SEO News Blog

Amazon.com opened up their Kindle publishing program to all bloggers. If you prefer to read blogs on your Kindle you can subscribe to SEO Book for the Kindle at Amazon.com.

Publishers get 60 cents per month per subscriber. It is unlikely that we will get enough Kindle subscribers to notice it as an income stream (as we would need about 50,000 Kindle subscribers for it to be a decent revenue stream), but as such distribution opportunities come about on authoritative domains like Amazon.com, they create a great opportunity for filling up branded organic search results with non-negative authoritative pages. And signing up takes less than 5 minutes.

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Posted by Lucy Langdon

Although a lot of a blog’s success comes from the ongoing effort you put into growing and nurturing it, there are a few things you can do to give it the best possible chance from day one. The checklist below varies from very simple actions through to big decisions and longer term strategies.
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Posted by randfish

A very simple return to the headsmacking series this week (as it’s late here in London and I’ve been up my usual 40+ hours traveling).

We’ve been noticing that a number of websites seeking to block bot access to pages on their domain have been employing robots.txt to do so. While this is certainly a fine practice, the questions we’ve been getting show that there’s a few misunderstandings about what blocking Google/Yahoo!/MSN/other search bots with robots.txt does. Here’s a quick breakdown:

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Posted by rebecca

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

Google crashed between 8:40 and 9:55 ET yesterday, preventing people from Googling to find out why Google wasn’t working. Oh noes! Speaking of Google, they recently overhauled Google News as well as updated their blog search algorithm, and they’re allowing trademarks to be used in US Adwords copy. Geez, no wonder there was downtime. Methinks Google needs a little R&R.Congratulations to Barry Schwartz–he and his wife just had a baby girl. Mazel tov!Now I know what I should work on the next time Rand’s out of town at a conference (wait, that’s next week…*evil laugh*).R.I.P. 3D Realms. Your perpetual release date for Duke Nukem Forever made for a lot of Internet lulz.Ladies and gentlemen, Frankenfrog! It’s alive! It’s ALIIIIIIIIIVE!!!

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Google Webmaster Central have just updated their toolset, so now might be a good time to review it.

For those new to Webmaster Central, Google offer a set of very useful tools that provide an insight into how Google handles your site. You can find out how your site is crawled, what keywords you rank for, and if there are any problems.

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Posted by great scott!

“Old McSpammer had a farm, e-i-e-i-oh,
And on that farm he built some links, e-i-e-i-oh

With a backlink here, and a backlink there,
Here a link, there a link,
Everywhere a link, link…”

You get the idea. Back in the day, building your own network of sites designed to link to each other and build link popularity was an easy way to help boost your rankings. Nowadays though, link farming is an almost surefire way to get yourself into some big trouble with the engines.
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Posted by randfish

(Intro: For those who aren’t aware, last week I challenged Will Critchlow to a presentation-off during SMX London).

I see how it is, Will. Don’t try to deny it.

You can’t win on points, so you think you can send some army of torrential British micro-water soldiers (colloquially called “rain”) to stop me?

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Posted by rebecca

The weather’s getting nicer, the days are getting longer and Rand’s barely in the office. You know what that means: it’s conference season! Since there are so many conferences right around the corner, I thought I’d list some upcoming events in case you’re thinking of attending a show but aren’t sure which one to book.
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One of my biggest business flaws was perhaps starting off with a fairly low self-esteem. Because of that, I catered toward people who were whiny, wanted free stuff, and never had any intent of buying anything. Being naive, and wanting to be liked too much, I catered to such worthless people, and probably cut my income short over the years by millions of dollars. Over the course of the last year I decided that I was going to change directions on that front, and I have never had a problem with being blunt.

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Do aggressive marketing practices repel you?

Or make you more likely to buy?

Is it a cultural thing? For example, does hard sell work in some cultures, but not others?

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