Every SEO uses different tools and resources. Some tools are paid, some are free and some are internally developed tools that we use for ourselves and our clients - but we all use them. Very often I get asked what tools people should use if they’re looking to optimize their own sites and what resources they should use to keep up with the latest going’s on. While telling people how to optimize their own sites and what the tools we use isn’t generally the best of business practices - I just can’t help myself. If your budget doesn’t allow for the hiring of a professional SEO company - trying it yourself may be the only option. I also try to remember that once-upon-a-time I was optimizing my own sites and was new to SEO and without the open advice of others already involved in the community - I wouldn’t be running a successful SEO company today. To this end, it only seems right to provide a list of some of the main tools we use on virtually every site.

Done your preparation prior to speaking, now it’s time to face the audience. For many people this is where the nerves really hit, but it’s worth remembering that in the vast majority of cases the audience is completely on your side. They have given up their valuable time to listen to you and in 99.9% of cases are actually willing you to be a great speaker. They want to share your knowledge, be inspired or be entertained, ideally all three.

So you have agreed to speak in public to an audience, either in a presentation, an interview, a speech or as part of a panel of experts. This could be in a business setting, to a broadcast media such as radio or at a social function; whichever it is you are doubtless nervous, keen to make a good impression and quite possibly regretting your bravado when you said yes.

A Google Webmaster Help video from Matt Cutts released on Nov. 10, 2009 got me thinking how the listing text in Google’s search results can easily be overlooked by some webmasters in their SEO efforts.

SEO is all about extending the reach of your web site content to your target market using online search platforms. You can tell when this has been achieved, and to what degree, by using web analytics software to monitor referral and visitor data. But what that data won’t tell you is how your site appears to users in a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Sure, you’re getting traffic but perhaps you’re missing out on a lot more because your listing text is weak. You wouldn’t take out a newspaper advertisement without looking at the final proof first. So don’t be in the dark over how your site appears to people who use Google.

How To Think About Webmedia

We’ve all seen Web video campaigns and television commercials that we actually enjoyed watching, not once, but over and over again. Whether it’s the Mac Versus PC ads or the thoroughly entertaining Visa Pizza Twirling Commercial, great campaigns are as memorable as great movies or television shows. When commercial presentations meet that standard, they transcend mere commercial status, and reach the level of Experiences.

Content is one of the most valuable things you can focus on during development of your website. Consider each page of your website a chance to capture or lose your audience. If a web page has paragraph after paragraph of text, many visitors won’t bother to begin reading. There are various other things to be leery of when writing for the web. This article covers eight tips to help you succeed when writing content for your website.

Entice with Communicative Headings

Visitors decide whether to invest their precious time reading your content, typically after scanning a heading or two. Consider which headline will receive more attention:

Creating an HTML sitemap and a XML sitemap for your website could be the easiest thing you do to improve your exposure on the web. For those of you who pay close attention to the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site, this could be the one thing that gets you onto the first page of Google’s results. For those who don’t devote too much time on the SEO of their site - this is a good place to start. By submittíng a sitemap to various search engines, you are telling them that you exist and what pages your site has to offer the World Wide Web.

Yesterday at 4pm in the Exeter Conference Centre, WNW Design (Nigel Wilkinson, Philip Vellender and myself, Camilla Todd) attended the ‘Tags’ event organised by Scott Gould (on Twitter at @scottgould), Alistair Banks of Optix Solutions (on Twitter at @banksy6) and Dave Thomas of Bluegrass Computer Services (on Twitter at @bluegrass_IT).

It was a natural progression of the slightly less formal ‘Tweetups’ held in Starbucks recently, and for £1.40 offered those interested in social media a chance to ask (and answer) some questions and hear some experiences from those already immersed in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
This is a recap of the event, with what I considered to be the most interesting points discussed (so there may be plenty of things discussed I have not written about here).

If you use Twitter or create content, you have probably figured out by now that it can be a great tool for driving traffic to your site. There are measures you can take to expand this if your content is not bringing in the Twitter traffic on its own.

If you’re not seeing much traffic from Twitter, there is a chance it’s coming in anyway, and you’re just not aware of it. For that matter, if you are getting a lot of traffic from Twitter, you may be getting even more than you thought.

Video SEO is an underutilized search engine marketing strategy. Even as videos continue to gain significant traction in the search engines’ natural listings, most companies either ignore them, or remain completely unaware of their potency. That oversight represents a valuable edge your company can use to leapfrog your competitors in the organic rankings.

The strategy blends traditional search optimization tactics with a relatively new platform. With the rise of YouTube, Revver, Blip, and similar video sites, consumption patterns have driven the search engines to provide these sites with greater ranking authority. As long as your primary objective is clearly established, a video SEO campaign can have a dramatic effect on your exposure in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.