long links into a newsprint format. Of course,