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.

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).

Of course I attended to explore the possibilities of widgets and SEO but found myself with a wealth of widget knowledge instead. Some really interesting facts and figures which may surprise a lot of you, but here’s a summary of some data:

•    The number 1 widget in the world (installs) = YouTube
•    The number 1 MySpace comment = “Thanks for the add”
•    Facebook “gifts” application made $30 million last year alone
•    The average widget only lasts 200 page views
•    Every human can only hold 150 meaningful relationships at once, the rest are lightweight
•    Each widget has a maximum lifespan of 6 weeks
•    For every widget install you should expect a maximum of 50 unique visitors

I also copied down some internal Gigya data to show the most common uses for widgets:

Anyway, I learned a lot more than what was written down on this post, but of course you have to hold back something for yourself! Thanks to all the guys that took part and I look forward to the next one!

2. Not too long ago there was quite a lot of fuss about a Stumbleupon user who got banned by posting threatening messages on other user’s walls. I think every SEO has probably come across these trolls before, the feature called “Flag this” now allows you to give a positive or negative rating to a users review. I have used this in both a positive and negative way but am yet to see any real positive responses.

3. Flickr given special treatment – when you come across a Flickr stumble in the future look on the right of the screen where the user whom discovered the page’s information will be. You will see the addition of “Stumble Thru Flickr.com” under “Share this with a friend”. In all honestly I’m not sure if this is new but I certainly haven’t noticed before.

4. Previously you could block users entirely in Stumbleupon if they were rude or for whatever other reason. If you look at your friends page and look at the bottom right of the page then you will notice a box where you can “unblock” blocked users, not entirely sure why you would want to do this but there you go. Also above that box you can search for friends by email address too, I was not aware of this either!

5. If you scroll down to the bottom of any Stumbleupon page you will see a link labelled “Directory” – if you click on this it will produce a list of alphabetic letters. From this you can find every member of StumbleUpon. If you look down the list you see that there is a small box to the left of your name, some are white, some have bits of blue, some have complete blue and some have complete green. I have looked through this and I can only determine this to be your Stumbleupon rank – Green being a power user or activity on Stumbleupon. Another thought is that the green represents being online, and the blue is based on reputation, I came to this assumption by looking at the number of pages liked, reviews etc. If anyone has any additional information on this I will update the post if it can be backed up.

And before people start saying “They’re not secret!” not everyone knows as much as you! Some people are beginners!

EDIT – I had some feedback from Howardtheduck on SU: 

You are right in #5 , Blue fills up as you get “fans” It turns all green if you become a “sponsor”. See, they are all green :
http://www.stumbleupon.com/sponsors.php

http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumblethru.php

This is something that has been on my mind for quite some time now and I wasn’t sure 100% if it was true or not, until now.

For those of you that know me I love StumbleUpon, it provides great on going traffic if you setup and maintain your profile correctly – see my post “Unofficial StumbleUpon guide”. Occasionally my blog posts would get stumbled by someone else for whatever reason but I considered SU a means of letting people know when I have a new post out, in case people have not subscribed via RSS.

Last month, one morning I typically wrote a post and used my usual means of promotion, or so I thought. Later that day I checked to see if any reviews had been made on the submission and to my surprise there was no listing visible. I thought perhaps there had been a mistake when I submitted, so I tried a different technique and looked on my profile again, still no submission – so what am I dong wrong? – Nothing at all is the answer here.

When I now try and submit my own blog content the process appears to work, when you later check it returns this result:

So why has this happened?

I suppose it’s to stop people gaming the system, which I don’t really consider it doing as the content is different each time. I have had friends get URL’s band in Digg before simply because they submitted the same domain too many times so I’m quite glad that the domains don’t get banned entirely.

If anyone else has started to have this problem too please use the poll below, it will be interesting to see the results:

I have interviewed some of the most powerful users across the board, especially Stumbleupon, Digg, Mixx and Sphinn. I have asked:

Jansie SilentJay74 TheNanny612 Jeff Quipp Spostareduro

The 5 I have asked are top users in one or more of the four social sites I have listed, lets hear what they have to say:

Question 1 – How many hours a day do you spend on each social bookmarking website?

Jansie – Mixx.com, all day, as time permits, with breaks in-between work, as the mails come in, or if I find something interesting to post.
SilentJay74 - I would say I only spend in total about 3 hours a day off and on. I usually haunt Mixx.com. That is where I am most well known.
TheNanny612 – Well, I don’t have an allotted time I spend on each social bookmarking site. But, I do keep windows open constantly of my favorite social bookmarking websites that I frequent. And, since I spend around 19-20 hours online a day…. I guess I could be spending that much time on them.
Jeff Quipp- a) Digg (2 hours)
b) Stumbleupon (2 hours)
c) Sphinn (1.5 hours)
d) Reddit (10 minutes)
e) Mixx (1/2 hour)
Spostareduro – This is a funny question. Can I actually boil it down to a set amount of hours out of 24? Hmm..I’d have to say 23.59. It’s likely I’ll divorce before marriage.

Question 2 -Which is your most visited social bookmarking website?

Jansie – Mixx
SilentJay74 – I usually haunt Mixx.com. That is where I am most well known. I have been Social Bookmarking for over a year or so. I am also the co-host of Social Blend. It is a podcast about Social Media and Social Bookmarking. We also talk about Mixx.com a lot on the podcast.
TheNanny612 – My favorite Social Bookmarking website is Stumble Upon. It is the one I spend the most time on.
Jeff Quipp- No question, Stumbleupon. It holds the most potential for the vast majority of Clients, large or small. I also use Stumbleupon to help me keep track of everything my friends think is important in the industry that day. Lastly, I’ve reduced my TV time, and now dedicate that time to following my interests on Stumble.
Spostareduro – Oh, this is simple. Stumbleupon. I love the variation of personalities and interests there. Which can be found everywhere, but SU makes others seem more tangible, not just virtual. A home away from home (I’m a real nerd) If Sphinn were considered a bookmarking site, I’d say Sphinn because it’s there that I’ve gotten most of my niche education.

Question 3 – How long have you been using social bookmarking?

Jansie – My addiction started in 2007. I’m seeing someone about it though…
SilentJay74 – No Answer
TheNanny612 – Since July of 2007
Jeff Quipp- I set up my first account on Digg almost 2 years ago, but really only got into it seriously in the last 8 months. In the last 8 months though, its been a full-time job!
Spostareduro – I’ve been actively involved with social bookmarking for probably a solid 2 months now. (give or take a week or 2) I opened a few profiles a few months back, but didn’t pursue them at that time.
Question 4 – Do you have a preferred choice of content to submit?

Jansie – Yup, SEO stuff, totally off the wall comic stuff, self-submissions, for shameless link-building.
SilentJay74 – My preferred choice of content is tech news and crazy videos.
TheNanny612 - Depends on the social bookmarking site I am on at the time. They all have different content that works well on them. Any niche will do well on StumbleUpon as long as long as the content is good. Sphinn, another of my favorite social bookmarking site, is a social bookmarking site for SEO, Marketing and Social Media….. so of course that is the content I submit there. The community members of Sphinn are major players in SEO and marketing, so the content you submit there has to be excellent otherwise it won’t do well.
Jeff Quipp – I’m a science and technology junkie, so I love to read and submit about that stuff. These topics also have a relatively large following on social media sites, and really good potential to go `hot’.
Spostareduro – At first I began submitting mostly SEO/M articles. Because I was trying to keep up with SEO education for my site. (Learning SEO Basics) Then as I hung out in Sphinn which has a vast amount of SEO/M as well as Social Media news, I began obsessing over SM. Now I’ve expanded into allowing it to be more of a multipurpose zone. A place where I can express my human side..laughter, art, love of music, poetry, fellow bloggers, environmental concerns and sometimes even pain.

Question 5 – Are there any social bookmarking sites you don’t like and why?

Jansie – Not really. Not like is too strong.
SilentJay74 – . Right now I would have to say my least preferred Social Bookmarking site is Digg.com. A ton of things have been happening at Digg and they have been banning well known users who also happen to be friends of mine. What some Social Bookmarking sites don’t realize is that there is a sense of community, and you don’t want to hurt your community or make changes without consulting them and getting community feedback. Mixx however understands this and is extremely involved with their community. I guess that is why I appreciate Mixx so much.
TheNanny612 – Not really. I don’t participate in all of them…. I just can’t. I don’t have the time in the day to enjoy them all. I have a few favorites and stick with them. I can’t say that I don’t like one or the other. I seem to stick with my favorites because I don’t have the time for others at this point.
Jeff Quipp – Reddit … the user interface seems juvenile and uninspiring. Its not designed for ease of use. While I like the people there … its designed for machines, not people.
Spostareduro – I have a difficult time finding enjoyment in Reddit.

Question 6- Have you ever been banned from any social bookmarking sites and why?

Jansie – Well, there was this one time when I got flamed. It’s almost as bad as a ban. I promise!
SilentJay74 – No Answer
TheNanny612 – Nope.
Jeff Quipp – Yes … not necessarily because we were engaging in anything blackhat, but we wanted to test the constraints. IT WAS INTENTIONAL! People learn in two ways; (1) by failing, or (2) vicariously by watching others. We didn’t have the time to watch and learn.
Spostareduro – Why would someone wan to risk that?

Thanks for all who took part, some interesting answers there.

Link builders have to evolve with the times; they should have a strategic and creative mindset behind them now. If you work for an agency or website design company you have to let the higher management know this. Links can not be bought by the number any more, this will not work effectively.

So what of the old link building methods, why don’t they work anymore?

Firstly I’m not saying stop any of your on-going link building methods, for example submitting links to directories will not harm a websites performance in the slightest. However if you want to achieve the same kind of SERP movement as was available through 06 and the beginning of 07 then a new link building strategy must be created, this should be your social media strategy.

There has been an on going debate between seo gurus discussing if social media work is technically classified as seo. I have previously blogged about the subject does seo include social media if you’re interested to know my opinion. What I’m implying here today is that link building has now morphed into social marketing.

So how do I build links in 2008?

The graph below is a basic description on how quality links are generated through link bait and social marketing.

Using social media platforms to link build is a clear and effective method to achieve more search engine visibility for the content on your site. Making the content on your site more visible will open up new opportunities in terms of link building. In stead of the search engine seeing directory links and duplicate articles etc, they will see users bookmarks of your URL with a possible review. Webmasters and bloggers will usually get their information or news for their own blogs from social sites. It’s these links that are valuable, because they are usually high quality and will help with traffic and SEO positions. (Providing you have planned which keywords to use in your content title).

The root to success of this strategy should be the content that is promoted (link bait), this must be high quality and “link able” – this is where a cost might incur on your clients side.

Metrics and Deliverables will change

Previously keeping a note of submissions as well as new purchases of links may well have been included in your metrics. Your agreement with a client could have previously been based on a number (100 new links per month). All this should change! Show the following metrics:

1. Traffic per link bait
2. Social bookmarks per bait
3. Links gained (site/link analysis required)
4. Search traffic gained as a result of bait
5. SERPS analysis and benchmarking for keywords targeted

Your deliverables will obviously be unknown to start with but you should measure the overall link increase per bait and per month, this will give you some averages.

Of course this method of link building is not cheap and it does require a lot of time and effort, the results however are better than any other link building strategy on the table.

P.S – In regard to one of my posts (25 websites every seo should know) as to why I included so many social sites, link building is part of seo, without it you would not be able to achieve good search positions. Link building will eventually be based around social marketing – hence my inclusion of so many social sites.

I have never really opened the gates to a good old fashioned rant on Seounique before, so here goes!

Have you ever wondered why your interesting blog posts or link bait you pay hundreds of bucks for never makes it big on social media sites? You start asking yourself questions like; is my avatar too offensive? Is my title not “catchy” enough? Or is my blog just worthless?

Well the flat out answer is no, no and no! It doesn’t matter how ultra juicy your story or post may be, it’s all about whom you know and what kind of reputation you have. Unfortunately this seems to be the case in every social media environment, although if it wasn’t the case then the quality of the stories making “published” status would probably vary.

Now if you’re reading this for the first time, don’t panic, and whatever you do, please don’t think you can cheat the system. If you’ve read a blog post explaining that you need to build a reputation to get submissions noticed – don’t be an ass!

This is just one example of someone clicking the Sphinn button as many times as possible for as long as possible. This is not an isolated incident by any means and I’ve seen plenty of users do it, I imagine this happens across the board so this is by no means a punt at Sphinn.

What these people are doing:

1. Reducing the quality of stories by voting rubbish stories
2. Not achieving anything because your reputation will look false
3. Thinking a number is better than the interaction
4. Giving their brand a bad name (if applicable)

So I urge all you geniuses out there to stop trying to look good, its not big and not clever and it’s a waste of your time!

Rant over lol!

2. The submission process is clean and friendly, I could quite happily sit down and submit hundreds of stories, photos and videos without feeling confused.

3. It’s easy to create a good friend and fan base, and your friends are displayed in your account page.

4. Karma points encourage Mixx users to interact, be nice, start conversations and be part of the community.

5. You can buy Mixx products, such as a stylish Mug, all your co-workers will know where you go to bookmark, drink with pride!

6. The Mixx lounge and tools are easily accessible at the bottom of the page giving you access to feeds and other Mix goodies.

7. They have a unique social awards system to once again encourage people to be active and friendly!

None of these features are particularly mind blowing or revolutionary but the way the site is put together it adds a sense of well being to the site. I’m yet to see the harassment of members by others, it reminds me of stumble when it first started.

Mixx is already a fast growing social bookmarking site but with these features standing out to me I can see very big things for Mixx in 2008!

Firstly I’d like to thank Matt for giving me the opportunity to make my voice heard over here. I appreciate it immensely.

Matt recently ran a small competition to compile a list of sage SEO tips that would be valid for 2008. His own suggestion was:

“Whatever industry your business is in your website will benefit from starting a company blog written by employees. As well as providing unique fresh content for your site this will open up opportunities in terms of networking and trust building…”

It’s a point that I agree wholeheartedly with, for the unprecedented success of blogs, blogging and various forms of social media have opened up an array of marketing opportunities away from just the old school, traditional SEO.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying for an instant that traditional SEO no longer has a place or is of any less importance. It can never be drummed into heads too many times that all those ‘repeated cliches’ about title tags, keywords, content, inbound links, and all the rest, are ‘repeated cliches’ for the simple fact that at present they do have a bearing on where a website ranks in the SERPs. SEO can affect a website’s performance although obviously not control where it will eventually land up within the hallowed halls of Google Search.

But as a means of bringing traffic into a website, the search engines are no longer the be-all and the end-all. In fact, they have even made their own forays into the world of social media with varying, if far from astounding degrees of success, because at present their existence is governed by the end-user utilising their search boxes in the hope of finding the most relevant replies to their requests: content that is produced and supplied by other users, not Google or the other portals.

But I digress. Back to the original point and that of starting a blog. This particular tidbit of advice is in fact a two-edged sword with regards to SEO. But a nice two-edged sword…

In fact it could be seen as ‘the gift that keeps on giving’, so to speak.

Firstly, if regularly updated with unique and informative content, Google will take note and increase the rate at which it crawls your website specifically to keep up with all these little gems you’re casting out into the cyber-latticework of the internet. At present a continual turnover in the content of your website is seen as good and aids in ranking issues, specifically over a website that may be targeting the same keywords as you, but has remained stagnant since its inception.

But there’s more. If a blog is continually providing this type of informative content and is being successfully promoted through social networks and bookmarking sites, then it will receive an influx of traffic and inevitably a steady reader base and subscriptions. This in turn will increase your blogs standing through the various networks as more and more people bookmark various articles or submit its content, making it available to their own group of friends and so on and so on, ad infinitum.

This will attract plenty of one-way, naturally formed, inbound links, the holy grail of SEO – the only downside of this scenario being the general inability to choose your anchor text – and hey presto, there’s suddenly all these other blogs and websites pointing their digital fingers at your pages. Taking into account that this hasn’t happened overnight and not all the inbound link text is identical, a search engine might just think… “Hmm… All these other sites pointing to this one. These boys must be good. Authority’s even. I’ll give them a foot-up through the rankings.”

It’s like a vicious circle, except it isn’t particularly vicious. Not even mildly perturbed. More of a warm and fluffy one. Social media providing a comfy chair for SEO to take the weight off its feet for a moment or two and let somebody else do the work.

But that’s just a basic outlay of the benefits a blog can have for a business and what counts in particular, people visiting the website and eventual conversions.

But that is not all. I’ve never been one to say in a short, sweet and succinct sentence what can also be said in twenty pages of rambling nonsense, which is probably why my application for staff editor at ‘Monosyllabic Monthly’ was swiftly turned down, but the title of this post refers to a onetime funny man of these shores: a certain Frank Carson and in particular his famous catchphrase.

All right, he wasn’t actually of these shores being from Northern Ireland, but what’s a small splash of water (the Irish Sea) between friends?

In his prime Frank Carson, like myself, could ramble for England (or Northern Ireland) but amidst his continuous patter of banter and bumble there was always the razor-sharp delivery of gags. As he would continually remind us, “It’s the way I tell ’em”. Which finally, is what I’m trying to get at with this post.

If you’re not an already established blogger or an authority site, how the deuce do you get yourself noticed above all the other blogs and noise in your niche vying for the same attention? Well disregarding any ‘black hat’ techniques to promote your blog, providing a unique voice with which to deliver your content is a must. Just take the common or garden SEO blog for instance; there are only so many times you can go on about the irrelevance of metatags before it’s drowned out beneath the clamour of everybody else saying or having said the same thing. Of course, there are a multitude of other topics to discuss within SEO, but if you’ve not carved out your particular recess or found a distinctive voice by which to brand yourself, then that groundbreaking item of search news that you’ve spent months researching for and testing against – the one that was set to be guaranteed, solid gold link bait – might pass by unnoticed, or even worse be picked up upon by a more renowned yet less scrupulous blogger who proceeds to steal your thunder and bask in the glory that was rightfully yours (masses of unadulterated, organically formed, one-way links).

If, however, you have successfully cultivated a unique voice and a unique style of writing, then it will give you some leverage with which to attain that extra few inches to raise ourself above the crowd. A rather tall hat can be as equally effective…

But wait there just one moment, young man! Just who the devil are you to tell us about unique voices and writing styles? What exactly have you achieved?

Well nothing really. And I’m certainly no authority on blogging, with an audience of thousands waiting upon my every word. But I know what I like and what I look for in the blogs that inhabit my feed. And I can only carry on with my particular style and hope it keeps a steady readership both informed and entertained.

A blog is a powerful marketing tool, but as I’ve said before it shouldn’t be just that. Its upkeep should be taken seriously, for if you take it seriously, remain genuine, and don’t regard it as solely a way of earning a few extra shillings, then your readership will start to grow and return your commitment with their loyalty.

You have to set yourself apart from the crowd if you wish to be heard. In a cutthroat world where success or failure can depend on the turn of a coin, so to speak, you have to have that something that sets your voice apart from the clamour fighting for the same attention all around you.

So the next time you sit down to write that post on ‘10 Things Danny Sullivan Eats For Breakfast’, remember, “It’s the way you tell ‘em.”