One of the posts that created the most buzz amongst SEOs last month came from Google patent expert Bill Slawski, who wrote on a Rank-Modifying Patent submitted in early 2010. This details a method to artificially adjust rankings after an SEO-related change is made to a website, with the overt or incidental impact being that SEOs are put off the scent when trying to test the algorithm, whilst also allowing Google to identify likely manipulators. Bill explains it better than I can, and the post is recommended reading.

Post-Panda there is a greater emphasis on content marketing as a link-building and brand awareness activity, and with more SEOs likely to jump on the guest blogging bandwagon it is going to become more important than ever to find the ideas that gain the most interest. Our favourite guest blogging expert offered an excellent guide to finding linkbait inspiration for those looking for some creative ideas.

Staying with link building there were a few overviews provided by Search Engine Land during the month. The first was a comprehensive round-up on 50 things every link builder needs to know. Point 16 of the 50 is ‘What Makes A Link A Bad/Spammy Link’ and for anyone new to link building there was a separate post going in to detail on the differences between Good, Bad and Bland Links.

I love posts that reference long-standing marketing theories, and a post by Seer Interactive fits the bill. In it the author applies Porter’s Five Forces Model to the competitive analysis of link building. He takes the traditional five forces and relaces them with the top-level measures to use when assessing competition for a given search term. These are listed as: number of links (there is still a strong correlation between number of backlinks and SERPs), quality of links (average domain authority or page authority), link types (the types of sites sending those links; .org, .edu, .gov etc), social signals (and their impact on a competitor’s reach if not directly on rankings) and competitor strength (the over-arching truism that a site performing strongly in the first four forces above will stand a better chance of naturally attracting more links in the future).

Finally, we always enjoy SEOs sharing inspiration for link building, and an SEOmoz ‘Whiteboard Friday’ video on 8 link building tips fits the bill. But the most entertaining, and the one reporting the most ambitious and creative ideas, had to be Unicorn Meat and Monster Feet. Enjoy!

The post SEO Round-Up : August 2012 appeared first on Erocket.

1. At the bottom right of the report screen, check to see how many results are returned. In the example below, there are 5,972 rows of data to export.

2. Change the ‘Show rows’ option from the default 10 to 25…

3. The screen will refresh and you will now see a row count at the end of the URL…

4. In the URL change the number 25 (rowCount%3D25/) to a number which is greater than the number of rows you need to export (up to 50000). In my example 6000 will do it.

5. Finally, hit ‘return’ to reload the page, then export in the usual way.

The post Google Analytics – Export More Than 500 Rows appeared first on Erocket.

Away from my desk the actual task of writing mixes the old and the new. Initial ideas are captured long-hand onto loose A4 sheets, with arrows and numbers linking paragraphs and sheets into some semblance of order.

I then dictate my hand-written notes into the Dragon Dictation app and copy the rough draft into a separate notepad file (less prone to crashing on my first gen iPad). Finally I add in the punctuation and correct any errors from the recording (the app seems to struggle at times with my Gloucestershire burr).

The point of explaining this (possibly arcane) work flow is that it is the handwritten part of the process that is typically fuelled by the cappuccino, and just this morning I spent some time in a café drafting the new copy for my web design services page. Between scribbling down ideas I took sips from my drink.

As usual, just as I finished handwriting my notes, I took a last swig from the cup, placed it back down on the saucer…and was suddenly struck by the froth tidelines around the bowl…

Why? Because they represented the flow of inspiration whilst I was writing! Short, hurried note taking at the outset, more protracted contemplation toward the end (reflected by the larger sips subsequently taken). That piece of writing appears to have been a six-sip-item!

Now call me a nerd but that’s the kind of thing that Malcolm Gladwell could base a book upon. A new kind of tipping point?! Sorry, I blame the coffee…

The post Copywriting Tidelines – A New Kind of Tipping Point appeared first on Erocket.

A question. If you’re involved in building links, do you know your 10 best link successes? Because I think you should.

It’s funny how disparate events, sometimes years apart, can come together to spark an idea. Many years ago, still a relatively recent graduate, and struggling to pin down the direction I wanted my career to go, some friends and I visited a house we were looking to rent. The outgoing tenants were two young guys at the beginning of a field sales career. Both worked for the same software house, and both were clearly ambitious.

Tacked to their living-room wall was a large, hand-drawn line chart of their sales targets and performance. After years of student digs decorated with Bob Marley posters and pages torn from Loaded, my house-mates and I found their choice of décor incongruous. In fact, we left the property in a slightly mocking mood.

But in truth I envied these guys their drive and sense of direction. And ironically, I later got into a sales career myself, where self-motivation and the recognition of personal successes were essential drivers for future sales.

Bringing this story up to date, I’ve read two things this past week which have built upon that earlier experience. The first is a post by Mark Porter over at Screaming Frog, on the subject of linkbait. In his beautifully-titled post Unicorn Meat And Monster Feet. 9 Exceptional Examples Of Linkbait Products, Mark collates a bunch of inspiring link-building success stories, each one a clever idea or ruse that generated significant links, social shares and brand awareness.

The second piece was an article I read this evening, in the ‘i’ newspaper. It was a profile piece on the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, and more specifically about a museum he has just opened in his home city of Istanbul. The museum contains around 1000 artefacts that together reflect life in the city during the 1970s and 1980s. Collected by Pamuk over many years, these flea market finds formed a core element of his 2009 novel ‘The Museum of Innocence’. The book tells the story of lovestruck Kemal, who hoards items connected to his cousin Fusun – the object of his affections – believing that one day he will build a shrine to her.

Okay, let me bring this back to link building. Sitting in my local park this evening, in reflective mood, these three strands came together and I was suddenly struck by the idea of cataloguing my more notable link building successes. Not the easy wins, but the really good stuff; the .edu links, the citations from major media, that kind of link loveliness. And I got to thinking about how we ought to do more to remember our more notable link building achievements; wrapped-up in the day-to-day push, it is too easy to lose sight of the really hard-won, high-value links that we have landed.

“Nothing succeeds like success.” – Alexandre Dumas

So to repeat the question I posed at the outset, if your work involves building backlinks, can you list your 10 best successes to date? If you had to build a shrine to your golden moments (okay, now I’m going too far – but hey, that’s the direction my daydreaming took me) do you know which links you would place there?

Because, off the top of my head, I can’t list my own top ten. Recalling them all without prompts, no can do. So I have decided to collate them, rate them, and then keep the list somewhere in view (although maybe not on my living-room wall – I love this stuff but when you share the space I guess you have to draw the line!).

Then, just like the sales targets I used to set out in my previous career, the aim will be to use this record to inspire myself to knock former glories off the list by bettering them.

What do you think? If you feel inspired to set out your own golden 10, or to get your teams to do the same, let me know how you get on in the comments. Link builders of the world, big up yourselves!

The post Link Builders – Do You Know Your Top Ten? appeared first on Erocket.