Hobo SEO Blog

It’s been an interesting 2008 so far. Recent Hobo blog posts proved to be popular in the search marketing world, and a secondary benefit was that all of a sudden this site was was getting ‘Stumbled‘ (it is still).

As a one time prolific ‘link-whore’, of course I had heard of StumbleUpon, used it, enjoyed it and I think abused it in the very early days (isn’t that what every seo is supposed to a newly popular network?) but it didn’t hold my interest as much as my first love, Google. I did always like the Toolbar, though. As that I have thousands of visitors currently stumbling the Hobo blog, I wanted to know more about this swarming visitor phenomenon, and what to do with all those peepers on my site.

I surmised, perhaps there was a Stumbleupon Guru, willing to let me assimilate all his knowledge, (much in the same way I successfully assimilated all of Jim Boykin’s link-building nous and all of Sebastian’s Robot’s txt knowledge recently) and educate me in the art of Stumbling.

Only one guy sprung to mind. That guy with the friendly Avatar…. Tim Nash, of Venture Skills! His reply to my Sylar-like approach was…..

“Sure what would you like to know ”

This interview would be easy and save me a lot of time…. Read The Tim Nash Interview

We've recently updated our comments policy and increased the number of comments a visitor has to make to get seo friendly links in comment signatures to reward long term readers and make it a bit harder for dofollow spammers ;) - I told you dofollow spamming wasn't a long term strategy....

StumbleUpon Frenzy Rattles Our Website!

A few of the articles on this site have proved popular in the search marketing industry network this week, the result being a lot of traffic to our seo blog. (more…)

Hobo – Right Sebastian! What do you think you are doing calling me out on a slight bit of “misinformation” on a post I made for a bit of branding. Just who do you think you are spamming my content with useful, original and interesting content?

Don’t you realize that @ 1,500 stumblers and Twitters visited my site as a result of this slapping?? You trying to discredit me?

Sebastian – Howdy Shaun, – I’m so sorry that I discredited you, that was really not my intention. (more…)

Update - what goes in robots.txt? Find out with our Robots.txt tutorial.

My recent post on how SEO experts started their authority seo blogs proved popular when submitted to Sphinn by Marty at Aimclear (thanks!) and came at a time where frankly I was preparing to give up blogging for a short time to get on with work! (more…)

Congratulations to veteran link-building specialist Jim Boykin, who I interviewed recently for the Hobo blog, (more…)

Update – This page was a pain to maintain with all the links and 404s – so I removed them

Ladies and Gentlemen of the SEO/SEM/SMO class of 2008

Add Good Content

Read More About Good Content

HA!

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

You know a lot of poeple type mispellings into Goolge – it is a source of traffic – and in order to rank for these common mis-spellings you’ve got to have them on your pqae or in links pionting to your page. Seemtmios it’s good to scerw things up, but hardly professional search engine optimizaion.

(more…)

I thought I would elaborate on my thinking about seo “heat” and try to unify how I visualise seo and the art of search engine optimization.

Disclaimer: Not How Google Works, More How I Visualise & Explain SEO To Prevent Madness.

It’s based on observations I’ve made over the last few years. What’s this all got to do with Viagra? You’ll find out.

Visualizing Neighbourhood “Heat”

All the major search engines rely on links to tell them about sites and pages and to help them determine what a site is about.

Yes, content will always be king (especially in the future) but without links, content can be a mute point.

You can have the best content in the world, but if you don’t have links pointing to it from other sites, it may lose out to better optimized content on ‘hotter’ sites, even if that content is of poorer quality.

To properly visualise this “seo heat” analogy, you’ve got to accept success in search engines for competitive terms is down to links – the number of links, the number of right links, the number of ‘hot’ links.

Read More About This Heat Analogy

Ever wondered how you start a blog? Ever wondered how popular seo blogs started? I decided to take another look at how some of the blogs I read on a weekly basis kicked things off. Read more about Starting a Winning Blog

This article has been updated here – The Most Useful Posts On The Hobo SEO Blog.

We used the Hobo blog to generate 78,452 unique visitors to this site in 2007, not bad considering we don’t pay for any links or advertising, in any shape or form, and generally we simply don’t have the resources to blog more. The vast majority of visits are from targeted sources, too.

Actually, 2008 for us will involve shorter blog posts (on the whole), and less blogging from us. It’s not because blogging doesn’t bring the visitors in. It’s the opposite. We’ve got to much work we have to get on with.

The following posts on the Hobo SEO Blog are examples of what we use our WordPress powered blog to do, and my favourite posts.

Read more about the best Hobo posts in 2007