As seo is a constant moving industry it’s important to stay in touch with “what’s new” in seo. So I have put together a list of list of sites I visit like clockwork, every morning.

1. Seomoz – I recently wrote a blog piece criticizing some of the recent blog posts not being relevant but after a response from the Seomoz team it made me think I rely on their posts a bit too heavily. They do however provide good quality findings and it’s 100% worth 10 minutes of my time in the morning.
2. Sphinn – The social bookmarking website for the seo users and webmasters, providing quality and humorous posts about the seo world and any new developments. If an seo blogger finds something worthwhile within the community you can guarantee it will be on the front page of Sphinn by noon. I can spend up to 30 minutes reading stories on Sphinn.
3. Digital Point – I’ve been a member on this site for quite some time now and it does seem recently that a lot of spammy posts are being created but occasionally you will find some juicy story on there. You might find a nice domain name on the cheap or even a site to buy in your niche. Another 10 minutes of my life every day is spent on this site.
4. Digg – I know the majority of stories on digg are meant for entertainment but again you will find an seo or web related gem, add another 5 minutes to the clock!
5. Matt Cutts – I will check every day to see if there are any new Google developments, spend around 2 minutes perhaps if Matt isn’t too busy.
6. Search Engine Journal – Have some good relationships with key figures in the world of seo, if there’s a new discovery related to a search engine you can guarantee it will be posted within minutes – 2 minutes more (not long left to go in my busy morning)
7. Andy Beard – Nice blog to finish off my hour of seo news in the morning, usually something worthwhile being posted on a daily bases – the final 1 minute.

That’s how I spend each day of the week to keep me up-to-date with seo, I would love to hear some more suggestions to take up more of my valuable time in the morning.

Thanks

After our initial release of our Social Bookmark Count plugin we have made some much needed tweaking and have a nice wordpress plugin for the masses to try.

Fixes/Additions:

1. Reddit’s removed

2. You can now see your bookmarked pages if you click on the numbers

3. Magnolia and Technorati bookmark counts have been added

4. Percentages now available by hovering on the Pie Chart

Download Social Bookmark Count V1.1

If anyone finds any other bugs or glitches please let me know.

Thats right folks, webmasters from all corners of the globe are now experiencing an update.

As to whether it is good or bad please remember PR is just a measure, SERPS and traffic are what counts!

It finally appears that Google has gone around the table and handed out their punishments for paid links. This has been discussed by the seo community for some time as one or two big websites have had 2-3 page rank drops.

I have clients that have purchased links on various sites that have now been reduced to links equalling their own page rank. I’ve always said you shouldn’t buy links if the only point you look at is PR, I always recommend that if you do buy it should be on trust and traffic.

I logged on to www.textlinkads.com to see what else has changed and to my disbelief ads for links of PR 6-7, costing over $150.00 most of the time have inaccurate page ranks! So I urge Text Link Ads to update their system or they will be receiving many unpleasant emails from unhappy customers. I would also say hold off to any more purchasing until this has settled down.

Another point I have also been considering of late is now we know (98% sure) that if you sell links you will receive a PR drop, what happens if you buy those links – do you get punished? Evidence at the moment says no but with this latest update finding links to buy will be harder and this news cannot be good for link brokers such as www.textlinkads.com.

I was going to write a piece on this subject when I came across some findings on Search Engine People. According to a recent survey by Prospero Technologies, nearly 9 in 10 marketers already using social media said they plan to “increase” or “increase significantly” their spending.

As you can see by these results 88% of people expect to spend more money on social media spending in 2008. I had already suspected that business heads and directors of small and medium sized businesses had started to catch on to the social media “craze”.

So how will it work in terms of SEO companies making money?

Well, like most blogs, including this one explain, it’s really not hard to get traffic from these sites – it just takes time. I do currently control social media campaigns for various companies which are still in the early phases of development and the clients are purely billed on time taken on the project. As well as time you may need to kit your blog/website/feeds out with social bookmarking options, this can cost a small amount if you need custom layouts etc, but generally the price will still be low.

I personally think you will start seeing a lot more “seo” companies offering numbers for cash, for example 10,000 hits via social media for $1000 or something as equally unrealistic. Like all good seo methods the social media and bookmarking requires constant attention and time to build up relationships with users and profiles. Of course its no good if you sell health insurance that you buy 100 “Diggs” either – you have to know what kind of users view each different social media site – you have to know your audience.


If any reading this is considering creating a campaign please don’t be tempted with quick fixes, you won’t see a ROI – it’s simple. Speak to agencies or trusted seo workers that charge you by there hourly rates and provide you with proposals and reports on all results. Remember if they’re good they will get large amounts of relevant traffic, not all at once but on a gradual increase.