The internet moves at a lightening pace, and SEO moves with it. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and now Bing frequently tweak and adjust their algorithms, forcing SEOs to adjust the way they do things.
Sometimes in a matter of mere hours you can see the SERPs move up and down relative to each other.
This means we must be creative and we must be innovative to keep our foothold on first place rankings for competitive keywords.
SEOmoz just published a great article by Danny Dover with their best policies and practices for SEO. It’s a great list, filled with explanations and reasoning behind their decisions.
But SEOmoz could probably publish one of these lists every few months or so with updated ideas and tactics as the computer science behind the major search engines changes.
Follow/nofollow links? To Tweet or not to Tweet? Plaxo? Plurk? Bad link neighborhoods? This is all stuff you’re going to want to consider when tackling search engine optimization.
There’s an outstanding video on the TED website from Clay Shirky about how Twitter can make history. In brief, Twitter and the internet as a whole have changed the way news and information is spread around the globe.
Cell phone pictures and videos, along with text messaging and the ability to upload content to the internet from nearly anywhere remove the gatekeepers from traditionally media sources and make everyone a potential information source.
As SEOs, we can tap into that fast-moving process. As Shirky says in the speech, the goal should be to convene messages and conversations, not control them.
Companies on Twitter that are using it properly should spend more time listening that broadcasting. Tune into what people are saying about your industry and your company, and respond thoughtfully.
There’s nothing wrong with a company doing some self-promotion. I loved the #squarespace iPhone promotion, and all the subsequent copy-cats like the ongoing Orbitz promotion on Twitter – great stuff!
This is innovation at its best, and it’s probably returning great results for the respective companies. But you know what else it’s doing? It’s probably strengthening their SEO.
Inbound links to a site will significantly improve a site’s SEO, so long as they aren’t from a bad link neighborhood. I think Twitter qualifies as at least an upper-middle class neighborhood.
That’s not to mention the number of people who will write on their blogs about the promotion (like this one) – thus increasing the number the inbound links as well.
Internet innovations like these Twitter promotions are great ways to stay fresh and stay on top of the search engines. Sure, it requires some creativity, but take a little time to plan beyond your Web site sitemap structure, and you can really improve your SEO.
By: Zack S.
Tags: SEO, SEO and innovation, TED Twitter speech, Twitter, Twitter promotion
