Cornwall SEO

Content Marketing Blog

Lyndon Antcliff

SEO Keyword Research using Google Insight

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Update: I didn’t think to check that the information presented was going to be live and so what I talk about in the post does not now reflect the data. DOH! Obviously I should have taken a screen shot and done it that way. But the points are still valid, it’s just the data set has changed on me.

Interesting to see seomoz as a breakout keyword. I would have thought they were riding too high to breakout, possibly recent press has sent a new bunch of people to search

Dannyseo

At first I thought, Danny Sullivan but no. This guy is called Danny Seo and is a Environmental lifestyle expert, sigh! He’s the kind of guy that makes me want to go out and burn tires in my garden.
Looks like he does a lot of TV and print, hence the boost in the search data. He also seems to smile a lot, maybe the new algo has a happy clappy quotient.

SEO Woo

This is interesting as I have chosen the search to be USA centric, this is a Korean of some sort. What I am realising here is “Seo” must be a Korean name and so when someone of that name gets famous they start ranking for “seo”

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Guess what, Seo Hyun is another female star of some sort and so is Hee Kyung Seo.

A quick search in US Google of SEO, only reveals our friends in the search optimization industry and no Korean stars, which is not surprising. But what we have uncovered here is a little nugget of information. How valuable is that nugget? Don’t know, but one semantic occurance, that of a Korean name popped up three times in the break out data.

What I find with this kind of knowledge, is that there is someone, somwhere who will put this to use to their advantage. 99% of people will probably be “so what”? But then 99% of people fail. It’s those who can take a piece of information and meld it to their own use, whilst no one else knows about it.

Lets turn our attention to top searches related to SEO

First thing you notice is “google seo”, twice the amount of searches than the second in the list. More searches than “how to seo” or even “seo website”.

What this tells me is like it or loathe it, Google is the web. Lets not get into that right now. Using “google” as a keyword seems an obvious choice for an seo site to optimise for. I would never use “google” as a keyword search term when loooking for info, but I am neck deep in search knowledge and so may not reflect the ordinary person.

This is an important point. When trying to figure out what ordinary people are searching for, try to search like an ordinary person.

Using a brand in your long tail is a no brainer, using the brand of Google within keyword phrases with the root of “seo” is essential.

Some may like to point out that the optimisation for this site is terrible, and it’s true, I’ve never bothered with SERPS traffic, I get my conversions in other ways, but that’s another story. I just wanted you to know why I am suggesting it but not bothering myself.

If you are in the SEO business and aggresively targetting the keyword you probably already know all this.

WordPress pops up two times, once by itself. What’s that about? Why would google say that someone searching for “wordpress” is an seo related search? Possibly Google is factoring in other metrics, such as where the searcher came from, what are they doing, what were their previous searches and so on.

The important thing is to realise that “wordpress” is within the semantic gaze of seo.

All interesting stuff, it’s fascinating what you can learn from mining data and seeing where it leads. Hope this has been educational, it certainly has for me.

What is Content Based Link building all about?

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What an awful label, “content based link building”. Doesn’t exactly fire you up to run to your keyboard and bash out ass achingly good linkbait does it?

Labels are interesting, within them you can find out lots of stuff.

What I specialise in has many labels, linkbait, content, magnetic content, etc.

None of which really capture the essesnce of what we do.

At the recent SASCON conference people asked what I did and I told them I produced content such as “13 Kittens on Crack go on Holiday to Holland”. How can you put a label on that?

The interesting thing is there is quite a strict process to creating linkbait, highly creative people tend to have patterns of behaviour which allows them to tap into their creative resevoir. Sometimes the headlines seem like they were thought up in minutes, but the reality is a casual headline which works has usually been crafted for hours if not days.

I am still shocked when people are surprised I work on a specific headline for days, I am sure most bloggers take about 30 secs. It is possible to come up with a great headline for 30 secs, but you will probably find that your sub-conscious as been mulling it over for years.

So, back to the question, What is content based link building all about?

Most of it seems to be about mediocrity, most content is medocre. I guess by pure definition that would be the case, if everything was exceptional then it would become average.

The important thing to focus on then, is successful content based link building. This is not that hard to backward engineer.

  • Look at the niche
  • Identify the content with most links
  • Deconstruct content
  • Analyse backlinks to identify patterns

The data you need to end up with is, why did these people link to this content? It’s difficult to be definitive and some of the gaps must be filled in by instinct and guess work. But you will notice certain interesting things:

  • 80% of the links come from 20% of the linkers
  • The links are given by real people, not machines
  • Human contact increases the chance of a link
  • Linkers may not agree with the content

We can divulge a lot more information from the why did these people link to this content question. And this data can help shape your own link building strategy within the specific niche.

But is content based linkbuilding all about relationships? I don’t think it’s “all” about that, there is a whole lot more to it, but it is a very important part of the mix.

SASCON SEO Conference

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I will be speaking at the Manchester SEO conference called, SASCON. Although it sounds like a Southern European military region, it’s going to be good as there is a great line up of speakers.

Click here for the website, I think there are still tickets left and they are a lot more reasonable than London conferences.
So if you are in the area, pop in and say hi.

There are some great people going and I’m looking forward to meeting. If you do go, come up and say hi.

It’s going to be a 6 hour drive, any podcasts you think I should download and listen to on the way?

SEO Blogging, or a River of Effluent?

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Aaron Wall has a certain style of blogging, one that is highly readable and underpinned by a true experts eye. He also seems to not mind offending big names, my cynical nature leads me at first to think there is some business logic as to where he aims his criticism, but probably not. I think he really enjoys peeling back the skin of those big names and revealing the raw flesh underneath.

There is so much spin and smoke and mirrors on seo industry blogs, everyone has an angle, those selling services are constantly on the look out for advantage. Which I don’t have a problem with as most industries operate in this way, but it requires special skill to navigate through the rivers of effluent that is the SEO blog scene and establish yourself as a top dog. This skill is not just about being a hot SEO, it’s something much more.

Which is why there is need for the top players in the industry to tell it like it is.

Trust and credibility are golden and are the best marketing tools around. If large amounts of people trust you and what you say and don’t think you are simply bigging up a mate or delivering a slagging to someone just because they are a competitor, it’s powerful stuff.

Of course there are other ways to be powerful but that’s for another post.

Here is the cracking article that inspired this post.
Who Are The Top 10 SEOs in the World?

Long Copy Short Copy

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OK, I admit, my post on social bookmarking was a little tongue in cheek. Designed possibly to raise an eyebrow or two? Most likley, but I also like to play around with the medium of blogging. I was just about to call it an art form, but noooooo.

Posts like that are designed to get you thinking. How long does a blog post have to be. My answer to that is “as long as it needs to be”. The style and objective of the blog will help define, plus the nature of the post. Are you trying to sell, inform, argue?

People bang on about the short attention span of internet users, I do this when talking about crafting headlines. But sometimes a long post is needed to lead people through an arguement to help define the points of view. I have seen successful blog posts that are similar to academic essays. Offering meat when everyone if offering lettuce is an interesting tactic.

This post could be quite long, but I have to go and get some sausage rolls from Truro.