Data might be the new oil, but a lot of us just need gasoline

B2B SEO | Google Hummingbird and Beyond

B2B SEO | Google Hummingbird and Beyond.

 

What does Google’s new approach to search mean to you.

by Michael Andrew Westfall

To take advantage of this new environment, one must first put yourself in Google’s shoes. The monolithic search market juggernaut is on a crusade to continue its core brand strategy as the only true innovator in its space. Ask, what would I do if I were trying to maintain this lofty status as the world’s leading provider of information – With this in mind we can better understand the motives and derive some context from the ever-so-vague and nebulous explanations we get from Google’s search team and leadership alike.

|1| Wouldn’t you like search engines like Google to present users with the most personal and relevant results and data possible? Even if it means keeping large amounts of personal data?

 

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SEO Tutorial | Understanding Site Architecture with Xenu and Excel

One of the often under-considered factors for a strong SEO strategy is the site’s architecture and its affect on the PageRank flow through a site. We know that PageRank dissipates as we get further from the home page, but our conceptualization of page depth is clouded by the modern website’s sidebars, dynamically updating widgets, site-wide footers, and more. The difficulty in assessing a site’s architecture is compounded with very large sites with rich histories, especially as an SEO working for an agency where there is a need to develop a strong understanding of a new client’s site relatively quickly.

There are a few things the SEO can do to quickly get a sense of how the search engine might crawl and discover deep pages aside from opening Firefox, disabling JavaScript, setting User Agent to Googlebot, and clicking around starting from the home page. Let’s discuss a few of these options:

Google Webmaster Tools

One such tool that doesn’t fail to disappoint time and again is the Webmaster Tools ‘Internal Links’ report. Within this report we can get a look at which pages are linking to which, and get a count of internal links to any individual page. Unfortunately, the data is sampled (and often misleading) and does not report page depth.

Black Widow

Black Widow by SoftBytes will crawl through your site discovering new pages link by link. The biggest benefit of Black Widow is the Windows Explorer-like visualization of site architecture:

Xenu

Xenu is a great tool for discovering broken links by doing a full site crawl much like Black Widow. Additionally, Xenu reports “LEVEL” and “LINKS IN”, which are particularly useful for developing a site architecture understanding. After running a full crawl, I like to import the results into Microsoft Excel and do some quick manipulation to rate the internal link juice that flows into each page. I have found that this has enabled me to get a quick sense of the site’s architecture in a pretty painless and repeatable manner. This process is what I’ll be detailing in this blog post:

Step 1: Run Your Crawl

We won’t need anything but links to internal pages crawled. You can speed up a crawl significantly be allowing Xenu to crawl only the pages that matter. That is, if you’d like to crawl only the www subdomain, you should specify so in Xenu, as crawling the root domain could take a lot more time.

Step 2: Import and Clean up Tab Separated File into Excel

After importing, remove all but the “Address”, “Type”, “Level”, and “Links In” columns. Next, we’ll remove all of the non-html pages by deleting all addresses that do not have a “Type” of text/html.

Use the above filter to show only non-text/html entries, then delete them all. Once the filter is removed, we’re left with just html pages.

Once we’ve done this we can delete the “Type” column, leaving us with “Address”, “Level” and “Links In”.

Because of various crawling oddities, many sites will include odd level counts. Unless you’re working with a MASSIVE site, most normal pages will not have a level higher than 10. Sort by level, and find that point where the levels begin to jump and/or non-important pages are crawled, and remove all thereafter.

Step 3: Assign a “Level” and “Links In” Score

Knowing that more PageRank flows to pages closer to zero (the home page), I use the following formula to score “Level”:

=1-(Table1[[#This Row],[Level]])/(MAX([Level])+AVERAGE([Level]))

The home page (level zero) will receive a score of 1, all of the level one pages will receive a score that is a fraction of 1, level two will be scored less than level one, and so on.

I score the “Links In” column using the following formula:

=Table1[[#This Row],[Links In]]/MAX([Links In])

This formula works similarly in that the strongest score is 1, and lower “Links In” counts will be a fraction of 1.

Your Excel table should look something like this

Step 4: Rank Your Pages

Once we have our scores, we can add them together and/or use the RANK formula to get a quick reference number.

The higher total score or lower PageRank score indicates higher importance

Utility and Caveats

There are some obvious issues and shortcomings with this method of scoring internal pages. The most obvious is the lack of external link weight into the formula. It’s important to understand that our score is simply based on internal weight.

I have found, however, that it can be quite useful to have early in the life of a project as a reference. For instance, as I’m auditing a new site I can copy the URL of a page in question and do a quick CTRL+F in my Excel score sheet to get a quick feel for a page’s internal “importance”. Another great utility would be to compare these scores with other KPI, such as conversion rate or organic traffic. If you’ve got a page that converts like crazy, but has a poor internal link score, perhaps it should be moved closer to the home page, or linked to from more internal pages.

What helps you visualize site architecture? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter, @MikeCP.

Guardian: SEO is dead. Long live social media optimisation– optimiZation

SEO is dead. Long live social media optimisation

As Google search results throw up more and more ads, using SEO to reach your audience is becoming increasingly futile. Could social media optimisation be the answer?

 

Today’s businesses need to consider what it means to be social-media optimised, with a focus on customer-centric interaction rather than merely setting up a web property in the hope that Google will deliver hits. Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters/Corbis

Search engine optimisation (SEO) was always a flawed concept. At its worst, it means making web content less engaging for the reader but supposedly better for search robots and for the mysterious algorithms that determine the order in which results appear for a Google search. At its best, it means no more than following best practice in creating clear, accessible web sites with intelligible content, meaningful titles, descriptive “alt” attributes for image, no broken links, and the rest of what makes for a high-quality web destination.

Now SEO is dying. A striking post by Dan Graziano reveals that a Google search may display only 13% organic results; “the rest is ads and junk”. In addition, a recent Forrester report on how consumers found websites in 2012 shows that social media is catching up with search, accounting for 32% of discoveries versus 54% for search, according to the US respondents, up from 25% in 2011. The trend towards localised results delivered to mobile users, perhaps via an app rather than a web page, is another reason why traditional SEO is decreasingly important.

A better model for today’s businesses is to consider what it means to be social-media optimised, with a focus on customer-centric interaction rather than merely setting up a web property in the hope that Google will deliver hits. Recommendations from friends count for more than a search engine algorithm will ever achieve.

What then is social media optimisation? It is about inviting people into conversation rather than merely broadcasting a message. It is about listening to social media chatter and acting on the results. It is a hashtag or twitter handle on every ad, and a responsive team behind that social media presence for those who respond. It is integrating multiple touch points on multiple channels so that customers get a consistent experience across all of them. These things are not trivial to implement, though the technology to do so now exists, and they have the potential not only to drive sales but also to transform customer experience.

SEO will not be missed.

News: CLEANING UP THE CON COMIC-CON LEFTOVERS INCLUDE 20 TONS OF TRASH

PDS Commercial Cleaning Services - Cleveland

 Comic-Con, with its 130,000 attendees over four days, may generate millions of dollars in revenues for local businesses, but it also manufactures close to 20 tons of trash on surrounding city streets.

That’s where the Downtown Partnership’s Clean & Safe staffers come in, tasked with hauling all that debris away, not including all the trash deposited in the center itself.

This year’s event ended Sunday at the San Diego Convention Center. Here’s how the cleanup took place:

Crowd control: The cleanup crew, with some 100 staffers working day and night throughout the event, had to navigate dense crowds with carts laden with tools. The crew covered a wide swath, between 1st and 13th avenues and north of Harbor Drive to Broadway.

“This is hands down the largest event we’ll do,” said Ryan Loofbourrow, executive director of the Clean & Safe program. “Others don’t cascade all the way into downtown the…

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Gigaom

Millions of people all over the U.S. will flock to the polls Tuesday to make their vote count; and later, everyone will be glued to the screen to find out how the country has voted. Pretty much all the big news organizations are streaming their live coverage online, so you don’t need to have cable — or you can watch multiple feeds at the same time — to see who is calling which state first.

Check out our ultimate guide to watching the elections online below:

• Polls are closing in Indiana and Kentucky at 3 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday. Check out this Politico map for poll closing times in every state, or check this site if you need to find your own polling place before it closes.
• ABC News will be streaming live election coverage on YouTube as well as through its iPad app starting at…

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Major Banks, Governmental Officials and Their Comrade Capitalists Targets of Spire Law Group, LLP’s Racketeering and Money Laundering Lawsuit Seeking Return of $43 Trillion to the United States Treasury

NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Spire Law Group, LLP’s national home owners’ lawsuit, pending in the venue where the “Banksters” control their $43 trillion racketeering scheme (New York) – known as the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History and identifying $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money by the “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners and joint venturers – now pinpoints the identities of the key racketeering partners of the “Banksters” located in the highest offices of government and acting for their own self-interests.

In connection with the federal lawsuit now impending in the United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York (Case No. 12-cv-04269-JBW-RML) – involving, among other things, a request that the District Court enjoin all mortgage foreclosures by the Banksters nationwide, unless and until the entire $43 trillion is repaid to a court-appointed receiver – Plaintiffs now establish the location of the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money in a racketeering enterprise participated in by the following individuals (without limitation): Attorney General Holder acting in his individual capacity, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, the brother in law of Defendant California Attorney General Kamala Harris (both acting in their individual capacities), Jon Corzine (former New Jersey Governor), Robert Rubin (former Treasury Secretary and Bankster), Timothy Geitner, Treasury Secretary (acting in his individual capacity), Vikram Pandit (recently resigned and disgraced Chairman of the Board of Citigroup), Valerie Jarrett (a Senior White House Advisor), Anita Dunn (a former “communications director” for the Obama Administration), Robert Bauer (husband of Anita Dunn and Chief Legal Counsel for the Obama Re-election Campaign), as well as the “Banksters” themselves, and their affiliates and conduits. The lawsuit alleges serial violations of the United States Patriot Act, the Policy of Embargo Against Iran and Countries Hostile to the Foreign Policy of the United States, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (commonly known as the RICO statute) and other State and Federal laws.

In the District Court lawsuit, Spire Law Group, LLP — on behalf of home owner across the Country and New York taxpayers, as well as under other taxpayer recompense laws — has expanded its mass tort action into federal court in Brooklyn, New York, seeking to halt all foreclosures nationwide pending the return of the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000.00) by the “Banksters” and their co-conspirators, seeking an audit of the Fed and audits of all the “bailout programs” by an independent receiver such as Neil Barofsky, former Inspector General of the TARP program who has stated that none of the TARP money and other “bailout money” advanced from the Treasury has ever been repaid despite protestations to the contrary by the Defendants as well as similar protestations by President Obama and the Obama Administration both publicly on national television and more privately to the United States Congress. Because the Obama Administration has failed to pursue any of the “Banksters” criminally, and indeed is actively borrowing monies for Mr. Obama’s campaign from these same “Banksters” to finance its political aspirations, the national group of plaintiff home owners has been forced to now expand its lawsuit to include racketeering, money laundering and intentional violations of the Iranian Nations Sanctions and Embargo Act by the national banks included among the “Bankster” Defendants.

The complaint – which has now been fully served on thousands of the “Banksters and their Co-Conspirators” – makes it irrefutable that the epicenter of this laundering and racketeering enterprise has been and continues to be Wall Street and continues to involve the very “Banksters” located there who have repeatedly asked in the past to be “bailed out” and to be “bailed out” in the future.

The Havens for the money laundering schemes – and certain of the names and places of these entities – are located in such venues as Switzerland, the Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Cypress and entities controlled by governments adverse to the interests of the United States Sanctions and Embargo Act against Iran, and are also identified in both the United Nations and the U.S. Senate’s recent reports on international money laundering. Many of these entities have already been personally served with summons and process of the complaint during the last six months. It is now beyond dispute that, while the Obama Administration was publicly encouraging loan modifications for home owners by “Banksters”, it was privately ratifying the formation of these shell companies in violation of the United States Patriot Act, and State and Federal law. The case further alleges that through these obscure foreign companies, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo Bank, Citibank, Citigroup, One West Bank, and numerous other federally chartered banks stole trillions of dollars of home owners’ and taxpayers’ money during the last decade and then laundered it through offshore companies.

This District Court Complaint – maintained by Spire Law Group, LLP — is the only lawsuit in the world listing as Defendants the Banksters, let alone serving all of such Banksters with legal process and therefore forcing them to finally answer the charges in court. Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission, nor the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, nor the Office of the Attorney General, nor any State Attorney General has sued the Banksters and thereby legally chased them worldwide to recover-back the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) and other lawful damages, injunctive relief and other legal remedies.

James N. Fiedler, Managing Partner of Spire Law Group, LLP, stated: “It is hard for me to believe as a 47-year lawyer that our nation’s guardians have been unwilling to stop this theft. Spire Law Group, LLP stands for the elimination of corruption and implementation of lawful strategies, and that is what we’re doing here. Spire Law Group, LLP’s charter is to not allow such corruption to go unanswered.”

Comments were requested from the Attorney Generals’ offices in NY, CA, NV, NH , OH, MA and the White House, but no comment was provided.

About Spire Law Group

Spire Law Group, LLP is a national law firm whose motto is “the public should be protected — at all costs — from corruption in whatever form it presents itself.” The Firm is comprised of lawyers nationally with more than 250-years of experience in a span of matters ranging from representing large corporations and wealthy individuals, to also representing the masses. The Firm is at the front lines litigating against government officials, banks, defunct loan pools, and now the very offshore entities where the corruption was enabled and perpetrated.

Contact: James N. Fiedler877-438-8766 http://spire-law.com

SOURCE Spire Law Group, LLP

Copyright (C) 2012 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Microsoft pushes marketing envelope with IE ad song choice

 

 

Alexander George “Alex” Clare (born 14 September 1985) is a British singer-songwriter.^[1] His debut album, The Lateness of the Hour, was released in the UK on 11 July 2011 on Island Records^[2] and was produced by Mike Spencer and Major Lazer.^[3]

Clare adopted his current stage name, Alex Clare, in 2010, replacing Alexander G. Muertos, a pseudonym he first used whilst still at school.

Top 7 Habits of Highly Effective SEO

When I started my professional career (selling advertising), one of the most influential books that I read at the time was “7 Habits of Highly Effective People“, by Stephen Covey.

It’s not much of an over-statement to say that this book changed my life.

What’s interesting to me is how many of the tenets that Mr. Covey conveyed in this book hold true in many facets of my life, and specifically with digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).

I speak to many prospects for SEO services, every day. Some of these believe that SEO is a one-and-done affair.

While I find instances where companies could see some solid gains by simply implementing proper title tags and correcting a few things, more often than not, proper SEO efforts need to be worked on a regular basis to realize the types of gains that can deliver really solid, long-lasting and “optimized” (optimal) results.

Every SEO company will have its own processes for performing SEO, and I’m not suggesting that what follows covers everything that goes into an ongoing SEO effort, but the key ingredients are here.

*Note: items in italics come directly from Stephen Covey’s website.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas–Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.

Proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern–things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather. Gaining an awareness of the areas in which we expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming proactive.

In our world, being proactive means you can’t chase an algorithm.

What we can focus on are those things that we can control, which is develop a sound web presence that the search engines “should want to” rank – one that:

• Presents a quality user experience.
• Has quality/resourceful/unique content.
• Has earned links through methods that most would call “good marketing”.

There are many things that are within our circle of influence, such as:

• Selecting the right keywords to target.
• Building quality websites.
• Making sure that content is crawlable/indexable.
• Developing sitemaps.
• Maintaining clean code.
• Promoting content.
• Distributing press releases.

While we must be aware, and understand, things like Google Panda/Penguin and other major changes in the algorithms, if we focus on doing “good marketing”, all other things should fall in line, and major algorithm changes shouldn’t be a concern.

You want to try to build a company’s web presence that the search engines should want to rank. Perhaps, that way, you aren’t reacting to algorithms but actually working “ahead” of any algorithm changes.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

So, what do you want to be when you grow up? That question may appear a little trite, but think about it for a moment. Are you–right now–who you want to be, what you dreamed you’d be, doing what you always wanted to do? Be honest. Sometimes people find themselves achieving victories that are empty–successes that have come at the expense of things that were far more valuable to them. If your ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.

Habit 2 is based on imagination–the ability to envision in your mind what you cannot at present see with your eyes. It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation, and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint. If you don’t make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default. It’s about connecting again with your own uniqueness and then defining the personal, moral, and ethical guidelines within which you can most happily express and fulfill yourself. Begin with the End in Mind means to begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination, and then continue by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen.

I have often asked prospects this very question (“What do you want to be when you grow up?”). Without knowing where you’d like to be, how do you get there? What are the goals?

When I hear “I want to rank for this one specific keyword”, I am very inclined to elect not to work with that company. I’m not about “empty” success.

When I hear “we’d like to grow sales by X” or “we’d like to grow traffic by Y,” then I know that there is potential in an ongoing relationship.

Once we’ve determined that there may be a fit, it is the responsibility of any good SEO to lay out a plan based upon the end goals, and begin the process of developing the necessary steps to achieve the end goal.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

To live a more balanced existence, you have to recognize that not doing everything that comes along is okay. There’s no need to overextend yourself. All it takes is realizing that it’s all right to say no when necessary and then focus on your highest priorities.

Habit 1 says, “You’re in charge. You’re the creator.” Being proactive is about choice. Habit 2 is the first, or mental, creation. Beginning with the End in Mind is about vision. Habit 3 is the second creation, the physical creation. This habit is where Habits 1 and 2 come together. It happens day in and day out, moment-by-moment. It deals with many of the questions addressed in the field of time management. But that’s not all it’s about. Habit 3 is about life management as well–your purpose, values, roles, and priorities. What are “first things?” First things are those things you, personally, find of most worth. If you put first things first, you are organizing and managing time and events according to the personal priorities you established in Habit 2.

Often, when performing a competitive analysis, we find websites that are quite successful (getting a lot of quality organic search traffic for keywords that we’d like to target). When we can identify those top competitors and uncover the reasons why they are successful, we can reverse engineer their success and build a program based upon “best practices”.

When you compare the reasons why a competitor may have more success than you, you can begin to develop a program based upon address those “holes” (deficiencies) and scope out a project plan, accordingly.

If you’re like most, you may not have an unlimited budget and you’ll need to prioritize your efforts. For some, link building may be the most glaring need. For others, a lack of content to support ranking for keywords in the issue.

However you go about getting to the end goal, you must understand the end goal – first – in order to understand the prioritization of steps necessary to be successful.

For SEO programs, most agree upon a common “hierarchy of needs”. As a general rule, this is a good illustration of those (SEO) needs:

Internal Blogging for Companies SEO Localize information and increase “findability”

Internal Blogging for Companies

A blog is an essential tool for companies who want to effectively communicate with their
staff. A blog will:

Capture information for short and long‐term reference ‐Foster cross discipline communication of information

Localize information and increase “findability”

Decrease deficiencies found in traditional knowledge transfer Usually placed on or linked from the company intranet, the internal blog should be one of the most easily accessible points to gain internal company information.

Ideally, everyone should be able to post entries; however, to maintain a sense of decorum, it is sometimes best to allow all management to have access to post entries while
everyone else in the company should have access to post comments.

Typically easier to pitch to the execs than an external blog, internal blogs are also
substantially easier to implement with buy‐in from senior management, as the content isn’t
viewable from external sources. In addition, an internal blog is more likely to be read by
employees than a typical company intranet, newsletters, or general announcements.
So, what should be included in an internal company blog? Obviously, any company
announcements, including new products, new company directions, staff additions and
changes, awards won, events, and especially “fun” things like riddles, links to interesting
sites related to the industry – even birthdays and other announcements can be included.
Usually just a couple of posts per day are sufficient to communicate all information without
overloading your readers. Any more than that, and information can easily be missed. Space out your announcement and do a “round‐up” once a week to reiterate all important
communications and links.

It typically takes five to ten repetitions for a piece of information to reach and be
comprehended by the majority of staff, so the more vehicles there are for internal
communications initiatives, the better – and if the staff is young or technology oriented, what better way than a blog?

Making Money through Blogging

You’ve written a bunch of great blog content or perhaps you’ve written an e‐book and
you’ve been giving it away for free. You have solid traffic to your site, but you don’t want to
advertise. How do you create cash from your site?

If your blog is a success and you’ve been giving your content away, you’ve got a solid basis of authority and an existing customer base. The only thing that’s left to do is package what you already have and sell it.

Check out the self‐publishing services offered by companies like Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/). If you already have an e‐book that you’re
offering for free, you can add the option of a hard copy book for a price – or like many new
authors, organize your existing blog content into a book.

Alternately, if you prefer to stay faithful to the paperless e‐book option, you could take a cue from countless successful subject matter experts, add additional content, and charge for
an “unabridged” version, which you can sell not only through your own blog, but through multiple other niche websites as well as monsters eBay (http://www.ebay.com) and Clickbank (http://www.clickbank.com). Better yet, automate the process and create an ongoing cash stream. Once your blog has solidified you as an expert in your subject matter, with your expertise and existing traffic; it won’t be difficult to turn your work into something profitable.

SEO Content

There are numerous simple methods to make money through blogging, including Google
Adsense, affiliates, sponsorships, paid reviews, and brokering services, but before
implementing any targeted monetization systems, the first thing you need to do is make sure your blog is well‐ranked in the search engines, enabling people to actually find your site to then click on any advertisements (or
what‐have‐you) you may have implemented.
Most people use search engines to find what they’re looking for, and from those people, many
won’t look past the second page of results. There is a higher probability of someone clicking
on a link to your site if you are ranked highly within the search engines ‐ and the more hits you have, the more potential money you can make.

Although in the past, search engine optimization has most often referred to making changes in the development of your site, people are now realizing that content is absolute king. Valuable content, coupled with readability and site structure, provides the basis for
any SEO ‐friendly content. There is a fine balance between giving your audience with
compelling content and providing search engines with popular content.
Developing content with top search terms in mind (i.e.: writing for what your audience is
searching for) is the most sure‐fire way of increasing your ranking; use these additional
tips to help increase your traffic:

1. Focus on niche markets ‐ if you broaden your subject matter too much, you’ll find
yourself lost among too many results to count. Focus on particulars and frequent other
blogs in the same niche; comment on other posts leaving a link back to your blog. Instant
traffic!

2. Research popular search terms using resources like Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/),
Digg (http://digg.com/), Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends), and Technorati
(http://technorati.com/) ‐ remember; you’re not looking for keywords that you WANT
people to search; you need to find out what they’re ALREADY searching for and use those
popular terms to create new content and thus boost your ranking.

3. Make use of your Meta tags to ensure that your title, description, and keyword tags are
unique to your page’s content, and pair down unnecessary language to boost your keyword density.

4. Test your site using a Meta tag analyzer and a keyword density analyzer; there are many
free tools available to analyze your content and tags. Some search engines claim to ignore
Meta tags entirely, but frequently use the description tag to provide a page’s description in
search results. Well‐written tags are strongly recommended.

5. Use Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics) or a similar service to keep
track of where your hits are coming from, and write new posts based on popular posts
you’ve already written ‐ why reinvent the wheel when you can learn from your existing
content? Analytics will track all traffic to your site and will tell you everything you want to
know about how your visitors found your site and how they interact with it ‐ you’ll be able
to focus your content based on what’s already been proven popular and improve to convert more visitors.

6. Make use of your blog roll ‐ link to external sites as well as other posts within your own
blog; this will increase referral traffic and most search engines give more weight to pages
that are frequently linked. A very general rule is that the higher the off‐site pages rank, the
quicker the site will be crawled, and so the greater number of important sites that are
linking to YOUR site, the more often search engines like Google will crawl your site in the
future. Many well‐linked sites are crawled several times a day.