31 Great SEO Articles for March 2010

by Nick Thacker on March 1, 2010

For my readers who are interested in improving their SEO (search engine optimization) for their blog or website, I wanted to take an extra day and write up a post about the best information I’ve found during the month of February. Note that these aren’t necessarily posts that were written in February, just posts that I came across and really liked. I asked my Twitter network to help me out with their favorite SEO posts, and hopefully you’ll help spread these great posts by linking to it and promoting it through your networks!

Introductory SEO Articles

  1. What Is SEO?
  2. How to Get Started With SEO – A great introductory article about SEO for general purposes; good for learning about what SEO is and how it works.
  3. Cheap SEO is Cheap SEO – The name explains all. Solid article though.
  4. SEO vs. PPC
  5. SEO Tips – 4 Quick SEO Wins
  6. How to Conduct Keyword Research – An SEOMoz article detailing some basics for conducting proper keyword research for SEO purposes.
  7. How Search Engines Operate
  8. The Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet
  9. The Beginner’s Checklist for Small Business SEO – If you read nothing else about SEO, click this link and read through everything SEOMoz says. This article is a must.
  10. The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO
  11. SEO for Startups – Top 7 Lessons

SEO Concepts

  1. How Our Brains “Google” – Interesting take on searches; includes nifty pictures with heat maps and walks through the “brain processes.”
  2. The Shape of Marketing – 2010 and Beyond
  3. Companies Get the SEO They Deserve
  4. 2010 SEO Checklist - From Bruce Clay’s SEO blog.
  5. 3 Tips for “Company Blogging”
  6. Managing and Improving Your Business’ Relationship Online – From GetListed.org; good read.

External (Offsite) SEO

  1. Should A Small Business Have A Wikipedia Article? – Promoting a website can be difficult; this post helps answer the question of how to go about doing it.
  2. YouTube and SEO
  3. Why Local Search Is So Important
  4. Marketing-Driven SEO Strategy – A good post on marketing and SEO.
  5. 30 SEO Bookmarklets to Save You Time
  6. Google Analytics and Tracking Code Basics and Time-Saving Plugins
  7. Getting Started Publishing on Google News
  8. Geo-Targeting for Your Website or Blog – Yeah, this one’s from my website, but I think it really is a great article (if I do say so myself). I’ve been working to geo-target my San Marcos-based printing and web design company using some of the methods I outline here.

Internal (Onsite SEO)

  1. Website Conversion Tactics
  2. Keyword Research Factors to Consider
  3. Theming Through Siloing – Bruce Clay writes about siloing, a concept that allows “you to achieve high search engine placement both for general and targeted keyword phrases through themed vertical page linking and/or construction.”
  4. Google Video Sitemaps – Ever wondered about using video on your site for SEO purposes? This article from Bruce Clay’s blog talks about using video sitemaps for Google.
  5. A Step by Step 15 Minute SEO Audit (A Sample from SEO Secrets) – A nice, well-thought out article detailing how to find and correct problems with your SEO. A post by Danny Dover from his SEO book. Very interesting advice and extremely helpful content on this post.
  6. Running Giveaway Competitions for Links and SEO – Have you thought about running a competition on your blog or website? For many small businesses, this plan could be a great way to generate more business or just popularity.

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SEO Basics: Geo-Targeting for Your Website or Blog

by Nick Thacker on February 25, 2010

SEO Basics: Geo Targeting for Your Website or BlogI’ve been working on SEO (search engine optimization) to increase my organic search results for both my personal blog and website and my company’s website, mainly by focusing on tried-and-true SEO tactics and some newer ideas. My main goal for my blog is to improve in the SERPs (search engine results pages) for certain keywords (online marketing and social media related ones), but for my company, I want to completely own the SERPs on Google for one specific goal: I want anyone in my city (San Marcos, Texas) searching for “printing,” “web design,” or “social marketing” to pick up the phone and call me. In order to do this, I’ve been looking into some simple “geo-targeting” SEO tactics that you can use to do the same for yourself. [click to continue…]

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Online Marketing for Your Small Business:
Bridging the Gap from Offline Marketing

February 18, 2010

Like me, you’re a small business owner. Maybe you’ve dabbled in marketing completely on your own, using things like business cards, postcards, and brochures, direct mail campaigns, and maybe even cold-calling to reach your customers. Maybe you even hired a marketing/advertising firm or had an intern designer working for you. Either way, if you’re like [...]

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Online Marketing for Your Small Business: Networking and Social Media

February 17, 2010

I attended a huge networking event today, and I really enjoyed most of what I was involved in. Austin is filled with great people, and passionate business owners, and lots of entrepreneurs who don’t know the next step. They’re considered (by me) to be very successful, and they know their industry inside and out. Still, [...]

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How to Use Online Marketing to Make Your Blog Your Business

February 16, 2010

Studying online marketing to start “Blogging for profits” has long been one of the most interesting subjects I’ve ever come across. To me, things like online marketing and blogging to make money aren’t as simple as people make them sound, but they are intriguing.
“Just write great content that gets targeted visitors, and sit back and [...]

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Social Media Influence: 3 Steps to Boost Your Social Media Productivity

February 15, 2010

Before I get into this post, I need to define what I mean by “social media” and “productivity” in this instance. First, by social media, I’m referring to your efforts to connect, share, mediate, and be relational online, whether for personal or online marketing reasons. I am including the use of social networking sites to [...]

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12 Great SEO-Ready WordPress Themes

February 11, 2010

If you’re running a blog, you need to be running it on WordPress. Why? For one, the ease-of-use and out-of-the-box functionality is second to none in the blogging platform world. Also, WordPress has some pretty stellar plugins that handle your on-site Search Engine Optimization without too much tweaking and coding. On top of that, there [...]

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Online Marketing Basics: 10 Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog

February 4, 2010

In continuing with online marketing and my tradition of list posts, I’ve decided to write an online marketing post that everyone can use. Don’t have a blog? Get one–but if you refuse, use these tips for your business’ website or your team’s online marketing strategy then. Here goes nothing:

Write great content. If this tip ever [...]

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7 Ways to Land Clients With Social Networking

February 3, 2010

If you’ve been running a business for any amount of time, you know the importance of finding, pitching, and landing clients. The process usually involves cold-calling, referral followups, requests for proposals, face-to-face meetings and/or some combination of the above. Online, while it’s significantly harder to have a face-to-face meeting (or easier if you’re using a [...]

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The Ultimate Productivity Playlist

February 3, 2010

I’ve been working a lot lately, and I came across some really cool, different music using Pandora’s free streaming service. These songs are all on my iTunes “Work” playlist, but I’ve included (affiliate) links here for your ease (and my benefit…). I hope this post will be something that keeps growing, and you’re welcome and [...]

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