What a question to pose at the start of this monthly blog roundup, is SEO Immoral? SEOmoz has always had the knack of making us sit up straight and pay attention, it almost made this SEO France girl choke on her tea! Things don’t calm down either this month with a look at the current hot topic, ‘clickstream-gate’ between Google and Bing and a number of interesting articles about link building, love it or hate we have to have it.
Is SEO Immoral?
Debate on the topic –
Q. by doing its job is SEO ruining the user’s internet experience, leading them to irrelevant sites and poor quality content? 
Corporate SEO – Link Building by Letter
Is there no place in this modern technological age for the humble letter?
International SEO: Where to Host and How to Target
With so many options open to the modern day SEO’er what are the best options for huge international companies and their websites. Questions like what subdomains, subdirectories and ccTLDs to use in order to cope with different countries and audiences are answered.
Keyword Research – Using Categories to Make Your Process More Actionable
It is agreed, one of the most important features to any effective SEO is the keyword research. This research will decide for you how to best structure a website and helps inspire content and link building.
Yes at times it can seem like simple guess work; it is data intensive and takes a lot of man hours to be done thoroughly. Is it any wonder some SEO’ers don’t like doing it? Yet does lazy keyword research spell disaster later down the line.
Where’s The Love, DMOZ?
Are we being blinded by reputation rather than investigating into whether the value of the page we are being given through DMOZ is actually correct or whether the page even exists at all on Google?
How we Increased our Twitter Followers By 250%
As we all know Twitter is not all about numbers it’s about influence, but how do you increase influence without first having to increase numbers? What is important is the percentage of increase rather than specific numbers. No quick fix but simple steps lead to impressive results.
Getting SEO Value from Your Affiliate Links
Take the opportunity to build affiliate links but beware of potential risks.
The Next Generation of Ranking Signals
Search engines change their metric systems every 3-4 years in order to keep search results up to date and relevant.
1996-1999: On-page keyword usage + meta data
1999 – 2002: PageRank + On-page
2002 – 2005: Anchor text + Domain name + PageRank + On-Page
2005 – 2009: Domain authority + Diversity of linking domains + Topic modeling + Anchor text + Domain name + PageRank + On-Page
2010 and 2011 have already seen advancements in search engine dealings with social media entries as well as the more recent clickstream stories. What will the next generation of ranking signals have in store for us?
A Tweet’s Effect on Rankings – An Unexpected Case Study
Director of Bing Discusses Holistic Search and Clickstream Data
Since ‘clickstream-gate’ where Google accused Bing of copying its ranking factors, heated debates have been taking place all over the web. Bing came back with a counter argument that it simply took Google results into consideration as a valuable search signal.
Should Bing be using Google data for its own results, are there hidden implications and if so what are they?
Site Speed – Are You Fast? Does it Matter?
In short, yes. Since making the announcement that Google takes site speed into consideration for rankings it is clear that user-ability is a priority to Google ranking metrics. This is further emphasised with data showing that increased speed leads to a higher percentage of page conversions.
Headsmacking Tip #17: Use Your Bio as an SEO Advantage
It may seem obvious but many aren’t making the most of their business and personal bio to enhance their SEO influence.
Link Building Training: Do You Already Have All the Links You Need?
Link building conference in London (18th March) and New Orleans (25th March)
I’m Ranking, So Where’s My Traffic?!
3 reasons why you may be ranking highly but seeing no return in visitor numbers
1. You’re Not Really Ranking
2. Your Keywords Don’t Deliver
3. Your Results Don’t Get Clicked
Outreach for Linkbuilding
A look at how important interactive link building is and how to reach out to webmasters and other marketers to gain the links we so badly need.
Tips and Must-Haves for your eCommerce Platform
A few SEO recommendations when choosing you ecommerce platform.