As an SEO one of the things we often have to overcome is optimizing for the singular and plural form of the word, such as [blue widget] and [blue widgets]. Now some folks go the route of building one page for each keyword. While this can work you often end up with two very similar reading pages. Sometimes people will pick the “more important” one and use it in the title and sprinkle the other one in the page. IMHO this is much better approach as it generally reads better.

However I learned something today from none other than Matt Cutts. Yesterday I posted on Threadwatch about link building techniques. Matt came along and noticed he was #2 for linkbait and linkbaiting. Now if you look at the title and URL of Matt’s post here’s what you see:

SEO Advice: linkbait and linkbaiting
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-linkbait-and-linkbaiting/


If you look at Matt’s post today you’ll see this Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO

Notice what I did with keywords. I carefully chose keywords for the title and the url (note that I used “change” in the url and “changing” in the title).

where he references a post with the following data:
Changing the default printer on Linux and Firefox
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/change-default-printer-linux-firefox/


Don’t know about you but I don’t need to be hit over the head anymore … Thanks Matt

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I can’t imagine if you read this blog and haven’t heard of Shoemoney. However if you aren’t listening to his podcast you’re missing out. I can’t listen live because I’ve got some scheduling conflicts but I’m catching up on the podcast archives. My top recommended Shoemoney Net Income Episodes are:

• ShoeMoney talks arbitrage, PPC, and affiliates with Pepperjam
• Part 2 of the Pepperjam interview
• Best of the Web’s Greg Hartnett joins ShoeMoney
• Shoemoney keeps it real!

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My buddy Nick has a golden rule of blogging, it’s called the 80/20 rule. If you’ve never read that post you certainly should, but in a nutshell it says 80% of your posts should be about your “core topic” and 20% of your posts can be off topic or “cat posts”. I have to say it’s really excellent advice although it’s sometimes a bit difficult to keep up with.

Experimentation and Off Topic Posts »

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One of the problems people have with linkbait is thinking they have to develop some web 2.0-ish high production value “thing”. While there’s nothing wrong with going that route and if you’re a fortune 500 company it’s going to be expected, but for almost everyone else simple is almost always better.

Environmentally Friendly Link Bait »

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In case you haven’t made your way over to Aaron’s Blog recently check out the 101 Link Building tips that he and Andy Hagans put out. It’s got some great tips that should required reading (and rereading) before you start thinking about linking.

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In the olden days of SEO it was all about targeting the “right keywords”. You wanted to rank for [blue widgets] you put blue widgets in the right spots, your title tags, your meta tags, you looked for a density of x%, you put your keywords in bold and italics and things were golden. While things have gotten tougher it’s still possible to succeed with this approach. However the folks who are looking forward aren’t just targeting the right keywords, instead they are setting their sights on traffic …

Targeting Keywords versus Targeting Traffic »

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I’ve mentioned Squidoo here a few times, and if you aren’t playing with it I think it’s time you start. It’s starting to look more and more like Wikipedia’s little brother and you can still get in on the ground floor.

Wikipedia Versus Squidoo »

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I’ve been monkeying with Google Base for a while now, but usually I’m going for stuff that’s off the beaten path so to speak. Sunday night about 10 pm EST I entered a new item and some of the tags I used were a lot closer to the surface. Monday morning I started putting up some links to the Google Base item. Monday afternoon, before anything I had put up earlier in the day had a chance to get into the index I was able to find my Google Base item for some unique “testing phrases”. So who’s playing with Google Base, have you found you needed to show Google where it is or was it self indexing?

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I get and can acknowledge on a general search like the one the one I did there might be user centric reason for showing 5 links to 5 URL’s. Really though do we need a whole second listing for the same domain right beneath it, who does it help? I suspect the first programming may not be communicating with the second part as I seen this rather frequently over the past week or so. C’mon Google what’s up with that and where the diversity in SERP’s? This is just more evidence of your over reliance on authority.

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If it says something on the internet it must be true, so here it is proof that Michael Gray is Really Awesome.

Michael Gray is Really Awesome »

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I get emails for link requests all the time. Two or three times an enterprising individual picked up the phone and left a voice mail for a link request. Today I got my first link request through a MySpace message …

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Is it even worth buying a new domain and spending 12-24 months developing out link worthy content anymore? I mean Google has the authority knob locked up tighter than the gold at Fort Knox. I haven’t seen any changes in their love affair with the Amazons, EBay’s and Cragslist for some time. So rather than fight the enemy embrace it and feel it up for any weaknesses.

Stop Buying New Domains for SEO Development »

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The following is an part of an updated merchant TOS I got this week, talk about losing the plot …

Partner agrees that it shall not use trademark
and registered names in the title or body text of any listing,whether
paid for or not, which will cause affiliate’s listing to return at the
top of a query string when user is searching on <snip> trademark,
registered or personality names is also not permitted. (example:
Froogle Google). Partner understands Product Partners and <snip>
will not pay commissions to an affiliate who breaches this agreement.

I get not wanting your affiliates to outrank you for your product, but I think you would want them backing you up instead of say your competitors or people saying less than favorable things about you …

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Yo Matt or Adam indexing Lycos SERP’s I mean really what the heck is that about?

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Let’s see who was paying attention to Jedi Master Rand Fishkin this week and can figure out why I posted about Danika Patrick.

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So I’ve been catching up with my podcast backlog and caught Greg Niland (aka GoodROI) interviewing Brad Geddes (aka eWhisper). He asked a pretty interesting question mid show

“Do you see Google a partner or as a vendor you’re buying traffic from”

good stuff, you can download the whole interview from Webmasterradio.

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The good news is my referals from Shopping.com, Bizrate.com, and EBay.com are WAY up this week. The bad news is since they cost $1.00 instead of $0.35 I’ve had to cut my budget.

I guess those users are really getting a “quality experience” on those sites huh? <sarcastic evil grin>

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I’ve been busy tearing down, ripping apart, fixing, and rebuilding some of my own sites and some clients sites quite a bit lately. I’ve been neglecting my linkbuilding and decided it’s time to get back on track here are few tips you might find useful in helping you build some links.

Looking at Link Building Tips »

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Hey Google Adsesne how about giving people the ability to call for a “fresh visit” and content reassessment so the adsense ads will target better. Sometimes we make typos or use phrase that call for the wrong ads to be delivered. Sure I can test it by throwing an irrelevant parameter on the URL but actual visitors to the site will get the old ads until you decide to revisit the page.

You could make it really easy and scaleable by making it a parameter like example.com/?recrawl=true, you could limit abuse by limiting it to one url per domain per day.

Of course you could really improve relevancy by allowing publishers to suggest kewords/phrases and comparing them to what you think the page is about. For example if you think the page is about oranges and the publisher tells you its about orange juice determine those phrases are related enough to go with the publishers suggestion. If you think the page is about oranges and the publisher thinks it’s about digital cameras determine those terms are too dissimilar and go with your interpretation.

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I’m sure some of you folks happened to stumble across this or maybe you’ve even gotten a trackback ping or two and seen my link blog and wondered what the heck I’m up to.

I’ve got a Link Blog, and Why You Should Care »

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Hey Google Adwords I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason why when I change a destination URL I lose my premium position. However the side effect is I drop to the side my CTR plummets and I’ve got to raise my bid price to get things back in line. It’s terribly annoying and leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, especially because I didn’t change the creative, I just changed the destination and tracking parameters so my new log analysis program would work.

Since your spiders are reading the pages for quality anyway how about if there’s no change in the content the premium slot doesn’t go away? C’mon how about it (shamelessly drops Matt Cutts name with a link in case he unsubscribed to me on vacation).

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I know you search engine folks got together a while ago and agreed on a standard to help fight blog spam. Problem is it didn’t work and it only satisfied whiney cat bloggers. Now if you had involved some of the people who were in the industry things might have turned out differently (see classic old school Nick W Threadwatch post The solution to blog spam) you might have had a little more success. I know some of you googlers read my blog, and because I’ve got a head full of crazy genius ideas I’m going to make the case for the adoption of a new parameter.

Making a Case for the Ignore Parameter »

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When you are looking for “polluted” areas on the web two that immediately leap to mind are travel and real estate. I don’t think that it should come as shock to anyone that searchers are starting looking places other than search engines for information.

Building Traffic to a Travel Website with 43Places »

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Recently I’ve been laying the groundwork for some future SEO projects doing some site migrations onto content management systems, showing search spiders friendlier content, and cleaning up some URL structures. I’ve been using Google Sitemaps to help keep track of how the projects are progressing.

Google Sitemaps and Site Migration »

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Go ahead search for [mosquito ringtone] which do you think is better CLOAKED New York Times Article or a the actual Washington Post article on mosquito ringtones?

The only good part is once everyone is cloaking spammer, no one is …

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With a first communion, kindergarten graduation, karate belt test, church picnic, and dance school recital all within the past three weeks my inbox and pile of work I need to get to runeth over. Posting will be light untill I get back on track.

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A few weeks ago Aaron asked me to look at and explain some things in Google Sitemaps, and although it’s been a few weeks I did eventually get around to it (see SeoBuzzBox.com). I’ll get into looking at things in a little later I’d like to start by looking at ways to improve Google Sitemaps.

Looking at Google Sitemaps »

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One of the things that always makes me think outside of the box is when “the real world” and “my outside life” intersects in serendipitous ways.