Prospecting for Links Like a Pro

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Matt Polsky — No Comments ↓

Guest blogging, while becoming overplayed, is still a great way to build relevant links from authority websites within a niche. Every site, from the one-man show to the enterprise level news blog, is in need of content, and many will jump on the opportunity to add content to their site, as long as it is unique, thought-provoking or relevant to their readers.

Although finding and identifying link opportunities – while matching unique, thoughtful topics to go with each guest post prospect – isn’t the most difficult part of link building, it is one of the most time-consuming.

In this post, I’ll be going over the surprisingly simple to the mind-blowing gems of discovering new link opportunities.
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Posted in Link Building, SEO

Getting Out of the Guest Blogging Bubble

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Matt Polsky — 1 Comment ↓

Guest blogging is the most widely known tactic to legitimately build links from authority websites; however, while guest posting has its benefits, it also has its negative connotations.

As inbound marketers, we need to not just get ahead of the curve, but stay ahead. What I mean is that smart – or scared – webmasters will soon quit accepting low-value works, yielding to columnists over one and done hits.

Take State of Search for example. To preserve quality, Bas van den Beld has eliminated guest post requests in general, opting only for guest posts from people that they approach, and not the other way around, which can be chalked up to spam tactics and pitches that have polluted the industry as a whole.

So, as more sites take on practices like State of Search, where will that leave the rest of the SEO industry that leans too heavily on guest blogging?

Incentivizing Link Building to Promote Results

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Matt Polsky — No Comments ↓

A few weeks ago, Derek Halpern over at Social Triggers, wrote a great piece on persuading people you don’t know to help you, aka getting links.

In short, Derek used the incentives brought to light in the popular book Freakonomics – economic, social and moral – then translated them into ways your outreach emails can provide value and increase responses.

Similar to Derek, I’m a fan of the thought process behind the Freakonomics’ incentives and use them for all facets of link building.

One of the most effective areas of these incentives falls on link builders themselves.
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Posted in Link Building, SEO

Why Google Modifies Your Title Tags

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Matt Polsky — No Comments ↓

Google Webmaster Central describes the site title, or title tag, as a quick representation of the content of a result and its relevance to a specific query.

Sounds basic right? However, one thing you may not know, or dealt with, is the fact that Google reserves the right to alter a title tag if they feel it isn’t the best representation of a page.

Over a year ago, Pierre Far – a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst – explained that algorithms will generate multiple alternative titles so that pages aren’t constrained to having the same static title tag for every search query.

The basic thought behind this to increase click-through ratios by displaying a “better,” more concise title tag or change the tag for semantic terms allowing users to easily recognize a relevant page. Yes, anyone who has ever written a PPC ad can tell you that a relevant, concise ad leads to an improved CTR, but what happens when the title isn’t a “better” choice for the user, or when it makes a site look incompetent?

The set Title Tag is actually just “Welcome to Rizzo’s!” Google is pulling the rest.

Moving Past Duplicate Content to Provide Unique Value

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Matt Polsky — No Comments ↓

It’s not breaking news to hear that search engines filter out duplicate or thin results. Yes, almost 12 percent of sites – a number directly from Google – were caught off guard with the first Panda algorithm; however, low-quality content isn’t what caught these sites by surprise.

What surprised webmasters was the fact that a gap started to close between what Google said happens and what actually happens.

This initial shock should have been expected. I mean, think about Google’s purpose – provide relevant content that people will want to read and share. If their search engine is promoting duplicate or thin results, then what are the odds that a user switches to a competitor? Very high.
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Posted in SEO

Google Removes “Not Selected” Feature from Webmaster Tools

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Matt Polsky — No Comments ↓

Last July, Google added a new feature to Webmaster Tools – Index Status. This feature helped webmasters better understand their site’s indexing, including what I considered as the most important feature, showing the pages that the algorithm overlooked.

As of yesterday, it seems that this feature has been turned off. Not Selected was a popular tool amongst technical SEOs that provided the benefit of knowing the exact moment a duplicate content issue or indexing issue occurred.
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Posted in On-Page SEO, SEO

Google’s “Ten things” Philosophy and the Connection with SEO

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Matt Polsky — No Comments ↓

SEO is one of the fastest growing industries on the market today – it’s also one of the most exciting. With SEO, changes occur on a daily basis, accumulating to over 500 algorithm improvements each year; however, if you can understand the root of why search quality teams would be making so many drastic improvements, you can better understand how to prepare and what to expect in the future.

To do this, I tore a page out of Google’s book with their Ten things we know to be true, or company philosophy.

Reading through this I found some very interesting topics and correlations between the search giant and SEO – go figure, right? – some upfront, some buried.
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Posted in SEO

SEO Glossary, Beginners Guides and Twitter Follows

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Matt Polsky — No Comments ↓

At this point, there isn’t a test, certification or degree/major for SEO professionals, even though you may find that happening in the near future – especially with amazing programs like Distilled U. But, no matter how you fell into SEO, one thing is always true, which is the fact that there is massive amounts of information on the Internet pertaining to SEO and not all of it is correct.

To alleviate this, I’ve put together this list below containing a handy glossary, industry blogs, great articles (that will be updated frequently) and, most importantly, people you should be following on Twitter to keep up with the changing SEO landscape.

I’ve found that following great minds like those below is one of the best ways to sharpen your skill set, and you can learn quite a lot from these great men and women.

Enjoy!
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Posted in SEO