When was the last time you checked your website’s link profile? Are all your links pointed to the home page? If the answer is yes then you’ve got some work to do. We all know how important links are, but you need to spread the link love around to help out your internal pages. Strengthening the power of these pages will help get them the visibility that they need to start making you more money.

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We have big plans for our blog. Big plans. One of them is moving away from Blog.cfc and to Wordpress. As such we've been racking our brains over what SEO stuff we need in order to make sure that our blog maintains as much of its juicyness as possible.

Fortunately Wordpress has a ton of plugins to make sure that your blog is as optimized as possible. Below are some of our favourites:

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People love a jackass. They love to talk about jackasses. And even more, they love to show other people how much of a jackass some one is. They will tell their friends. They will tell their family. They will post links on message boards pointing at the jackass. And that's where it comes in. The Jackass hook. An unreal amount of links from people who want nothing more than to tell other people about how much they hate you.

While we will take credit for any links you receive as a result of these guidelines, we take ABSOLUTELY NO responsibility for anything else. This includes bad press, hurt reputations, angry partners, lawsuits, bankruptcy, death threats, and actual death.

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it takes more than age to judge the value of a link

Link building is one of the essential tactics all SEOs must know how to do if they have any hopes of getting a website to rank in Google's organic results. This will remain the case until the day in which Google decides to move away from a links based ranking algorithm.

A big part of the link building process is determining what the value of a link actually is, because without that you'll have no clue as to how much time and effort to invest into getting it. So let's take a look at a few metrics that will help you make that judgment about a link.

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In a recent project, a client asked me whether I'd recommend getting rid of his Site Map. We had just conducted a series of user tests, and the client noticed that not a single subject ever looked at the Site Map. Not even when they were hopelessly lost.

Following the "less is more" principle of design, he argued, didn't it make sense to eliminate rarely-used features like Site Maps?

Though I understood his position, I strongly recommended he retain his Site Map. Here's why:

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Building out the content of your website should be at the heart of your SEO strategy. We all know that producing quality articles can be both time consuming and expensive. Why not let your online community help you build your content out?

User generated content isn't anything new, and you're seeing it pop up on more sites all the time. More ecommerce sites are incorporating user reviews. Service and information based companies are using their audience as guest bloggers to help with new articles. You'll also find more websites encouraging their community to share experiences by uploading pictures and videos or discussing topics within a forum.

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not that kind of canon

I’ve talked about the Canonical Tag a couple of times before on the blog, and now Google is supporting it across domains. If you’re unaware of what this handy little tag does, it’s basically another way with which you can handle duplicate content issues internally on your site, and now across separate domains.

We’ve know that this tag was in the process of being implemented since Google made the announcement at SMX East in October. Now that its here we can start using it as part of our strategy. Obviously, my first recommendation would be to simply avoid duplicate content in the first place, but sometimes there are instances where this is difficult. While there are a number of ways with which we can handle the problem already (including the best option of using a 301 permanent redirect) it’s always nice to add an additional weapon to your arsenal.

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As a web usability professional and copywriter, I must sometimes clash swords with Search Engine Optimization folk. For example, they'll insist that a page contain at least 300 words of keyword-rich text... even where from the user's perspective, the text isn't necessary. Bloody battles ensue. And when the dust has cleared, we're left with a compromise page that pleases neither of us (but hopefully works for both robotic and human visitors).

In the spirit of the new year and a fresh start, I'd like to touch upon one area in which we can all be friends: the humble yet all-important Title Tag.

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Your users don't want to wait

As we come into the New Year, one of Google's goals is to try and make the web a much faster place. One of the ways that they have talked about accomplishing this is by adding load times as a factor to the algorithm.

We've already seen Google's movement towards a faster web experience with Chrome and load times effecting Adwords landing page quality. Now it looks to be pushed into organic search. The weight placed on load times for organic search will probably be quite minimal compared to other top factors but this doesn't mean that it should be brushed aside.

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It’s not unusual for multinational corporations to target specific geographic regions using multiple mini sites. If this is part of the strategy your company incorporates, then it’s important to make sure that each of these sites are giving search engines a clear indication of the country that’s being targeted. Below are a few items that will help these sites target specific international regions.

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