In October we decided to mix things up a bit and offer more posts with practical tips, especially the SEO Basics series. While many of our readers appreciate industry insights, observations, conference coverage and interviews, it was the practical tips and resources that attracted the most interest.
While started out with tips focused on search engine optimization in October, we’ll begin offering similarly practical tips for digital PR and social media marketing as well.
The two day Social Media Smarts workshop in conjunction with the DMA will offer more than enough basic social media tips to share. Here are the top 10 Online Marketing Blog posts according to visitors, post ratings and incoming links for October:
- SEO Tops Recession Internet Marketing Tactics – Over 400 internet marketing professionals took this survey to identify the top Internet marketing tactics to focus on over the next 6 months and SEO came out on top.
- SEO Basics: Are Directory Submissions Still Worthwhile? – A topic that’s pretty much a blast from the past, this post questions the value of submitting web sites to directories to attract traffic and for SEO. Google’s recent changes to their webmaster recommendations gives the impression directories are even less valuable than previously thought. Also this post earned TopRank a spot on “SEO Rockstars” at WebmasterRadio.FM.
- SEO Basics: 4 Tips to Improve Search Engine Rankings – Our SEO Basics series of posts were popular out of the gate. Each post is based on a real question posed by a web site owner. The idea is not new or unique, but is one of the best ways to source content for a blog in a way that wins for everyone involved. This post offers the first or top 3 things a web site owner should do to improve their search visibility. As much as search engines have evolved and become more sophisticated, SEO fundamentals are still about crawler friendly, keywords, content and links.
- SEO Basics: Ensure Your Site Can be Crawled by Search Engines – Speaking of crawler friendly, this post is dedicated to addressing the most common issue for web site owners that are not doing well in search results. This post provides the most common issues and considerations with generous links to 3rd party resources.
- The Yin and Yang of PR and SEO – The popular SEO topic share the stage with public relations in this post that describes the interplay between keyword optimizing content and link building compared to keyword messaging and pitching with media relations. As search and PR converge, the skill sets from each discipline combine to create even more value for web site owners.
If you’re a regular reader of Online Marketing Blog, we’d love to get your feedback on your favorite topics and post formats. We’ll continue to offer marketing conference liveblogging, interviews, insights and tips but want to make sure we’re posting the kind of content that works for you. Please share your feedback on how we’re doing in the comments or email to seo at toprankmarketing dot com.
I still visit particularly because of the articles on digital PR that crop up every so often. I elsewhere for SEO related content, but Lee, you’ve definitely cornered the market on topics like influencing journalists. Your blog assumes the lion’s share of space in my “online PR” bookmarks folder, and the articeles are always full of great ideas.
More regular use of headings would make reading much easier.
Cheers
Thanks Megan. I agree, there are plenty of other SEO blogs far more in depth than ours. That’s why we focus on the basics 🙂 I totally agree on the headings use. We’ve tried to use images more consistently as well. Thank you for reading!
I greatly appreciate your “basics” and “lists” approaches. Keep these coming. It’s comforting to know that I can always get grounded at Top Rank after reading blogs touting the latest shiny new object. You do a great job of sharing cutting-edge technologies as well. However, your guides keep our eyes focused on the fundamentals, something from which we cannot afford to stray.
ROCKTOBER!
Keep up the great work Lee.
Thank you for reading Dana and also for you feedback and kind words. 🙂
I’d love to see tools review posts. There are so many tools out there; it’s tough to keep up with which ones work and which ones don’t work.
Love the “Also this post earned TopRank a spot on
Hey David, it was a real pleasure and fun to do SEO 101 and you’ve had plenty of great guests. You guys do a great job and thanks for reading OMB.