The Top 20 SEO Know-it-alls on Twitter

If you're new to the vast, and sometimes intimidating world of SEO, I have put together a who's who list of industry leaders that you should be familiar with. This list is in no particular order since many of these individuals and companies have different specialties.

Aaron Wall (Seo Book)
Twitter
CEO of SEO Book, Aaron runs one of the oldest SEO web sites still being regularly updated. The original blog was designed to help sell their popular SEO ebook that had well over $1,000,000 in sales.

Rand Fishkin (SEO Moz)
Twitter
An admitted Seahawks fan, (Go Browns!) Rand started SEOmoz to share his discoveries in the SEO world. He has since travelled the world speaking at search conferences, and has been published in countless major news publications.

Matt Cutts (Google)
Twitter
Matt Cutts, who has just registered for a sprint triathlon (400m swim, 11 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) in August, is not only ambitious physically, he is also the head of the webspam team at Google so don't mess with him, he knows what we wish we knew!

Brian Carter (Fuel Interactive)
Twitter
Brian Carter is a "Funny Keynote Speaker on Online Marketing, Internet Optimization, and Social Media", as well as an "all-around good guy that your mom, dad and grandma would like" according to www.briancarteryeah.com

Ann Smarty (SEO Smarty)
Twitter
Quite possibly the coolest name in search marketing, definitely worth subscribing to her blog and following on Twitter.

Michael Gray (Atlas Web Service)
Twitter
A very well respected SEO consultant, but in addition to his long list of talents nowhere does it list that he is a magician? According to his bio he had a part in "helping create [the client's] website presence and growing their online sales from less than $10,000 a month to over $25 million in annual web sales." Crazy magic!

Joost De Valk (Yoast.com)
Twitter
Online Marketer, Blogger, Speaker, WordPress Guru, SEO, Web analytics, Social Media Maven, CSS, Apple and founder of yoast.com and SocialMediaBlog.nl He is also a cartoon character.

David Brown (Top SEO Consultants)
Twitter
David is without a doubt a Top SEO Consultant, and with specialties like his who could argue? I hear he cooks up a mean pork bellie!

Lee Odden (Top Rank Online Marketing)
Twitter
According to his Twitter profile Lee is a, "Traveler, foodie, dad, geek & CEO @TopRank with 12+ years in online marketing focused on SEO, public relations & social media." Finally I have something in common with one of the phenoms.... Minus the CEO @TopRank with 12+ years..... etc.

Jennifer Laycock (Search Engine Guide)
Twitter
Involved in internet marketing since 1995, Jennifer "payed her dues" in the industry before settling into the cushy, yet rewarding and glamorous job of editor-in-chief for one of the most respected SEO resources in the solar system. She is also a mommy ;)

Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land)
Twitter
Danny has been following and reporting search engine news since 1995. Now the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, he has been quoted in The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The New Yorker and Newsweek and ABC's Nightline.

Neil Patel (Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics)
Twitter
This kid was more successful at 21 than Macaulay Culkin! Then again, at 21 I may have been too? Anyway, Neil has some great success (and failure) stories on his blog that WILL help you if you are planning on starting a new business.

Bruce Clay Inc. (Bruce Clay Inc.)
Twitter
A leader in the SEO world since 1996. A true big fish, the big kahuna, masters of their "domain"..... get it? Bruce Clay Inc. has been setting the bar for years.

Andy Beard (Andy Beard)
Twitter
Here's a guy I can relate to, stating on his Twitter bio, "Online Marketing & other boring geek stuff". I love other boring geeky stuff! Nothing beats an SEO with a sense of humor. Hey, wasn't Andy Beard the drummer in ZZ-Top?

Todd Malicoat (Stuntdubl)
Twitter
Todd is an internet Stunt Double, but the "real" version of him has his clients "getting hit by traffic.... not cars." Love the logo, 68' Camaro RS?

Jim Boykin (Web Build Pages)
Twitter
After skipping out of college early to "ride the rails" across the U.S., Jim fell in love with the internet in 1999, but not like many of you did on those lonely nights. Since then, Jim has built up the number one link building company in the world!

Patrick Altoft (Branded3)
Twitter
Patrick is the director of search with Branded3, a Leeds based full service digital agency. His blog is among the UK's largest, discussing internet marketing and search engine optimisation news & strategies.

Will Critchlow (Distilled)
Twitter
Co-founded the UK internet marketing company distilled in 2005 with partner, Duncan Morris. Will claims to "run Distilled, enjoy cooking, playing basketball and drinking whisky (in nearly any order)" which I highly respect, especially the whiskey part.

Jordan Kasteler (Search & Social)
Twitter
Utah's own "SEO Pro" has been at the fore front of social media marketing and SEO since 2001. A co-founder of Search & Social, Jordan paves the way for a new type of internet marketing.

Matt Mcgee (Small Business SEM)
Twitter
Matt believes in helping small businesses compete on their own terms whithin their own budgets. I think it's fair to say that SEO, and people like Matt, can allow small businesses to compete with the big guys, and survive.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter as well: @abalonedesigns

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, twitter

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By John Simmonds @ 3:08 PM

10 Easy Steps to Automate Your Social Marketing

Two of the biggest trends in web site marketing in recent years have been SEO and Social Marketing. While sometimes they can go hand in hand, other times the approach is quite unique. I've been spending a fair amount of time developing my Social Networking presence, both personally and professionally. Today I wish to share the 10 steps to automate your social marketing and how to get more out of it.

Your web site: Your business is what makes you money. Your web site is how you sell your products. SEO will take care of the search engines, but while you wait for that #1 ranking, you need to find other ways of getting targeted traffic to your web site.

Your social network: Networking is an important aspect of any business and online social marketing takes it to a new level. Your choice of networks seems endless, with new ones popping up all the time. Where to begin?

Step 1. Start a blog related to your business. Don't use your blog as a place to simply advertise your products, that's what your web site is for. Post relevant industry news, events, opinions, and write interesting, original content. For more blogging tips and ideas check out this article.

Step 2. For the purpose of the article this step is not mandatory, but this is something I always do with my blogs so I will include it. Use Feedburner to burn your rss feed. There are many benefits to using Feedburner and it's good practice.

Step 3. Create company profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Identi.ca, Delicious, MySpace, and LinkedIn to get started. There are many more obviously, but these ones are important and a good start.

Step 4. Spend some time on each of these social network/bookmarking web sites. Build up contacts related to your industry. Here's an article I wrote recently about specifically how to do this on Twitter.

Step 5. Go set up an account at Ping.fm. This service allows you to enter a status update, much like you would on Twitter, and it will automatically update your social web sites, such as the 6 I listed in step 3. You will find many more you can use as well.

Step 6. You will need this later, but while your logged into you Ping.fm account go to this url and take note of your unique application key.

Step 7. Set up an account at Twitterfeed. This service is not limited to just Twitter, but more importantly it can feed Ping.fm, which in turn feeds that list we just set up in step 5 including Twitter. You will need your blogs rss feed and your Ping.fm app key.

Step 8. Continue to build more relationships on the social networking web sites. This process does take some time, but will be worth while. Spend a few minutes each day for a few weeks and you should have a really good size following that will continue to grow on its own.

Step 9. Post to your blog, and make your posts informative, creative, and well written. Post the occasional special or promo, but don't go overboard otherwise it will appear spammy. Provide good quality information related to your industry, become a legitimate resource of knowledge.

Step 10. Sit back and watch the traffic flow to your blog, and in turn your web site. Statistics show that 2% of your Twitter following, for example, will click the link in your post. If you have a following of 10,000 that's 200 targeted visitors going to your web site for each post.

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By John Simmonds @ 11:45 AM

10 Easy Steps to Generate Traffic to your Web Site with Twitter

I run a number of blogs and web sites, some for business and some as hobbies. Sometimes I blog because I am trying to generate discussion or a buzz about something I'm working on, or I just have something on my mind, sort of like now. I often use Twitter to get additional targeted traffic to my web sites and especially my blogs. Here are 10 tips on how to make the most of Twitter harness its traffic.

1. Sign up for an account at Twitter. You can customize your profile with your screen name and share personal information that you choose. You can also add a link to your web site, obviously this is important. There are background image generators you can make use of to create a fully customized background, or you can simply upload an image, or even use one of the standard templates offered within the Twitter interface.

2. Good Twitter etiquette is important. Much like other social networking web sites, people like to feel welcomed by you and you want to feel welcomed by them, however responding to every follower can be a huge daily undertaking. Try using Tweet Later. This tool allows you to set up an automated greeting to all your new followers. You can create a custom message like, "Thanks for the follow, read about tiddlywinks on my blog: http://www.tiddlywinksfreak.com!" Make sure to have the http:// in there to make the link clickable. You can also select an option that will automatically follow any new followers that follow you. Tweeps love that too, when you show them the same love they showed you.

3. This is the step that takes some time, but you only have to work on it once or twice a week to be effective. Use Twitter's "Find People" feature to search for other Tweeps that have similar interests. Since my blog is about tiddlywinks, I may search for simply "tiddlywinks". Then follow all the Tweeps that show up, plus follow all of their followers. You can follow up to 2000 Tweeps before you will get told you can't follow anymore. As you gain followers yourself, you will be allowed to follow more and so on.

4. Once you have maxed out your follows, spend some time getting to know your Twitter account and your followers. Respond to as many, if not all, @replys so that your followers know you are paying attention to them. Send out @replys to those who say something interesting and try to make interesting comments yourself to try to spark up conversation. Do this for about a week before proceeding to tip #5.

5. When you follow people on Twitter more often than not they will follow you back, however sometimes people don't. This is why it is now time to login to refollow. Sign in using your Twitter login and password, and you can browse through your followers, viewing them by following me, not following me, i'm following, i'm not following, etc. Start by viewing I'm not following. Select all and click "Follow". This will ensure that you are following everyone who is following you, good karma. Next view, not following me, select all, and click "unfollow. This will unfollow all Tweeps who didn't show you the love that you showed them. The reason we wait a week before doing this, is because we want to give them a good chance to follow you back before cutting them loose. Once this is complete, and assuming you had Tweeps to unfollow, you can repeat step 3 until maxed out again.

6. If you're like me and use Digg, then sign up for Twiggit. This will automatically post your Diggs to your Twitter account, saving you time and spreading the word faster.

7. Another helpful way to spread the word is through Ping.fm. With this little beauty, you can simultaneously post to Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Identi, and many other social networking and bookmarking web sites. While this tool isn't specifically for Twitter, it can really save a lot of time for you and make Tweeting that much easier.

8. If you really want to kick up the Tweeting process, then this step is more of a part 1 to step 9, but a very important one none the less. Using our Google account, log into Feedburner. Make sure your blog, or web site that uses a feed of some sort is pointing to your Feedburner account and burn your feeds there. Trust me, not only can you take advantage of many great features, this will be very worth while in the next step.

9. It's like the heavens have opened up and shone upon the word wide web! Setup Twitter Feed and your life will never be the same. With Twitter Feed you can use your rss feeds, previously hot rodded with Feedburner, and have them automatically post to your Twitter account. You can customize your setting so it's as frequent or infrequent as you wish. You can now simply post to your blog as you normally would, and voila! Twitter is now on autopilot!

10. Don't ignore your Twitter account at this point, login and reply to your @replys, keep using refollow and continue to add more followers. Do this for a few weeks and watch the traffic flow to your web site. Eventually the followers will just come to you, and your web site.

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By John Simmonds @ 9:16 PM

10 Easy Ways to Beat Blogger's Block

1. Read other blogs with opposing view points to yours and write as though you are responding to it.

2. Expand on one of the questions in your frequently asked questions.

3. Go to an answer writing site like Yahoo! Answers and find a relevant question to answer.

4. For personal bloggers: write a letter to a friend.

5. Read the news.

6. Ask a child what to write about - believe it or not, they always, ALWAYS have the best ideas.

7. Take a quick poll of your Facebook friends or Twitter followers regarding a relevant topic.

8. Write about Blogger's Block.

9. Rewrite something you've already written, from the opposite perspective and post it as a Devil's Advocate post.

10. Ask your readers to tell you what they want you to write about.

Of course, you can also always hire a blog coach if you have a bit of money to spend.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogger, blogger's block, blog coach, seo, search engine optimization

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By Courtney @ 10:50 AM

The Truth About Meta Tags

This has been a debate amongst SEO's for some time, the importance or lack there of regarding meta tags. Matt Cutts, tells us they are not important to Google yet his answer seems fairly vague and almost like he tries to avoid the question somewhat.

Matt Cutts Talks Geo Tags and Webmaster Tools

Google's Matt Cutts frequently posts useful tips for webmasters on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel. The short clips generally offer valuable nuggets of info that can have an impact on your site's performance in Google.

In these videos, Matt always answers questions submitted by users, and in a recent one he answers the question: "How do meta geo tags influence search results?"

Do Meta Geo Tags Influence Google? | WebProNews

Technorati Tags: matgt cutts, google, meta tags

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By John Simmonds @ 8:45 AM

How to: Automate Your Blog with Wordpress

Hi Everyone, Happy 4th of July! We're heading off to the beach tomorrow for a barbecue in the sun and some live music. We hope you all have a great 4th!

This newsletter we're going to look at how to automate blog posting using Wordpress and Wordpress plugins. This can be a huge time saver and also draw a large number of readers and potential customers to your web site and blog.

Step 1. Make sure you have a Wordpress blog installed on your web site or that you are using a Wordpress hosted blog. Find free Wordpress software to install on your site here: http://www.wordpress.org

Step 2. Once your Wordpress blog has been installed and/or setup, you will need to download the FeedWordpress plugin, which can be found here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedwordpress/ . Install this plugin according to the instructions that come with it.

Step 3. Setup your FeedWordpress plugin. Once you have installed it, go into your Wordpress Admin area and click on Plugins. In the list of plugins that appear, you will see FeedWordpress and an option to activate it. Go ahead and activate and notice that at the bottom of your Admin section sidebar a new button appears called Syndication.

Step 4. Click the syndication button. The first part of setting this up is to find an RSS feed somewhere that you would like to syndicate. Google news is a good source, just enter your keywords and click the RSS icon in the address bar that appears when the search results do. Copy the link to the feed and enter it into the Add New Source text field in your Syndication settings. Make sure the feed address starts with http:// and not feed://

Step 5. Click Syndicate. You will now be taken to a sample article from that feed and you have the option to confirm that it is the feed you want to use.

Step 6. Once you have confirmed which feed or feeds you want to use, click Posts in your sidebar under the Syndication heading. You want to select "Publish syndicated posts immediately" for total automation, or any of the other options if you would like to review each post first. Comments and permalink settings are totally up to you.

Step 7. Click Settings in your sidebar under the Syndication heading. In the drop down menu for "check for updates" select "Automatically" for total automation. All other options are up to you.

Your blog will now post automatically, every post that shows up in the RSS feed or feeds you chose. The entire post will not be posted so as to avoid copyright infringements, and the original source will always be given credit. You can take this a step further and install the Wordpress plugin Twitter Tools, found here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/ to autmatically tweet all of your blog posts as well.

If you would like somebody to set this all up for you, we are offering this service, normally a $199USD service, for $149USD - just email me by clicking here.

Also, remember to get your first or updated free analysis at our web site: http://www.abalone.ca to find out how your site is doing in the eyes of the search engines!

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, blog, blogging, wordpress, plugin, twitter

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By Courtney @ 9:57 AM