Aaron’s discussed content mills in his interview with Tedster yesterday.

What is a content mill?

A content mill is a site that publishes cheap content. The content is either user-contributed, paid, or a mix of the two. The term content mill is obviously pejorative, the implication being that the content is only published to pump content into search engines, and is typically of low value in terms of quality…

According to Hitwise, Facebook just became more popular than Google Search.

become the most visited website for the week. Facebook.com recently reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th. The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google…

The landing page, in terms of SEO, went out of fashion.

Landing pages, which tended to be mass-generated, near identical pages pointing to one money page, became a target for the search engine spam filters.

However, the type of landing page we should take a closer look at is the type of landing page used in PPC - a page carefully crafted to lead a visitor to desired action. SEOs can benefit from applying the same techniques used for creating effective PPC landing pages to their organic pages…

There is obviously no shortage of information on SEO.

But thanks for turning up here

The sheer avalanche of SEO information can be overwhelming, for beginners and experts alike. Who do you know who to listen to? What information do you need to know, and what information is filler?

Why should you even listen to SEOBook?

1. Most Information Published On SEO Is Filler

You can learn 80% of what you need to know about SEO pretty quickly…

Like in any consulting field, SEO is rife with competition. There is only one way to win in such an environment, and that is to set yourself apart from the crowd.

Not in a bad way, of course

Here are some ideas on how to construct winning proposals.

Size Isn’t Everything, But It Does Count

Large proposals take a long time to do. On the upside, large proposals can look impressive, simply by virtue of their size…

Marissa Mayer announces that Google has reached an agreement with Twitter to include Twitter updates in Google’s search results.

We look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information…

One of our commenters, WebsterJ, recently made the astute observation:

So Derek calls out SEO as a scam while touting social media - a field that is quickly cornering the market on snake oil. Fast talking social gurus charging boring clients with nothing interesting to say big $$$ to make Twitter profiles, blogs and Facebook pages that will bring in zero return. They just make the client feel like they are “doing social media…

Derek Powazek - no, I hadn’t heard of him until today either - is, according to the blurb: “one of the top 40 “Industry Influencers” of 2007 by Folio Magazine..has worked the web since 1995 at pioneering sites like HotWired, Blogger, and Technorati”.

A designer, apparently.

He doesn’t care much for SEO.

The fact we may never heard of him just goes to show that the web is a big place…

How are your referral stats looking? Noticed more traffic from Bing lately?

According to a Nielsen report last month, Bing is growing faster than any other search engine. It was reported Bing had 10.7% of the total search market, up 2% from the month before. Yesterdays report from Hitwise suggests Bing has since dropped to around 8.96 percent.

So, somewhere around 8-10% perhaps…

Have you ever had an unexpected success?

For example, you may have targeted a keyword term you thought was highly important, yet a few obscure long term keywords brought you more business? Or the site you’ve put all your effort into lately isn’t doing as much business as that throw-away site you’ve been neglecting?

I’m re-reading a great book called “Innovation & Entrepreneurship” by Peter Drucker…

SEO came about soon after the advent of the web crawler. The commercial imperative was obvious - where there was web traffic, there was money to be made. Positioning a page first in the engines was pretty much a licence to print money.

Still is, of course.

Throughout the history of search and SEO, the predominant metaphor of the web has been one borrowed partly from publishing - the page - and partly from computer science - the domain…

Remember how the news media wanted Google to come riding to the rescue and save them, and their failing business model?

Well, Google might have found a way.

This should be of huge interest to anyone who produces content on the web.

IF

…it comes off.

Micropayments

Google is planning to roll out a system of micropayments within the next year. Micropayments, as the name implies, are small payments - a cent or even a fraction of a cent - and the idea is that micropayments can be used to pay for accessing web content…

Following on from my post “What To Consider When Starting An SEO Agency”, we had a few questions about how to approach the design agency model. This is a model whereby you partner with web design companies. I used to run this model, so here are my ideas on how you can approach it.

What Is The Design Agency Model?

This is when you partner with one or more design agencies who do not have a SEO skillset in-house…

Starting your own SEO business can be a challenge. In DMOZ, a directory often hostile to SEO listings, there are still over 1,018 SEO service companies listed. Do a Google search on SEO companies, are you’ll see…..quite a few more!

Ok, it’s a big planet, and there is room for many operators, but it’s true to say that in the SEO game in 2009, no one is short of competition.

There is a lot of competion because there is a low barrier to entry…

Credit: HardForums

Do you work in an office?

From home?

If you’re thinking of starting SEO business, one of the key decisions you’ll need to make is where to setup. One of the advantages of the internet is that distance doesn’t become the obstacle it once was. An office can exist virtually, with the workforce spread out across the country, or around the globe, with employees working from home…

IIf you could tell the web 2.0/read-write/blogging/crowd-sourcing crowd one thing about search marketing, what would it be?

In a recent talk, given to bloggers, by Google Engineer Matt Cutts, Matt posed the question:

“What Do SEOs know that bloggers might not know?”

Matt goes on to talk about the merits of keyword research in terms of topic selection, and how understanding this concept can bring you a great deal of traffic…

What is the purpose of that new page you’re adding to your site?

Is it to rank highly for a keyword term? That’s half the battle won, of course

After the visitor has arrived on your page, what do you want the visitor to do next?

According to Seth Godin, you probably want a visitor to do one of five things:

• Click to go to another page on your site
• Buy something
• Register for something
• Click on/view advertising
• Pass your message on to a friend

So, if you build a landing page, and you’re going to invest time and money to get people to visit it, it makes sense to optimize that page to accomplish just one of the things above…

You’ve launched your website. Everybody you show it to thinks that it is great. You’re starting to get some traffic. You search Google for your site.

You can’t find it anywhere.

If you’ve arrived at SEOBook.com, chances are you’re trying to solve that problem. Welcome to the world of SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a process whereby websites can gain higher rankings in the search engines…

Are you making enough money from your website?

There are a number of ways to monetize a site. Aaron covers the options in extensive detail in the “Monetization” members area , however today we’ll take a close look at just one aspect of monetization, Affiliate Marketing.

What Is Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a marketing method whereby one business rewards another business for sending customers, visitors and/or sales…

In 2009, Google places a lot of trust in authority.

Authority, in terms of ranking, typically means “an established site with a high number of inbound links from authoritative sources”.

Ranking might also have something to do with a sites popularity. And the usage patterns. And various other signals of “establishment” known only to the Google alchemists.

Whatever way you look at it, a new site is difficult to get ranked in competitive keyword areas…

The conventional SEO strategy goes like this:

• Research keywords
• Optimize site for those keywords
• Link internal pages using keyword loaded terms
• Get links from other sites with keywords in the link

These days, this strategy isn’t working as well as it used to.

If a site isn’t genuinely interesting and isn’t worth remarking upon, it can be difficult to get links, attention and rankings…

Framing is when you use language to set the agenda.

Framing is short for “frame of reference”, meaning “a set of ideas, conditions, or assumptions that determine how something will be approached, perceived, or understood”.

This is a very important concept in marketing, and business in general. By using an appropriate frame of reference, you can manage how people perceive you…

Following on from our posts on SEO business planning, let’s take a look at allocating capital. We’ll also take a close look at one of the most important areas for SEO consultancy start-ups: advertising and marketing.

Allocate Budget

Never a truer phrase was said than “you need to spend money to make money”. Thankfully, in the SEO game, you don’t need to spend a lot, like brick-n-mortar companies need to do in order to get going…

What were the reasons you started your SEO-related business?

Perhaps you’re thinking of starting one up.

A survey published in New Business UK found the following:

• 41% went into business because they were passionate about their idea
• 39% wanted the freedom that came with being their own boss
• Only 7% cited money as being the reason

It’s interesting to note that the biggest obstacle people faced with starting their own business was a lack of money…

Often, in our rush to get ahead and do things, we forget to plan.

Do you have a business plan? Do you have a business plan, but haven’t updated it in a while?

A business plan need not be complicated. A few bullet points scribbled on the back of an envelope can constitute a business plan. A business plan is simply a description of what you intend to do, and how you intend to do it…

When we launch SEO projects, we’ve often got one eye on the future.

We start with a site that ranks nowhere, then we build links and optimize with the expectation that a few months from now, we’ll start getting rankings, and traffic. Are the keyword terms we rank for going to be worthwhile over time? Will search volumes in our niche increase? Will they decrease? Are there more lucrative niches we could target instead? What will our market be interested in this time next year? Where is our market moving?

Given that search engine ranking has a long lead time, it pays to think about keyword trends well ahead of time…

If Google is so successful, shouldn’t you be doing what they do? If you follow their philosophy, then you can be successful, too.

This book, by blogger Jeff Jarvis, is a collection of Google fanboy thoughts on how to do business in the internet age, using Google, and other high tech companies, as a model. The rules have changed. The old way of doing things no longer applies. We’re entering a brave new world where the internet will bring about a tech-led utopia…

Bill from SEO By The Sea published a good article entitled “Writing Content for Small Businesses Online”, in which he talks about search taxonomies.

For those new to the topic, I thought I’d go over it, and show it applies to SEO strategy.

I’m basing this article on the study “A Taxonomy Of Web Search”(PDF), by Andrei Broder. Andrei is VP of Search Advertising at Yahoo, although he wrote this report while he was with AltaVista…

There is an interview on Open Forum in which Seth Godin interviews Richard Branson. The question is: Why is small business is better than big business?

Branson explains how he structures Virgin so that it is a series of small companies. People know each other by first name. People need to know each others strengths and weakness, and collaborate, and be responsible for the work they do…