Search Engine Weekly Round-up #32
The Search Engine Weekly Round-up is where I look at the finest articles, talking points and news from the week from the worlds of SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc. This week focuses on evergreen content, experts’ link building thoughts, some link cloaking and fake branding.
An Evergreen Content Case Study
Christopher Fielden
Follow @ChrisFielden
Evergreen content refers to a piece of content which is essentially timeless, and will continue to remain relevant to your niche/audience, as opposed to a piece of content on a topic which will see interest fizzle out.
The first post in this round-up takes a look at evergreen content, as Christopher Fielden has written up an in-depth case study on the matter, proving how effective some top-drawer evergreen content can be for your site. Christopher goes through his entire process of creating this content, which ended up being a list of short story writing competitions.
This post looks at the research that went into the creation of this post, the actual content, the links that were used, et al, and finishes by running through the metrics which prove that evergreen content is greatly beneficial.Tweet Chris’ blog: Tweet
Link Building with the Experts
Rae Hoffman
Follow @sugarrae
Ever since 2007, Rae Hoffman has gathered a few link building experts and has created a post which compiles their thoughts across several topics regarding link building activity that year. The latest edition has just been posted, and it’s a absolute goliath of post which takes the thoughts from the very best in the business.
Considering all of the changes that have happened in the past year, the majority of which coming from the Panda and Penguin updates, with a possible Zebra update on the horizon, there’s certainly not a shortage of topics to speak about.
The likes of Rand Fishkin, Will Critchlow, Aaron Wall and indeed Rae Hoffman herself look at topics such as the effect of links in Google’s algorithm, the top 5 SEO tools at their disposal, the first five things they do to procure links during their link building strategy, et al.
Tweet Rae’s blog: Tweet
WordPress SEO Tip for Matt Cutts
Geir Ellefsen
Follow @EdgySEO
One of the more interesting topics that has arisen this week is something which was discovered by Geir Ellefsen – there were a few footer links hidden within the CSS of Matt Cutts’ blog. Whilst there probably isn’t any malice behind this, Geir points out that this is rather sloppy, and could be deemed punishable considering that Google may decipher hidden footer links as an endoresement for those links.
Geir also briefly touches upon how you can go about removing any footer/affiliate links.
Tweet Geir’s blog: Tweet
How to Sucker Punch Google in the Gonads with Fake Branding
Jacob King
Follow @IMJacogKing
The final post in this week’s round-up takes a bit of a grey hat look at Google’s supposed brand bias, and how it can be taken advantage of. After noticing that sites with a positive brand signal were performing well, Jacob decided to don the ol’ grey hat and take advantage of this, and has written a post detailing ways that you can do this. It looks at three main areas, link signals, on-page signals and search/social signals. He’s also been kind enough to offer a couple of sage words of advice on what to avoid if you want to stay away from Lana in the danger zone, such as ensuring that your site accrues some social shares.
Tweet Jacob’s blog: Tweet
That’s all for this week’s round-up. If you fancy sharing the content which has been mentioned in this blog, click the corresponding Tweet buttons. So, what have been your favourite articles of the week? Feel free to leave your comments below.
