Computer and Internet

Contextual ads are typically pay-per-click ads. The ads are delivered based on the content of the page on the blog where the ads will be displayed. In theory, the ads shown on the page should be relevant to the content of the page thereby increasing the chance that someone will click on them. Google AdSense & Kontera are examples of contextual advertising oppportunities.

Text Link Ads:

Ads that are not served based on the content of a blog's page but rather are placed based on specific text in the posts of a blog are called text link ads. Text Link Brokers & Text-Link-Ads are examples of text link advertising opportunities.

Impression-Based Ads:

Ads that pay bloggers based on the number of times the ad appears on the blog are called impression-based ads. FastClick & Tribal Fusion are examples of impression-based advertising opportunities.

Affiliate Ads:

Affiliate ads give bloggers a choice of programs to provide links to products. Bloggers are paid when someone purchases the advertised product. Amazon Associates & eBay Affiliates are examples of affiliate advertising programs.

Direct Ads:

Many bloggers offer an option for visitors to purchase advertising space on their blogs. Direct ads are typically shown in the form of banner ads or similar display ads provided directly to the blogger by the advertiser to be uploaded to the blog. Pricing and payment methods vary from blogger to blogger (often dependent on the amount of traffic the blog receives). Direct advertisers on blogs are sometimes called sponsors of that blog.

Reviews:

Reviews (often called sponsored reviews) are an indirect form of advertising on blogs. A company might contact a blogger directly asking them to write a review for a product, business, website, etc. If the blogger is paid to write the review, then it is a form of advertising revenue. Some companies offer forms of review advertising such as PayPerPost.

1. Write Great Content

No one will want to return to your blog if your content is updated sporadically or has nothing original to say. Keep your blog's content fresh and establish a tone for your blog, then stick to it. Readers want to feel connected to you. Blogging is a two-way conversation, so inject some personality into your content, provide valuable and meaningful content to your readers and develop a conversation with your readers. Blog's that can achieve those goals are ones that will find loyal readers who are likely to subscribe to that blog's feed.

2. Make It Easy to Subscribe

You've got great content, now you need to make it as easy as possible for readers to subscribe to your blog's feed. Make sure your subscription link is positioned in a highly visible location on every page in your blog. The top of the page is a great place for your subscription icon. You may also want to put a subscription link between your blog posts.

3. Ask Readers to Subscribe

It's not too aggressive to ask readers to subscribe. Sometimes a gentle reminder is all it takes to encourage someone to subscribe to your blog. Consider including a request at the end of your best blog posts saying, "If you enjoyed this post, why not subscribe to my feed?" Of course, include a link to your feed subscription page to make it as easy as possible for your readers to act on your reminder.

4. Offer a Freebie to Subscribers

A great way to increase the number of subscribers to your blog is to offer subscribers something extra such as a free gift or additional information that could be helpful to them. For example, you may want to send subscribers a free ebook that provides additional information about your blog's topic or a free newsletter. You could also send a free gift that's tied to your blog's topic. The key is to offer a freebie that is meaningful and useful to your readers and provides added value to their experiences on your blog.

5. Promote Your Blog's Popularity by Showing the Number of Subscribers

Once your blog starts to generate some decent traffic and subscribers, you should promote that success to your readers. For example, if your blog has over 100 subscribers, show that figure on your blog (Feedburner provides code to do this automatically). Whatever number seems significant to you, once you reach that number of subscribers, start to advertise your popularity by displaying it on your blog. Casual visitors are likely to see that number and say, "If 500 other people think this blog is good enough to subscribe to, then it must be good. I better subscribe, too."

Why is RSS Helpful?:

RSS simplifies the process of reading blogs. Many bloggers & blog enthusiasts, have a dozen/more blogs they visit on a daily basis. It can be time consuming to have to type in each URL & move from one blog to another. When people subscribe to blogs, they receive the feed for each blog they've subscribed to & can read those feeds in a single location through a feed reader. New posts for each blog a person subscribes to are displayed in the feed reader, so it's quick & easy to find who has posted something new & interesting rather than searching each individual blog to find that new content.

What is a Feed Reader?:

A feed reader is the software used to read the feeds people subscribe to. Many websites offer feed reader software for free & you simply access your aggregated feed content through a username & password on that website. Popular feed readers include Google Reader & Bloglines.

How Do I Subscribe to a Blog's Feed?:

To subscribe to a blog's feed, first register for an account with the feed reader of your choice. Then simply select the link, tab/icon identified as 'RSS' or 'Subscribe' (or something similar) on the blog you'd like to subscribe to. Typically, a window will open asking you which feed reader you'd like to read the blog's feed in. Choose your preferred feed reader & you're all set. The blog's feed will start appearing in your feed reader.

How Do I Create an RSS Feed for My Blog?:

Creating a feed for your own blog is easily done by visiting the Feedburner website & registering your blog. Next, you'll add code provided by Feedburner to a specific location on your blog & your feed is ready to go!

What is the Email Subscription Option?:

And that's how you gain ownership of an idea - by writing about it & developing the topic & expanding on tangents, etc. The more you're associated with it, the more likely you are to get referenced in association with it. Being able to measure your social networks, obviously matters a lot to knowing how far your ideas can spread; having a friend like you tells me that I can reach readers of Blog-tips-tricks.blogspot.com & thus potentially gain links from them for ideas I own.

Of course, on that particular idea I'd be an oaf not to mention this post by Lee Dodd, where he shared the same distribution idea, albeit with some different tactics, way ahead of me. So that's an idea whose ownership I think we might be sharing, if I can get Lee to agree to that.

What is Universal Search & how can bloggers use Universal Search for multiple listings?

Universal Search is something that search engines have been implementing for several months now & it's the blending of non-traditional items into search. The most prevalent right now seem to be video results (especially from Youtube, for those of you interested in Search Engine Reputation Management) & maps results.

Depending on the query, Google Base products (i.e., for ecommerce queries) also show up & we're seeing Google News a fair bit too.

Search isn't just about the ten blue links anymore & it's increasingly becoming a question of how many places on the page can you occupy using results from other mediums that the search engines blend into the results. Whereas a lot of this used to be seen/done mostly by reputation management pros, it's increasingly happening for competitive commercial queries too.

For bloggers, the best ways into Universal Search are getting into Google News as well as ranking for local results. You might take BrandCurve/Marketing Blurb & submit them as businesses to the search engines' local listings areas. Then, to get ranked, I suggest you see this local search engine ranking factors survey compiled by David Mihm, featuring the opinions & experience of himself, another 18 local SEO experts & yours truly.

Notice also that David put in the work to organize that, come up with questions, contact & assemble the answers of 19 other pros besides himself & then design a nice layout for it. He definitely has a large ownership stake in the 'local SEO ranking factors' topic now.

For those also hawking products through their blogs, Google Base might be an interesting avenue to pursue, though I personally don't know as much as I should, unfortunately.

Can you give any recommendations for how bloggers can experiment with SEO?

Absolutely. Set up a variety of blogs on Blogger & monetize them really aggressively. Adsense & affiliate ads with obvious tracking codes should fill the page. You'll see that Google probably asks you to enter a captcha for every new post you want to create. They've tied aggressive monetization to spammers & are using that to help filter out splogs (spam blogs). You can then take that idea & avoid monetizing with ads/affililiate ads until you've really built up a big audience; your site will take longer to get trusted otherwise.

Generally, to experiment, what you want to do is create dummy sites on nonsense keywods (like agrleowibm) & have them be identical in all but one respect. Then see how the search engines react & you know how they treat that factor.

What is footprinting & blog security?

Footprinting is the practice of figuring out the visible traits of similar websites. By similar websites, I mean those that have the same CMS usually, though crackers (malicious hackers) will footprint security loopholes not-CMS dependant. A well known footprint is "Powered by Wordpress" - search for that in Google & you get a bunch of wordpress blogs. Spammers do that to find blogs to spam links on.

The relation this has to blog security is that a lot of CMS updates are done to void security loopholes. Wordpress 2.3 is more secure than Wordpress 2.2, 2.5 is better than 2.3 and so on. If your site gets footprinted as being on an older version with known security problems, crackers can attack it & inject links, etc. How do you think college websites & social media sites rank for "Buy Viagra"? They got cracked & spammers added pages & links to them.

For the person getting their site broken into though, rankings will typically suffer. I like to refer people to my friend Hamlet Batista's posts on the relation between the two: SEO & Internet Security & protect yourself from a DDOS attack. (Again, note how he owns the topic in my mind).

I also need to give credit where it's due - my friend XMCP introduced me to footprinting with his post A 10 Minute Trick to Cut Blog Spam (by Eliminating Footprints).

Could you give a short schedule of what bloggers should do each day to boost SEO for their blogs (this can include beginner, intermediate and/or advanced SEO techniques - whatever you think bloggers should make sure they do everyday that's SEO related)?

Beginners: Read, read & read some more. Eventually you'll find who the leading authorities are in a field because all the second level and C-list authorities are referencing them. Don't restrict your reading to them, but try & read them at least a few times a week & mix in b- & c-listers who write original material & make you think.

While recently client work has made me cut back, I was reading 15 - 20 hours a week on SEO for a very long time. Luckily, I'm at the point where a lot of material isn't new to me anymore so that reduction isn't entirely a loss - some of it is no longer useful to me. And I've been reading consistently for 2 + years now. Not 15-20 hours a week since the start, but I was reading at least 5 - 10 a week starting out.

People who say you can succeed with only a half hour of work a day are lying. It takes long hours of hard effort & the first thing you need to do is feed your brain with quality reading, because otherwise you won't be able to think of your own ideas to share on your blog.

If you have nothing original to share, it's going to be harder to get people to promote you. Not impossible mind you, given how much crap people promote just because they're friendly with the crap-producer.

I would commit a minimum 5 - 10 hours a week to reading in your niche if you're serious. Sure, I call myself "bookworm seo" ... but then again this reading list has been a critical element in allowing me to have the early successes I have had. How many bloggers two years in are speaking at major industry trade shows like SMX West & SMX Advanced?

The next point is to build relationships. In your day-to-day business life, consider who you're closest to & what those people do for you that makes them special.

My friend Jon, for example, will jump to my defense when we play soccer & someone pulls a dirty move on me. Considering he's ~180 - 200 lbs, most people get that I'm not a good person to play nasty with. And I really appreciate that. Online, if you see a friend being slandered, etc., they will appreciate & remember those names in the comments who came to their defense.

I've had people say nasty things about me online ... & rather than being defended, more stupid people jumped on the bandwagon. I did notice though when the blog's owner - who I know - edited the post to reference my point-of-view. I wasn't too happy that he allowed the tripe to be published to begin with, but it was nice to see he was at least giving me a chance to defend myself.

Just to be clear, I'm all for constructive criticism & friends/people who respect you will actively give you that feedback. Giving it to others is another way to build a relationship. Be sure to criticize actions/ideas & never people, though, or your constructive criticism will be taken as an insult.

Of course, you won't find people flaming friends nor find something to criticize every day amongst the people you want to build relationships with. So you'll want to consider other ways of building relationships online.

I absolutely love forums & social networking sites for meeting new people & making acquaintances ... but IM is the best for building & developing those relationships once they're formed. If you can spend an hour/2 a day reading feeds & collecting links to your favourite posts for submission to social news sites, you'll quickly build a lot of relationships. I would also focus on niche community sites rather than go to Digg. This can be the same time you're reading as part of the weekly 5-10 hours.

My friend Shana Albert of Social Desire got Darren Rowse's attention by submitting his stuff regularly to different social media sites. I know that Maki of Dosh Dosh Internet Marketing has done the same with many folks, although he's spent time going the mass-social-media route with building up a power profile on Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.

Finally, as to being advanced, go through the archives of these sites and read some more:

• Blue Hat SEO
• Slightly Shady SEO
• Nicky Cakes
• Rogue Domainer
• Oooff
• Nop
• Diorex
• Dink
• Search Engine People
• Gray Wolf's SEO Blog

Schedules all depend on how quickly you want to be succesful & how succesful you want to be. "Working smart" just means using tools to be more efficient & making relationships with others so that they lend a hand where it's needed. The rest is all about putting in the hours.

What resources & tools do you recommend to help bloggers learn more about SEO?

I make no secret of the fact that I'm a huge fan of SEOmoz. Their Pro membership lets you ask them questions you'd have to pay $1000/hour to ask otherwise, plus you get their guides & unlimited use of their tools. How can anybody not see the value in that, for $50 a month or $400 a year?? I know them personally from having met them at shows & been to their offices ... not only will you get expert advice, but it's an opportunity to help build friendships with some of the most genuine, friendly people around.

As far as plugins go, I'm happy to announce the release of my first SEO tools this week & particularly the 'Internal Link Building' plugin which automatically links given plugins to pages that you define on your blog (or pages outside your blog, for such purposes as frequently cited sources).

Essentially, your blog ends up interlinking like Wikipedia - so you can rank like it too!

Also, what's particularly unique about this plugin is that it has post-level override capability. So if I set the phrase "seo consulting" to always link to my seo services & consulting page, then my whole blog will always link to it when I use that phrase.

But suppose I want to link to my friend Michael's SEO consulting page within a post. I can set the words "SEO consulting" to link to him.

Note: I give credit for the idea to Jim Boykin's Internet Marketing Ninjas. They have some similar tool, apparently & that's what inspired me. He wasn't the first, but he took ownership of the idea to my mind by being the first to present it with the Wikipedia angle. Of course, if you want access to Jim's tool and program, you need a few thousand dollars, while I'm releasing mine for free as soon as I get the download tracking figured out.

Gab Goldenberg provides SEO consulting services including 1 on 1 consultations, as well as PPC management to bloggers & mid-size companies that understand the value of search marketing. Some clients include this Montreal youth hostel & this dental seminars cruise provider.

In the search marketing world, for instance, I'm hoping that "submarine crawling" catches on as a popular search & I already see it sending me some traffic. For a more generic example, take the division between social media optimization & social media marketing. Rohit Bhargava coined the term social media optimization & it briefly looked like it would become the de facto name for promoting content through social media.

Then other people started using the term social media marketing. Cameron Olthuis tried to clarify the difference between social media optimization & marketing, though it doesn't seem that caught on, since the two are still used interchangeably. If you look at Pronet's social media archives you'll see a historical evolution & transition from SMO being popular to SMM & now it's balancing out with some people referring to SMO again.

So with emerging things like that, I'd say it's worth tracking popularity. You can use sites like Memeorandum for politics, Google Trends, Facebook's new Lexicon tool & generally just be aware of what's going on in your niche by reading other blogs & social media sites, like Sphinn or Small Business Brief.

Now if you're talking about researching keywords generally, there's a whole bunch of tools like Google AdWords' Keyword Tool & its more specific daily volume estimates "sandbox" tool. Unfortunately, the latter can be very imprecise at times, particularly for low-volume keywords, saying there's not enough volume to give estimates (because that's a PPC tool estimating how many clicks ads on a given keyword will get in a day). Tools will generally just give you ideas anyways, so if you're short on ideas, just being creative & brainstorming can work pretty well, too.

Besides that, bloggers need to consider keywords in light of their goals. Do they just want to distribute their ideas really broadly without respect for targeted traffic? Go for the super popular one-word keywords (also the case for people selling CPM ads). Do they want to make affiliate sales? Target product names and brands. Want to be a niche authority? Consider the newest ideas and go after those terms.

How can bloggers optimize their keywords within their blog posts (e.g., is there truth to recommendations that keywords included in links/in bold are better)?

It's pretty straightforward really:

1. Put the keyword in the title.
2. Have a variation on the keyword (plural, conjugation, alternate spelling, related phrase etc.) in the first paragraph & conclusion.
3. Use a subheader or two (h2/h3 tags) & use the keyword/a variant in them.
4. Instead of h2/h3 tags, you can use bold/italics for subheaders.
5. Don’t bold/italicize keywords throughout a post - it looks like textual acne & is really horrid. You're not improving your SEO that way anyways.
6. If you have a picture that's about your topic, describe it truthfully & don't stuff keywords into the 'alt' attribute. If they fit in naturally fine, but otherwise, don't bother.
7. Use keywords in URLs; this is good in & of itself for a small boost, but more importantly some people will link using your URL as anchor text. So if your URL has keywords in it, those links using the URL as the anchor text will feature your keywords.
   

How can bloggers optimize their blog themes for searches?

This is a great question! Ideally, you get some custom programming to help you out. For instance, I have manual control over my site's navigation (except for categories), including positioning & anchor text. That's a plugin I had created specially. You can also do what Chris Pearson did with his sidebar, which was to feature the best posts in each category. You don't need to follow exactly his approach, but he's obviously funneling lots of link strength to those pages he wants to rank.

Short of custom programming, you can create a page that links to your best posts (including especially those you want to rank) & feature that prominently in your navigation.

Some of the posts you feature using your theme should also be those that link out generously to other bloggers. By continually sending them traffic, you'll stay on their radar & if you have anything remarkable, they'll usually link on their own/certainly do you a favour if you have a noticeable piece.

Besides that, making sure that all your posts are within 2-3 clicks from the homepage should make life easier for search engines trying to index your content. Note: depending on the context, I'm not usually a big fan of sitemaps that are easily visible to your human audience. It's more acceptable for bloggers, but with ecommerce sites you're asking for it. I wrote about how other people are stealing your keywords & how you can get theirs while protecting your own.

1 final point: Jeffrey Smith can get a little technical, but he does very good things with search engine friendly web design & my friend, David Mihm, also does great seo focused web design.

How can bloggers optimize their comments, guest posts & other activities outside of their blogs for SEO?

I wouldn't worry too much about optimizing comments unless you're trying to help that blogger rank for their given keywords. Otherwise, you can just include a keyword/2 in a sentence of yours in the comment to give the link back to your site some better context. But comments really shoudn't be seen as something to "optimize" really.

I'd focus on making value-added comments that help build up a relationship with the blogger in question. Maki at Dosh Dosh had an excellent point recently about commenting for relationship building with the blog's author. Ironically, most of the comments were 'great post, I agree' type useless feedback that didn't add anything. For those people who did have something intelligent to say though, I'd like to share some linklove:

• Wendi Kelly - Wendi highlighted that after a certain number of comments, some people feel that they're just going to be ignored & prefer not to comment/save something value-added for a later post. True, but ...
• Scribbles and Words - Jay mentioned that he reads every comment he gets & that's probably true of most bloggers, even if they don't respond.
• Marketing Safari - Hjortur explained the basics of good commenting on Dosh Dosh
• Clare Windlehurst summed up Maki's thoughts (& mine, as we discussed in the beginner SEO interview for About Web Logs) perfectly well: "It's not about link building, it's about relationship building."
  

As for guest posts, I think you'll notice that I try & link out generously (to others especially) & give credit where it's due when I get a chance to share my content & thoughts on someone else's site. The point is to build relationships. Doing other activities? Show as much interest as possible in other people (even if you fake it a bit at first, eventually you'll develop the habit & become sincere) & make lots of friends. The best way to put it would be: "Be generous with praise & stingy with criticism."

What is link-baiting?

I'll defer to the master-baiter himself, Rand Fishkin on this one.

• Leveraging Linkbait
• Rand's 13-step Guide to Linkbait Love
• Identifying the Linkerati

Which is why I gave my "Linkbait's Characteristics" post the alternate title, "Rand Fishkin is Brilliant."

Darren Rowse has an excellent introduction to the topic as well: Introduction to Linkbaiting

Finally, another excellent linkbaiter we all know and love, Lyndon Antcliff, put together the ultimate linkbait reading list.

Should bloggers list their blogs on any of the myriad of blog directories available? Does this help or hurt SEO?

Once you have your niche's top keywords, use a rank checking service to see if they're in the top 100 for any of them. If so, have a look at the links they're providing to other people; if there's funny looking redirects, if the links are generated by javascript code like blogrolling.com blogrolls ... those are useless even if they're in the top 100. Otherwise, go ahead & submit. But don't waste your time trying to maximize the number of directory links you have; most of them will be useless or only barely marginally helpful after the first few give you links.

Spend your time more wisely building relationships with other bloggers in your niche with comments, links & trackbacks (so they know you linked!). That will get you plenty more links.

Gab Goldenberg provides SEO consulting services including one on one consultations, as well as PPC management to bloggers & mid-size companies that understand the value of search marketing. Some clients include this Montreal youth hostel & this dental seminars cruise provider.

What is search engine optimization & how can it help bloggers?

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is a process that helps get web pages ranked in the top results for a given search at Yahoo, Google/MSN. For example, if you search for the keywords "buy a computer" you'll find that NewEgg, About.com Best Buy, CompUSA & others are doing SEO to get found at the top of the results for that search.

SEO can help bloggers by exposing their content to a broader audience with all the rewards & ramifications that brings.

If you want to make money, doing SEO for your blog can help distribute your ideas & land you a book deal. It can get people looking for your services to find a post you wrote & once they see your expertise, you'll often be contacted for a quote. For example, that's why most SEO experts blog (the exposure to potential clients is a good lead generator). There is a whole variety of ways to use SEO commercially; the only limit is your own creativity.

If you want to spread your ideas, SEO is a way to do it. If you want be famous for its own sake, SEO can get your name out there. (Consider that Wikipedia largely built its readership through succesful SEO). And if you want to be friends with me... er, just email me.

What is the most important thing that beginner bloggers should understand about SEO?

There are 2 steps to it:

1. Creating original content & sharing fresh ideas that haven't been addressed anywhere else before
2. Building relationships (because that's how you get links & search engines rank your site based on the number & quality of your links)

I'd say the second step far outweighs the first because friends will often link to friends' average, unoriginal & sometimes plain mediocre material. But the bar people set before they'll link to strangers is incredibly high.

Let me give a couple of examples to back this up. I thought up a new way to buy/sell links under your competition's radar (explained in this post - Sneakiest Text Link Ad Disguise) that got a lot of attention in the SEO industry, including a coveted four-star link in SEOmoz's weekly link roundup.

Now let me put that into context. I created a similar tactic which I called cloning expired sites earlier. How much earlier? Well, that was published before I spoke at SMX West, which is an SEO trade show. The reason that I bring it up is because I hung out with Rebecca Kelley [of SEOmoz] at SMX. So when she linked to my post recently, while it was partly for its originality, it was also partly because we're on good terms.

Similarly, I wrote a round-up and linked to a bunch of fun & interesting people I met at SMX - just because they were nice & hanging out with me! And plenty of people do that - links are a kind of social currency on the web. And just as it takes money to make money, you need to link out & invest in building relationships before people will link back to you. I point out in passing that BoingBoing makes it its business to link out to others & that's also how Yahoo got its start (the founders linked to sites they liked & made one of the first web directories). They seem to be doing all right!

What are the top 5 things that bloggers should do to optimize their blogs & blog posts?

First, you'll want to get a handle on the basic principles of search engine friendly design. SMX had a session on it, and Barry Schwartz' SERoundtable live-blogged the session. Most important, in my opinion, is getting your navigation made using keyword-rich text links.

Second, I would put serious consideration into the blogging system (also called blogging platform, content management system/CMS) that you're using. I spent a very long time using Google's Blogger, because I kept reading that it had an easier learning curve than WordPress. That's pure hogwash & I wish that the misconception would quit being spouted off. When I made the switch, the system was completely intuitive & I know that it would have been even without my prior experience with Blogger.

Another good reason to use WordPress instead of Blogger is because it's easier to SEO your site & optimize individual posts. That's because you have plugins that add functionality to WordPress in a way that is welcomed by WordPress' makers. The All In One SEO Pack is a classic, for starters.

Then you have plugins that will allow you to control at the individual-comment level whether the link a commenter leaves back to his own site is "dofollow" / "nofollow." Dofollow links help web pages rank in Google while nofollow links have no effect, positive/negative (I note in passing that this is something Google cares abou, but I've yet to see Yahoo/MSN say that they care/use it). The reason this matters is because by rewarding good commenters with dofollow links, you help build a relationship with them & then they'll link back.

There are plenty of other plugins & a much larger developer community working on WordPress plugins than there is on Blogger hacks. The fact that you have to 'hack' Blogger to implement certain techniques reflects on it being a closed Google platform that doesn't do much to encourage outside developers (in my honest opinion). But don't take my word for it - Google's lead search engineer, Matt Cutts, uses Wordpress.

Getting back to the question, the third thing bloggers should do to optimize their blogs is scope out blogs of a similar size to their own & seek to build relationships with their authors.

For the fourth part, you want to write mind-blowing, jaw-dropping, contortionist-stiffening titles. Attention is a precious, limited resource that everyone else is competing for. If you write bland post titles, no one's going to check out what you have to say. To be honest, this is something I'm still struggling with, though when I do pull it off (or get help from friends) it works well! If you need help getting inspiration, a swipe file is great. Here are a couple of resources to help you out in that respect:

• Free swipe file
• Magnetic headlines

Finally, make sure that your posts are original. People don't need your rehash/commentary on the news - they're already linking to their friends' rehashes & comments. If you can do research (think: read some articles in an academic database & extract the key themes/trends/stats), that tends to get noticed. If you interview an industry leader that helps as well (my interview of Aaron Wall was very well received, for instance) besides building a relationship with them.

What role does relationship building play in SEO?

With the exception of the most competitive industries - where paid links are a de facto requirement - relationship building is the easiest way to get links. Friends link to friends, mostly. That's why it often feels like the A list is a closed list, regardless of what industry you're in - because the A listers often know each other personally & are on friendly terms. This post covers some ideas of mine for social media analytics & since social media is about building friendships online, it's also got useful tips on making investments in your relationships.

What should bloggers avoid doing that can hurt their SEO? Can you explain what whitehat, greyhat & blackhat SEO are?

I'd personally rephrase the question as, "What are the search engines' current guidelines that bloggers should know about?" The guidelines, which shift on a continual basis & are enforced in a variety of ways, define what is "whitehat," what is "greyhat" & what is "blackhat SEO." In a nutshell, whitehat SEO means approved practices, greyhat SEO is borderline stuff (which, like paid links did, can easily shift into Google's definition of blackhat SEO) & blackhat SEO is 100% against guidelines.

I'd like to debunk the nonsense that whitehat SEO is ethical, greyhat is getting shady & blackhat SEOs are on the verge of being axe murderers. Actually, they use spears, not axes. Just kidding.

More seriously, the only point where ethics arise is in terms of what you're promoting & whether you're vandalizing others' websites to do it. For instance, I have a friend at Slightly Shady SEO who does SEO for products you could find in a local outlet store. But some others promote products that are detrimental to buyers, by selling them extra credit lines that they don't need, for example.

And as to vandalizing websites, most spammers stuff links to their sites into vulnerable wikis, blogs & other content management sites that let you submit links. There's also outright cracking where a site gets broken into & Viagra or other 'pharmacy' products are added to the site. Typically this happens to universities, whose powerful domain names help get spam ranking for competitive queries.

Concretely, there's 2 more points I want to share.

First, trading links indiscriminately is a bad idea because search engines won't rank you any higher for it and you risk penalization. A whole bunch of real estate sites got slammed for doing this, in an effort by Google to make examples out of them. That doesn't mean that your swimming blog can't link to your brother's anime blog. Just make it clear why you're linking & you should be fine.

Second, your site's security & defenses against crackers is increasingly important. While McGill's sites won't get banned if they're hacked, your average blog could. The difference is that McGill has a brand. If McGill doesn't show up when people look for McGill, Google looks bad. But if your blog with no brand awareness (especially as measured by search volume for your personal name/blog name) dissapears, who'll miss it?

If you want to take action right away, make sure that your version of WordPress is the latest one (currently 2.5) and that you add patches as they're released. There are some excellent references on the topic I encourage everyone to read & particularly the case study of CornwallSEO who got cracked & had a marker alongside their site in Google's search results saying that their site was no longer secure and might expose your computer to spyware/adware/viruses & other junk:

• SEO and internet security (Hamlet's a technical pro & I encourage you to check out his new RankSense SEO software for helping automate certain tedious SEO processes. He's also a friend - note again the power of friendships for link building!)
• Wordpress Blogs not Being Indexed
• Living Without Google
• Google Proxy Hacking

To summarize: If you're very risk averse, just blog & don't sell links. If you think you can buy/sell links without getting noticed & aren't overly worried about penalties, you can try that too (besides my post on disguising paid links above, I recommend Brian Chappell's 30 Tips for Buying Links & Rand Fishkin's Buying Links Under the Radar. And if you're highly aggressive... well, the question was about avoiding running into trouble with one's SEO, so this is kind of going beyond the scope of it.

Oh, & on the same note of ethics - Google's no beacon of shining hope itself, so take its admonitions with a grain of salt. Consider this quote from leading SEO expert Aaron Wall, "Google paying AdSense scrapers to steal your content makes Google a pretty dirty company."

What tools and resources are available to help bloggers start optimizing their blogs?

I love SEOmoz & can vouch firsthand for the quality of their Pro content. Having their experts answer your questions is worth the price of admission alone in my opinion. And yet they give you in-depth, advanced, well-researched articles as well. And if you're still not satisfied, there's regular SEO tips and industry-leading SEO tools in there.

If you want to see some practical applications of what it can mean, check out my SEOmoz Pro Review. I'll also eventually be complementing that review with plugins & SEO tools of my own that people who buy through my links to SEOmoz Pro will get access to (but don't wait; either buy straight through their link/check out my site first). Disclaimer: I get paid when people buy premium memberships through my review site. (I don't get paid when they go direct to SEOmoz from the first link & if you don't care to read what I have to say, then just go buy directly from them. I'd still advocate people getting the Pro membership even if I'm not getting a commission. Besides - at $50/month, it's dirt cheap. Their services cost $10,000/mo and up!).

Something else which I'm a huge fan of is Aaron Wall's SEO for Firefox. It makes competitive research a heck of a lot easier!

I'm considering Aaron's paid training program. I bought his SEO Book when it was available (it's now bundled with his training) & learned a lot from it. My inkling is that the training is probably worth it. However, it costs double what SEOmoz does, at $100/month & the services are pretty comparable, so my preference is for SEOmoz (again, notice friendship partly at work - SEOmoz's crew have always treated me really well, while Aaron's been an unnecessarily tough cookie at times. That said, I'd prefer SEOmoz independently of our relationship, too).

Besides that, have a look around for plugins that add navigation to your blog and help you create a sitemap as well as the plugins I mentioned above.

What should bloggers track to evaluate their SEO progress (i.e., what statistics should they be looking at, how should they track results, etc.)?

It all depends on your goals. If you're blogging & you're part of an ecommerce business, then track sales/revenue/order size/other financial metrics where the visitor originated from a search engine. If your business model is ads, track ad sale revenue. If you just want influence, look at the growth of your repeat visitors in particular & at the number of times they return.

My favorite tool is Sitemeter Pro, though Sitemeter free is pretty good too if you have the patience to dig through your logs. The advantage with Pro is that you can export your data, access more of it (last 4000 visits vs. last 100 for the free version) & get your search engine keywords that are referring visitors neatly displayed to you. If your budget is tight, start with the free version as it'll get you used to looking at data & probably make you enjoy it, too.

Another statistic that is important for getting your ideas passed on (and thus eventually garnering links) is the number of subscribers you have. I personally use ClickAudit click tracking to tell how many people have clicked a "subscribe to my RSS feed" link. I've already got 350+ subscribers based on that & am aiming for 600 by the end of May.

Finally, while I'm regularly advocating for people to minimize the amount of data that they share with Google (because it can be used against you), I have to commend the idea Joost Devalk had about Google Analytics. It achieves similar functionality to what ClickAudit does for me, but for outgoing links only. The real reason I commend it is because it helps you figure out who is benefitting from your links & thus what relationships you have contributed to developing recently. All of which gets back to my social media analytics proposal.

1. Check the Popularity of Keywords

In order to obtain traffic from keyword searches on the major search engines like Google & Yahoo!, you need to be writing about a topic that people want to read about and are actively looking for information about. 1 of the easiest ways to get a basic idea of what people are looking for online is to check the popularity of keyword searches on websites like Wordtracker, Google AdWords, Google Trends or Yahoo! Buzz Index. Each of these sites provides a snapshot of keyword popularity at any given time.

2. Select Specific & Relevant Keywords

A good rule to go by is to select 1 keyword phrase per page then optimize that page to that keyword phrase. Keywords should be relevant to the overall content of your page. Furthermore, choose specific keywords that are more likely to give you a better search results ranking than a broad term would. For example, consider how many sites use the keyword phrase of "punk music." The competition for ranking using that keyword is likely to be tough. If you choose a more specific keyword like "Green Day concert," the competition is a lot easier.

3. Select a Keyword Phrase of 2/3 Words

Statistics show that nearly 60% of keyword searches include 2/3 keywords. With that in mind, try to optimize your pages for searches on keyword phrases of 2/3 words to drive the biggest results.

4. Use Your Keyword Phrase in Your Title

Once you select the keyword phrase you plan to optimize your page for, make sure you use that phrase in the title of your blog post (or page).

5. Use Your Keyword Phrase in Your Subtitle & Headlines

Breaking blog posts up using subtitles & section headlines not only makes them more visually appealing on a text heavy computer screen, but it also gives you additional opportunities to use your keyword phrase.

6. Use Your Keyword Phrase in the Body of Your Content

It's important that you use your keyword phrase in the body of your blog post. A good goal to try to achieve is to use your keyword phrase at least twice in the first paragraph of your post & as many times as you can (without keyword stuffing - see #10 below) within the first 200 (alternatively, the first 1,000) words of your post.

7. Use Your Keyword Phrase in & Around Your Links

Search engines count links higher than plain text in their search algorithms, so try to create links that use your keyword phrase. Avoid using links that simply say, "click here"/"more information" as these links will do nothing to help you with your search engine optimization. Leverage the power of links in SEO by including your keyword phrase in them whenever possible. The text surrounding links is typically weighted more heavily by search engines than other text on your page as well. If you can't include your keyword phrase in your link text, try to include it around your link text.

8. Use Your Keyword Phrase in Images

Many bloggers see a large amount of traffic sent to their blogs from image searches on search engines. Make the images you use in your blog work for you in terms of SEO. Make sure your image filenames & captions include your keyword phrase.

9. Avoid Block Quotes

There are differing opinions on this issue with one group of people saying that Google & other search engines ignore the text included in the HTML block quote tag when crawling a web page. Therefore, the text within the block quote tag won't be included in terms of SEO. Until a more definitive answer can be determined to this issue, it's a good idea to keep it in mind & use the block quote tag cautiously.

10. Don't Keyword Stuff

Search engines penalize sites that stuff pages full of keywords simply to increase their rankings through keyword searches. Some sites are even banned from inclusion in search engine results because of keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is considered a form of spamming & search engines have zero tolerance for it. Keep this in mind as you optimize your blog posts for search engines using your specific keyword phrase.

1. Products Related to Your Blog

Depending on your blog topic, there’re probably many types of prizes you can find/buy to give away in a blog contest. Prizes don't have to be big to be interesting to your blog's readers. Of course, while big prizes tend to drive the most buzz and traffic, prizes that’re relevant to your blog are likely to be most appreciated by your loyal readers. In fact, prizes that are consistent with your blog topic will draw the attention of new visitors who are more likely to return & subscribe to your blog feed.

2. Products/Services from Companies

Sometimes companies contact bloggers & request product reviews. This is a great time to request a sample to offer as a blog contest prize. Most companies welcome the additional exposure a contest (and the promotion that goes along with it) brings. Furthermore, don't be afraid to reach out to companies that offer products related to your blog topic that your readers would enjoy & ask for a sample to offer as a blog contest prize. The worst that can happen is the company says no. Be certain to provide blog traffic statistics when you make a sample request to demonstrate what a contest on your blog could mean to the company in terms of promotion.

3. Books

There’re books written about nearly every subject that bloggers write about. Consider offering a book related to your blog's topic for your blog contest prize.

4. Your Expertise

If you have a talent, knowledge/expertise that people would pay for such as blog reviewing, blog design, copywriting, speaking, consulting & so on, offer those services as a blog contest prize. What comes easily to you might be a valuable prize to someone else.

5. Get Crafty

Can you paint, sew, knit, build/create some other craft/product that people might enjoy winning? If so, offer a custom design/an item you already created as a blog contest prize.

6. Electronic Gift Certificates

Gift certificates are great blog contest prizes because people love to win money to spend at a popular store. Electronic gift certificates are great for you because you avoid paying shipping charges because the prize can be emailed directly to the winner.

7. Money

People love money, so a blog contest with a cash prize is always popular. Consider signing up for PayPal & paying the winner via your PayPal account to avoid paying postage or sending a personal check/money order. If you use PayPal to deliver the prize, be certain to include a disclosure in the original contest post that tells people the prize will be sent via PayPal & the winner will be responsible for any fees PayPal charges for him/her to receive & accept the prize.

8. Advertising on Your Blog

If your blog is popular and generates enough traffic & subscribers to make it attractive to advertisers, offer advertising space as a prize for your blog contest. Other bloggers & website owners are likely to be very interested in winning free advertising.

9. Guest Posts

If you write a popular blog with a decent amount of monthly traffic, you can offer guest posts as a blog contest prize. Consider offering your services to write a guest post on the winner's blog or allow the winner to write a guest post to appear on your blog. Either way, the winner will gain exposure & traffic from the guest post.

10. Entrecard Credits

Entrecard is a popular social advertising website for bloggers who earn Entrecard Credits to pay for advertising space on other blogs. Consider joining Entrecard (if you're not already a member) & offer the credits you earn as a blog contest prize. Other Entrecard members will be very interested in this type of contest.

1. Pick a Prize

Picking a prize might seem simple enough, but you should take some time to think about your prize to ensure you choose 1 that will help to make your blog contest successful. The more exciting your prize is, the more buzz that will naturally grow around it. However, you need to consider the monetary investment in purchasing your prize & shipping it to the winner. Also, prizes that are related to your blog's topic are typically the best because they bring added value to your readers.

You might be able to find a sponsor for your blog contest who will donate a prize. Companies will donate prizes to generate publicity. You can publish your request on sites like ProfNet. You'd be surprised how many responses you're likely to get.

2. Choose an Entry Method

The simplest blog contest entry method is to ask people to leave a comment on your blog contest announcement post. That comment acts as their entry. Alternatively, you could require people to answer a question in their comments to be entered into the contest. Alternatively, you could require people to post about the contest on their own blogs with a link back to your contest post on your blog to count as an entry into the contest.

You can give different value to each type of entry. For example, leaving a comment on your blog contest post could equate to one entry into the contest but blogging about the contest on their own blogs with a link back to your contest post, could give them 2 entries. It's up to you.

3. Choose a Start & End Date

Before you announce your blog contest, make sure you decide the specific date & times it will start & end to set entrant's expectations.

4. Determine Prize Delivery Restrictions

It's critical that you determine how you're going to deliver the prize to the winner up front. For example, if you need to mail the prize, you might want to restrict the contest to people within a certain geographic area to reduce shipping costs.

5. Identify How a Winner Will Be Chosen

Depending on how your blog contest is set up, the winner will either be picked randomly /subjectively (for example, the best answer to the contest question). For random contests, you can use a website such as Randomizer.org to automatically generate a winner.

It's also important to set up restrictions around prize notification. You don't want to have to wait months for the winner to get back to you with their mailing address, so you can send the prize to them. Set up a limitation stating how much time the winner has to respond to you after you send their prize notification with their contact information for prize delivery else the prize will be forfeited & an alternate winner will be chosen.

6. Write the Rules

1. Online-Sweepstakes.com

Online-Sweepstakes.com is a popular & heavily-trafficked directory of online sweepstakes & contests. To submit your blog contest to Online-Sweepstakes.com, you simply need to register for a free account, select the Add a Sweep button & complete the requested information for your contest. You'll need to provide your blog URL, the contest post URL, the prize description & the start & end date for entries.

2. ContestBlogger.com

ContestBlogger.com offers several forums for online sweepstakes, blog contests & free sample offers. To submit your blog contest to ContestBlogger.com, you must register for a forum account then start a new forum post in the appropriate forum folder with the details of your contest.

3. About.com Web Logs Forum

You can enter your blog contests for free right here in the About.com Web Logs Forum. Simply register for an account then start a new post in the Blog Contests folder & provide the details about your contest.

In the simplest terms, a blog contest is exactly what the term implies - a contest hosted on your blog. Since it's your blog, the nuances of the contest are entirely up to you. For example, you can determine the method of entry, duration of the contest, prize & more. Again, it's up to you.

The most important thing to remember about a blog contest is it will drive traffic equivalent to the amount you promote it. In other words, if no someone knows about your contest, they won't visit your blog to enter. Take some time to visit other blogs & websites to announce your contest. A quick Google search will reveal many blogs & websites that operate solely to announce blog contests. The great way to promote your contest is through blog carnivals.

Finally, make sure you understand the monetary investment inherent in a blog contest. Unless your contest is being sponsored by a company who donated a prize, you'll need to purchase a prize & most likely, you'll have to pay shipping costs to send the prize to the winner.

On the date of the blog carnival, the host publishes a post with links to each of the participants' entries. Typically, the host will write a summary of each link, but it's up to the host how he/she wants to display the links to the various entries. When the blog carnival post is published by the host, readers of the host's blog will have easy access to a variety of posts related to a topic of interest to them.

Each participant is expected to promote the blog carnival on their own blogs in advance of the carnival thereby driving traffic to the host's blog. The assumption is that when the carnival date arrives, the host's readers will want to read the various participants' entries to the carnival & will click on those links to visit the participants' blogs thus driving new traffic to the participants' blogs.

Often a blog carnival is an ongoing event with the host running the carnival weekly, monthly/quarterly, but they can be one-time events as well. Blog carnival hosts may put out a call for content on their own blog/by contacting other bloggers they know that blog about the carnival's topic. Alternatively, there are websites that operate as central locations for blog carnival hosts & participants to find each other. For example, BlogCarnival.com provides a place for carnival hosts to promote their upcoming blog carnivals & ask for submissions from other bloggers. If you're interested in hosting a blog carnival/finding an open carnival to join with your own submissions, BlogCarnival.com is a great resource.

2. Add a Great Description

Don't stop at writing a great title. When you submit a piece of content, take the time to write a description that will entice del.icio.us users to click through to read the original content/ bookmark it themselves. Make your submissions too interesting to pass by with great descriptions.

3. Use Relevant Tags

If you want other del.icio.us users to find the content you submit, make sure you tag your bookmarks intuitively. Think of what tags other users would search for to find content like what you're bookmarking, then use those tags in your bookmark submission. The content you submit doesn't have a chance to generate any interest & traffic if no one can find it.

4. Ask for Bookmarks

When you write a great blog post, ask your readers to bookmark it. Send an email/Twitter your friends & ask them to bookmark it, too. Install the del.icio.us Tagometer which will show your readers how many people‘ve bookmarked your posts. When people see that others are bookmarking a post, they'll often join in & bookmark it, too.

5. Make Friends

Build a network of friends on del.icio.us. Follow other users, bookmark their content & develop relationships with them. A strong group of del.icio.us friends can have a powerful influence in terms of drawing attention to bookmark submissions.

2. Stumble a Variety of Content from a Variety of Sources

Take the time to stumble content from a variety of blogs & websites as well as a mixture of articles, photos, musics & videos. Only stumble the very best content that you truly want to share with other StumbleUpon users. Avoid stumbling content that doesn't add value to other StumbleUpon users.

3. Use Great Titles & Descriptions

When you stumble content, take the time to write a great title & description for that content to entice other users to click through & view your submission. Vague titles & descriptions are not helpful to other users.

4. Make Friends

Take some time to get to know other members of the StumbleUpon community & be friend of them. Your StumbleUpon presence will grow as you network with more users. Don't just add a friend then forget about them. The power of StumbleUpon grows the more you network.

5. Use 1 Account & 1 Identity

Don't try to fool the StumbleUpon community by creating multiple accounts/ stumbling only your friends' content & vice versa. Chances’re you'll get caught, which could lead to your content getting buried/you getting banned from StumbleUpon temporarily/permanently. Follow the rules (even the unwritten rules).

1. Drive Traffic

Twitter has a viral marketing effect to it wherein your tweets could spread quickly across the Twitter community if they are interesting. For example, if you're hosting a blog contest/launching a new feature on your blog, send a tweet to let your followers know. Chances are they'll spread the word as well. As word gets out, more & more people will visit your blog to check out what all the hype is about.

2. Network with Like-Minded People

Twitter is set up inherently to act as a networking tool. People "follow" users whose tweets they enjoy/interest them. As such, you'll be able to connect with like-minded people by using Twitter which could lead to more traffic to your blog & much more.

3. Make Business Contacts

Just as Twitter is a great networking tool for finding like-minded people, it's also very effective with connecting users with business contacts. Whether you're looking to hire someone to help you with your blog/business (or both), looking for a new job/just looking to bounce ideas off your business peers, Twitter can help.

4. Establish Yourself as an Expert

Twitter can help support your efforts to establish yourself as an expert in your field or blogging niche to the online community. By communicating through tweets about subject-matter you're knowledgeable in, answering questions via tweets & searching out new contacts, your efforts to be viewed as an expert (which gives your blog greater credibility & appeal) will grow.

5. Get Ideas for Blog Posts

If you're having a dry spell in terms of coming up with post ideas, Twitter can help get your creative juices flowing. Read & send some tweets & see what people are talking about. Something you read is apt to spark a post idea/2 to get you through a temporary state of blogger's block.

6. Ask Questions

Just as you might use Twitter to establish yourself as an expert in your field, other people use it for the same reason. Don't be afraid to ask questions. You just might learn something new & find new bloggers & users to connect with!

7. Provide Live Coverage

If you're attending a conference or meeting that you'd like to share, you can send multiple tweets real-time to share the information you learn then expound on your tweets with blog posts.

8. Ask for Diggs, Stumbles & Other Promotional Help

Twitter is a great place to ask your followers to Digg or Stumble your blog posts. You could also ask other users to blog about your post with a link back to it/spread the word to their own Twitter followers to drive more traffic to your blog.

9. Accuracy & Fact Checker

Imagine you're writing a blog post about a recent event but don't know how to spell the names of the people involved in the event. Send a tweet to get the information you need & while you're at it, give your followers a heads up about your upcoming blog post.

10. Find and Share Resources

Need a quote, interview or guest post? Want to offer your services as a source? Send a tweet!

1. Digg the Original Source

Digg users are very particular about how the site is used. There are a variety of rules that Digg expects users to follow. One of the most important rules of Digg etiquette is to always submit the original source of a story. If you're submitting a blog post/page that expounds on the original source of a story by adding new information/opinions, that's okay, but make sure your submission adds value to the conversation/story. If it doesn't, find the original source & submit that instead.

2. Don't Digg Your Own Posts

Digg will penalize users who submit their own content too frequently. If you want your blog posts to have a chance at making it to the main page of Digg (& generating a lot of traffic to your blog), don't be the first to submit your post. Ask a friend or colleague to submit it first.

3. Digg Several Articles at a Time

When you ask your friends to Digg your blog post, make sure they Digg more than just your post while they're at it. Digg keeps tabs on people who just Digg a single item while they're on the Digg website in order to penalize spammers (particularly those who are paid to Digg specific stories). Ask your friends to Digg your post as well as a few other stories of interest/on the main page of Digg at the same time.

4. Use a Good Title & Description in Your Diggs

When you Digg something, give it a good title & description. The title & description are what you're using to convince other users to click on the submission, read the article & hopefully Digg it, too. Sell the article with a great title & description to increase your chances of getting more Diggs for it.

5. Be an Active Digg User

How is Social Bookmarking Social?

Social bookmarking occurs when users share their bookmarked web pages via social bookmarking communities. When you share your blog posts through social bookmarking, you can increase traffic to your blog. Alternatively, when you view other users' bookmarks, you can find new blogs to read, new post ideas, new conversations to start, new communities to join for further networking & many more.

Things to Avoid in Social Bookmarking

Be careful of only bookmarking your own posts on social bookmarking sites. This behavior is frowned upon on most social bookmarking sites & could have a negative affect on your bookmarks. For example, they may not be displayed in keyword searches/worse yet, they may not be displayed for other users to view at all.

Examples of Social Bookmarking Websites

Popular social bookmarking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Furl, Fark, Del.icio.us & Sphere, but there are many social bookmarking sites dedicated to a variety of areas of interest.