Ben Milleare: Web Apps, Technology and SEO

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Something new for 2012

I’m not normally one for making New Year’s resolutions, partly because I think folk rarely achieve them and partly because if something is important it shouldn’t need to be influenced by a new set of numbers on your calendar.

Having said that, I’ve decided to be a bit more transparent in 2012 and publish some general goals:

1. Blog regularly and grow a subscriber list of over 1000 users
   In actual fact, I plan to start a new blog and leave this one for more personal/opinion led posts. More info on the new blog coming soon but it will be strictly SEO/affiliate oriented.
2. Increase my Twitter follower count to 4000+
3. Push my passive income above £3000/mo
   Some time ago I wrote a post about how I wanted to pay my mortgage with my affiliate earnings. Well, I’m pleased to report that I’m currently earning around £1000/mo so it is mission accomplished in that sense (although I’ve learnt there’s no such thing as 100% ‘passive’). The one thing I didn’t do was document the process which I regret now. I plan to change that for the next £2k/mo.
4. Build and launch a web app
   This one goes hand in hand with point 3 but I have several ideas for web apps that could make good money. I want to have one live in at least a minimum viable product format by January 2013
5. Lose weight and increase fitness levels
   Now, I’m no fatty by any stretch of the imagination but I’ve developed a bit of a beer belly over the last 12 months. I want to lose a stone (down from 12 to 11) and be regularly running 5-8k (couple of times a week). The bigger pitcure goal is to run a marathon in 2013, but it’s also about getting motivated physically and mentally.

So that’s it, not a huge list but one I think I can certainly make a dent in.

The Google SSL saga, in cartoon format.

(Click for the full size version.)

SEO Sunday: Oct 16 2011

I know, I know - 3 weeks in and I already missed a couple of posts. In my defence, I’ve been pretty damn busy on a Sunday night but hey ho. As always, this entry is from a series of weekly posts highlighting a handful of interesting links I bookmarked each week(s). For the full archives visit the SEO Sunday category page.

• Automating and Scaling Keyword Research
  While the techniques and tools discussed are a little bit harder without an Adwords API key, @richardbaxter provides some great insight into scaling keyword research and prioritising keyword targets.
• SEO P.I.M.P Music Video - T-Money feat. Craig
  Probably the funniest SEO video you’re likely to see this year - seriously good work by the master @ToryMcGill with the usual G.I.T. cameo by @animaxy. I’m hugely surprised this didn’t go a bit more viral among the UK SEO scene.
• SEO/social reporting with Google Spreadsheets
  This is so awesome. If you ever wanted a Google Docs Spreadsheet to use as a client dashboard then you’re prayers have been answered. I can think of a few extensions but it’s a fantastic first draft.
• Copy Detection Mechanisms for Digital Documents
  This is a paper written by Sergey Brin way back in 1995, it’s scary to think where Google could be 16 years on - and yet they still seem to fail massively on occasions (hat tip to @paddymoogan for sharing).
• 7 Technical SEO Wins for Web Developers
  Speaking of @paddymoogan, here’s a post on Distilled covering 7 SEO wins for developers. In conclusion - “Love your developer!” and “Give developers credit where its due”.
• Conquer Link Directory Best Practices for SEO
  A useful post and well worth a read for anyone in the SEO game.
• Keyword Research for Affiliates
  A video from @wilreynolds (of SEER Interactive) for a talk given at Affiliate Summit to “help you understand where pockets of opportunity exist” with affiliate keyword research (slides here).
• Ex-Googlers Debut Zillabyte To Let Business Users Easily Analyze Big Data
  Some ex-Googlers formed a company called Zillabyte and one of their ‘off-the-shelf’ datasets will include a full crawl of the web. Yes, you heard me right. Holy shit.
• Data Scraping Guide for SEO
  Ultimate round-up of how to scrape every kind of data imaginable for your SEO campaign from @seohimanshu.
• Competitive Backlink Analysis
  Fantastic post on the Ayima blog by Jane Copland on how to analyse your rivals strong and weak points in regard to their link building campaign.
• Excel Dashboards
  Not strictly just for SEO, but we can all do with improving our Excel-fu (via @stuntdubl)

SEO Sunday: Sep 25 2011

This post is from a series of weekly posts highlighting a handful of interesting links I bookmarked in the past 7 days. For the full archives (only two weeks so far) visit the SEO Sunday category page.

• Engeeno
  What happens when two ex-Google spam-team engineers (@pedrodias and @ArielL) leave and create their own startup? We don’t know yet, but I’m on the list and you should probably be too.
• 62 steps to the definitive link building campaign
  Great post on wordtracker from Mark Nunney covering everything you need to know for link building. Well, maybe not everything, but it’s a big chunk of knowledge anyhow.
• Google News Ranking Factors 2011
  I’m too lazy to find out who’s directly behind this site - but if you have a strategy that involves targeting screen space in Google News (which you should) then this is probably one for the bookmarks.
• Step by Step Guide to Spying on the Competition with KeywordSpy
  So this one isn’t strictly SEO - but if data on a competitor sites PPC strategy isn’t something you’d sit up and take notice of then you aren’t doing your job justice. We’ve all heard of KeywordSpy but SEER has gone the extra mile and even provided a downloadable Excel file to make sense of all the raw data.
• Basic SEO for Facebook Pages
  I haven’t delved too much into social media profile optimisation as my focus is heavily on enterprise SEO and technical issues but this is a great starting point for anyone looking at giving it a go.
• How to Game Klout
  Who knew Klout was so easily gamed? and more importantly, who knew that with a high Klout score you could get all sorts of perks in Vegas? time to knuckle down and then book some flights methinks….
• Google -50 Penalty Research
  Some good discussion on WebmasterWorld of a -50 penalty dissection. Certainly worth a read if you ever have potential leads contacting you over similar issues.

SEO Sunday: Sep 18 2011

This post is from a series of weekly posts highlighting a handful of interesting links I bookmarked in the past 7 days. For the full archives (only two weeks so far) visit the SEO Sunday category page.

• Tracking the KPIs of Social Media
  You rarely see a poor post by @randfish over on SEOmoz and this one is no different. If you’re from the agency world then you’ve no doubt had a conversation with a client who is scared of dabbling in social because “there’s no way to track it”. Rand covers some great advice on how to get a bit more insight into the impact of being friendly.
• Using Google Docs To Generate Hot Content Strategies [Tool]
  Very nice tool from ex-HP SEO @DBSEO that takes a little bit of pain out of the process of content strategy research. This triggered a few extra ideas in my head too, which is always nice.
• Google+ Developer Platform
  Awesome! it’s finally here - the Google+ developer API! oh… no, hold up… let me step back a second here. It turns out it’s pretty much a one-way API right now, so essentially just a data export tool. Looks like all of those spam bots will have to be put back on hold for the time being.
• A Guide to Long Tail Link Building
  Yet another great post by the famous @rishil this time tackling how to create sub-sets of your head terms and create those all important long-tail anchor text variations. A seemingly simple guide but one I’m sure many SEOs don’t action often enough.
• Quora: Kevin Lacker’s Answers about Web Search
  I think it was Rand Fishkin that tweeted this out originally but I’m too lazy to go and check. Anyway - this guy “wrote search algorithms at Google” so he knows his shit. There’s some really interesting answers that any hardcore SEO will enjoy reading.
• Introducing Twitter Web Analytics
  About freakin’ time. Twitter finally launch an official analytics tool. Well, I say launch but it’s still closed to a selected beta group for now. Hopefully it will roll-out more widely pretty soon.
• Blekko Web Grep
  Blekko certainly get the kudos for empowering the modern SEO with decent tools. This one does exactly what it says on the tin - allows you to essentially grep the web using strings or patterns. This could be awesome for certain niche research tasks.