Thunder SEO

Hello Everyone! It’s that time of the week again… Thunder Booms!!!

Following is our short-list of highlights for this past week. From Matt Cutts’ recent video “answer” regarding the importance of links on a page to the growing importance of Conversion Optimization, it’s been a great week for SEO and SMO insights and information.

• Link Building Lessons from Edward Bernays, “Father of Public Relations”
  Article from Vedran Tomic of Search Engine Journal about applying the lessons of the “Father of Public Relations,” Edward Bernays, to link building. The article discusses “influencing the influencers” which DOES NOT involve buying links but DOES involve building relationships with people, staying on top of industry trends, and following social media “power users.” Additionally, Tomic talks about the importance of link worthy content, claiming “the best way to build links is to make your content a tool of self expression.” It’s a great read for anyone looking for link-building inspiration.

• NYTimes.com’s Simmonds Explains Benefit of Linking to Other Sites via Topic Pages
  Rand Fishkin’s White-Board-Friday interview with Marshall Simmonds, Chief Strategist for the New York Times (ever heard of that site!). Simmonds explains the “Bow Tie Theory” (starting with About.com) and how sites like About.com and NYTimes.com have successfully used the bow tie effect, “link journalism” and topic pages to drive rankings and traffic, including the controversial practice of linking out to “authority” sites (including competitors). Great presentation and reference for updating a site’s internal linking strategy and site structure.

• Conversion Optimization is the New SEO
  Great post by Scott Brinker of Ion Interactive highlighting the importance on on-page conversion factors, including a nice overview of how SEO and conversion optimization are similar and different. Coming mostly from paid lead generation, Brinker offers some compelling arguments for creating a balance between traffic-focused SEO strategies and user-focused conversion strategies.

• “Is the order of links on a page important for SEO?” Matt Cutts Answers Matt
  Matt Cutts responds to question if the first link on a page is “priority” to Google, with the response, “I really wouldn’t worry about it.” Cutts explains that Googlebot will crawl through an entire page and determine which link is the most significant. While this (potentially) clears up questions about whether Google does indeed follow only the top level links, it still highlights the importance of prioritizing content and links so Googlebot knows what the page is about.