In February last year I created a list of 25 websites every SEO should know, I must admit the basis of that blog post was intended as link bait which did happen to deliver. However I did also receive a lot of negative comments regarding what I had included, looking back on the list I can now see why.

Anyway, moving forward, I have created a new list of websites that every SEO should know or at the very least is aware of.

1. http://www.seomoz.org – seomoz have not held back over the last year and 9 months, most notably the addition of Linkscape and Rand’s constant travelling have done nothing but push this company to the top of the industry.

2. http://www.linkdiagnosis.com – this website has also come a long way since I first started using it back in early 08, this link analysis tool is actually quite accurate although the results are only taken from Yahoo, link building can be very effective using this site

3. http://www.twitter.com – Twitter was a must in my previous list and it’s a must now. Any budding SEOs can learn a lot from following some of the leaders in the industry and seasoned SEOs can get a lot of good stories aggregated straight to your twitter home with absolutely no effort.

4. http://www.wolf-howl.com – A search blog with a different stance from many other industry leaders, not always agreeing with Google tactics and methods Michael Gray provides a good contrast in perspective and a sometimes light hearted Friday afternoon read.

5. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com – The official Google webmasters blog, there’s always a lot of activity happening over at the big G, it pays to keep on top of developments.

6. http://www.huomah.com/dojo – I can’t stress enough how good this website is, recently voted as number 1 for the “best paid subscription SEM community” by readers at Top Rank Blog. I’ve spoken to Dave (the ninja boss) many times and the amount of SEO he knows is scary!

7. http://www.sphinn.com – Sphinn is the equivalent to Digg for anything search related, the community has continued to grow over the last few years and although some recent technical decisions have caused some negative chatter – it still feels ace.

8. http://www.seobook.com – Aaron Wall has been in this business a long time and SEO Book provides great resources for SEOs around the world, I especially like the tool “Rank Checker” for snapshot views into ranking performance.

9. http://raven-seo-tools.com – The Raven site provides excellent SEO tools in the form of benchmarking, I used the site in it’s early days and it’s continued to get better and better – solid SEO blog too.

10. http://www.seo-browser.com – It’s important to know how search engines view your website, using SEO Browser can easy display what’s working and what’s not, very useful for performing site audits.

11. http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp – A lot of good SEO questions have been answered by Matt Cutts and co through the video format on YouTube, great watching, even if you just want to find out what T-shirt colour Matt wears.

12. http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories – Link building from authority based directories does still hold SEO value – fact. Aviva Directory created this list a while a go but many listings are still valuable, decent bookmark to have.

13. http://www.google.com/insights/search – Alas another Google link but extremely important for identifying keyword opportunities on generic and local based levels, although take a pinch of salt with the data provided.

14. http://searchengineland.com – one of the most important search blogs online with great insights and in depth discoveries, it would be rude not to include these boys.

15. http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog – This website has grown in authority and reputation over the last few years with much deserves. Constantly providing good SEO blog posts, free e-books and valuable insights, you’d be crazy not to be subscribed to this blog.

16. http://www.seounique.com/blog – I felt the need to add my blog on the list because I do run tests which may provide insights, I’m by no means like the others on this list but I’d appreciate the signup to my feed!

17. http://www.seroundtable.com – Great site for breaking SEO news stories or developments within the industry, plus they have great resources and a forum

18. http://www.bruceclay.com/blog – Solid SEO advice and one to keep on top of.

19. http://www.reelseo.com – Video SEO is something that’s been “around” for a while but never implemented to the full potential. Learn how to maximise this at this great site.

20. http://www.mybloglog.com – Essential for bloggers and online community builders.

21. http://technorati.com – I don’t think I need to explain why you should be aware of this site, news is information, knowledge is power.

22. http://econsultancy.com – An absolute must for any internet marketer. Community content, breaking stories, industry insights and a gazillion more things related to SEO.

23. http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/ – I’ve been in contact with Jeffery for a long time and his blog has never stopped producing quality SEO insights, theories and discoveries over the last 20 months, I suggest those of you who aren’t signed up do so!

24. http://www.google.com/analytics – This is quite an obvious one really, analytics packages are the backbone to any good online marketing campaign as they show the results and RIO for campaigns. The positives include extended insights and functions, landscape benchmarking, in depth data breakdown and its free!

25. http://socialmention.com/ – Brands are becoming more important in natural search and from social aspects, this website helps you monitor brand mentions online through various channels, best thing about this site – it’s free, unlike competitors.

Ok guys, I have been link building for many years now but don’t always get the chance to practice the art as much as I’d like to, mainly due to my more strategic based role at my current job. Call me crazy but I do actually enjoy link building and I think you have to if you’re involved in the job, it’s a buzz to setup quality links for a client at absolutely no cost then watching the impact these links have on the rankings.

So the reason for my post is to share with you my observations from a recent batch of link building I completed. Most of you will probably already know what’s included but if you have a UK based client you may find this post has some value.

1. Domain Value – I have compiled a list of domain names based on results from link building and their direct effect on rankings for UK based sites:

Links from .ac.uk are similar to .edu links to our American friends and drive massive amounts of trust and authority. Links from .co.uk websites are also extremely valuable for link building in the UK, not only because of the localised domain but the content and language is usually more relevant. Surprising results show that .com links hold considerably less value than an equally matched .co.uk domain, when I say “less value” I mean less impact on UK search.

2. Anchor Text – A year or two ago I would have said keywords in anchor text is a must but I have to say there’s less weight on this factor than their use to be in the UK. I realise that Seomoz recently released the 2009 ranking factors but in the UK brand terms in links still deliver a very healthy amount of link juice which I’ve seen massive rankings boosts from. Although I must say this is based on domains no younger than 12 months old, any younger than that there would probably be a different outcome.

3. Negotiations – I’m going to start sounding rather old now but “back in the day” emailing webmasters for links worked well, generally because SEO was not really as widely known. However there is a misconception that this tactic will not work now due to the increase in web knowledge from website owners. Well let me tell you this is still the best method to build links anywhere, out of 40 emails sent to prospective sites I setup 15 links for free to sites including .gov and .ac.uk with an average PR of 4. Of course it’s all about finding the right sites but that’s the fun no?

4. Impact – This is kind of a gray area in the link building world, how long will it take my new shiny link to boost my rankings? Well usually it depends on when the bots crawl the link and add the update to the index, a good indicator of this was recently announced whereby it was mentioned Page Rank is a measure that is used to determine how often Google will visit a site. Essentially sites with a higher page rank will pass value to you quicker.

5. Directories – You can still get some great positive movement in rankings by identifying directories which are based or targeted for the UK. Firstly the domains are mostly .co.uk which provide good link juice and the content is often localised (which can bring in added benefits for local search). Admittedly the directories that hold the most value in the UK often have a review price but there are other gems out there if you look properly.

Those of you may or may not have seen many references to random words such as “MoonFruit” and Mpora on twitter over the last few months. Let me just explain to those of you who are not so up-to-date with these seemingly meaningless phrases what exactly they are all about.

Since twitter has been snowballing in popularity more brands are quickly diving into the “twitter barrel” in hope for some kind of brand value to pour out. Lots of businesses are “doing twitter” just because someone sitting in a nice empty office at a top of a tall building says” it’s what everyone else is doing, why aren’t I?” I won’t get sidetracked and explain what I think a brand should do on twitter but I’ll quickly explain how “MoonFruit” and “Mpora” have influenced twitter in a major way.

Essentially MoonFruit and Mpora are both brands, they both came up with a simple idea to attract people to start tweeting (or posting) about their brand, in particular – their competition give-away. MoonFruit started first giving away a free Macbook Pro every day for 7 days straight, the rules and method of deployment were simple – twitter about the brand and include the tag #moonfruit. Everyday a winner would be selected at random from, method unknown, but probably looking through the twitter search engine somehow.   Being the first major contest like this to actually gather pace was probably down to the ease of entering, simply click on a button and you’ve entered, of course as well as notifying all your fellow friends about MoonFruit too.

MoonFruit got very big very quickly and actually topped the twitter trends for a while (even when Michael Jackson had recently died), however before the end of the competition the phrase #moonfruit was apparently removed by twitter or somehow sandboxed. Now although the competition was very popular the chance that they will ever be able to reach the top trends again looks unlikely, but like many I now know of the brand MoonFruit, so kudos.

Now my second case study is for a brand called Mpora who used the same strategy, I of course got hooked like many others by the chance to win, yet again, another Macbook Pro. However Mpora used a much more aggressive approach to the promotion which in my personal opinion has harmed their brand.

So, what did they do? In my eyes they got greedy, they started the competition like MoonFruit but quickly introduced the rule “more tweets gives you more chances to win”. They notified the winners at 5pm UK time every day, for the hours leading up to that point – Mpora would establish themselves in the top 10 most popular trends. However, like many I started getting minute by minute updates from Mpora themselves, pushing just about anything on their site to get as much traffic as possible. Very soon my twitter looked like the screenshot below:

The last thing I want in my twitter feed is for someone or some business to start spamming their services at me. So anyway, why has this harmed the brand? Well I for one got very bored, very quickly of seeing #mpora popping up everywhere – and although judging by traffic estimates from Alexa and Compete their campaign seems to have been a success. I wonder how many other people out there like me who quickly stopped following the brand during the competition and now consider them to be something to avoid in the future – food for thought.

The graph below shows an increase in traffic rankings in alexa while the competition was running:

The graph below clearly shows that the term #mpora was only popular at times near the result of the winners:

So no doubt there will have been some traffic being sent to both these sites but if brands continue to use such tactics to engage potential customers and increase brand visibility only bad things can happen (i.e. spam association).