SEO

1. Development Skills (C#, Python, ASP.Net)

   

   Obviously from the URL I work in SEO – at Summit Media, working with Head of SEO Phill Midwinter.

   Recently I’ve been heading a lot more towards development at work rather than general link building – although obviously I do still link build, create strategies, deal with ad-hoc requests, etc.

   Anyway, back on track – the point that I was writing this for was just an update on what I’m now starting to learn, get more involved with and starting to like more and more

   I’ve always been interested in coding and anything really mathmatical based, even from  a very early stage in life before I started thinking about work; then when I started work I initially went into Engineering, very mathmatically based!

   I think this has what has made me like coding so much, with the research that is required, the logical steps that need to be taken and the problem solving (not to mention the sense of accomplishment when a project is completed).

   The languages I knew previously, before really starting development, was just HTML and CSS with a small amount of PHP that I was starting to get the hang of.

   I first jumped into Python, on request of @PhillMidwinter, and he worked with me to help me start developing tools to automate current tasks we are doing and speed things up a lot (I think we ended up saving about 2hours per job, for a 3 day project)

   I then jumped into ASP.Net and C# for a client/twitter based project that I can’t really go into much detail to at the moment, but I really enjoyed this, especially since it has actually involved in creating backend user interfaces as well as all the coding and then the frontend of the website itself, it has made it a really fun project and been able to see it from start to completion (well almost completion anyway)!!

   I’ve been speaking to my mangers at work in one of my reviews and I have basically been told that I might be given the chance to specialise in development of tools/etc. for the SEO team at Summit Media soooooooooo… my next plan of action is to try and do some research and learn some more about development and specialisations within development, then make a list of what other languages I want to learn (JavaScript really being on the top of this list because I think I should already know that)

   We’ll see how things go from there but I’m liking the new direction my job ‘might’ take – not that I’m not happy with how it is at the moment, I love my job and the varying tasks and clients I get to work with, but I think this new direction will suit me and the way my mind works

2. (Rob Hughes) Brand Management

   Ranking for Rob Hughes

   One thing that quite annoys me really about having websites and ‘sometimes’ updating them is the fact none of them seem to rank highly for my name, Rob Hughes.

   Although this does annoy me I strangely don’t actually ever do anything about it – considering I work in SEO, and similarly to pretty much every Search Engine Optimiser out there, I spend my time reading about it and testing things, etc.

   Even though I spend all this time doing this I never actually seem to bother writing any decent blog posts or spend any time optimising or link building for my personal website (probably mainly because I’ve got a habit of changing URLs every few months even though I really shouldn’t).

    

   I’ve read quite a few posts recently by people like Will Critchlow at Distilled who keep mentioning brand management, which although it isn’t the same thing makes me think of exactly this topic.

   Additionaly, it doesn’t help that my boss, Phill Midwinter – Head of SEO at Summit Media constantly decided he is going to announce how well he ranks for this or that (strangely the terms always seem to include the words ‘semantics’ or ‘Google’ in them).

    

   Well I know this post isn’t going to go anywhere near repairing the damage I’ve probably already caused my situation by not even considering what I post about or posting with a totally irregular pattern, etc. and there is also a lot of competition within search for Rob Hughes so that does make it additionally difficult!

   To make a start today (that I’ll probably have forgotten about tomorrow and won’t even bother trying to continue this task I’ve set myself) I’ve decided to start creating some more social media profiles with URLs that I can try and optimise, so here they are:

   • Facebook profile for Rob Hughes
   • Rob Hughes on Twitter
   • Newly created Linkedin profile for Rob Hughes
   • My Personal blog: Rob Hughes at Inverse SEO

   I think that’s all of the ones at the moment – that’s all the ones I can think of anyway so I shall leave it at this and see what happens

    

3. Fresh Start

   Ok, so now (following on from my previous post New Domain) I’ve decided that rather than just shifting the site, as a whole, straight onto the new domain I’d create myself a new template and try and re-brand myself.

   My thoughts really are, why do I spend all my time at work (and a lot of time out of work) thinking, reading, learning, talking about SEO and yet the one place that I really put my thoughts down on “paper” I rarely discuss any of this I also don’t actual practice SEO on my own site at all!!

   So… with this new template I’m going to attempt (I use the word attempt as I know how I usually drop my personal projects midway through unfortunately) to make my site SEO friendly and actually think about what I’m posting up.

   I’m also pledging to myself that I’m going to post at least one decent post a week to at least get some rhythm and consistency into the website even if I don’t really consider too much the semantics of my post.

   I’m ALSO going to use the blog to learn how to improve my copy-writing, this is a factor of SEO I know I struggle the most with and probably a very important factor when I’m writing my strategies.

   Ok, so this post is my resolution of what I’m now planning to try and do with my blog – if all goes well hopefully this post might be read by somebody in the future?

   Well for anybody reading this, feel free to leave a comment if I’ve actually stuck to the tasks I’ve set myself and my blog actual has some decent content now!

   So, my new site is now going to be on the domain http://www.inverseSEO.com/ and here is a first draft at what I’m thinking of for my layout:

   

4. New Domain

   Well, I’ve been thinking I don’t like my url that I’m on anymore (admittedly I only recently moved onto it, but still)

   I’ve purchased two new domains now – just need to decide which one I prefer more:

   • http://www.seotone.com/
   • http://www.inverseseo.com/

   Main problem I’m having choosing is that although I prefer the sound and feel of InverseSEO more than SEOTone, the latter looks more legible when written down in URL format, can’t decide if that matters or not.

   When I think about it a bit more in depth I’m not actually sure I should really use either of them since the majority of my posts don’t really have anything to do with SEO at all, more so with random comments and thoughts.

   I do think though, if I had more traffic I may post some more interesting blog posts and put more thought into them rather than just putting them up without even proof reading things!!

   So, now – admittedly mid post – I have decided I’m definitely going to go with one of these two domains… also I’m swaying towards inverseSEO…. hmmm I shall have a think!

5. Dofollow Links on Twitter

   Well, unfortunately I got told I shouldn’t post this when I wanted to buy a friend, but now it appears that some sites have already published it so I might as well – I wrote this post on about 28th July.

   Right I’m still not sure I agree with all this nofollow and dofollow rage on links and I believe in their importance, however, since there is no proof that I’ve seen to show that what Matt Cutts has said isn’t true at the moment I’ll go along with it!

   So, this is a pretty simple thing to do, and it’s pretty easy to notice as well so I presume many people have already considered doing something along this line – I’ve not seen it written up anywhere though so thought I’d document it myself

   I did actually notice this quite a while ago, I sent an email around the middle of June to a couple of guys at work as they hadn’t seen it, even though I had spotted it a month or so before then just wasn’t sure if anybody would care!

   Ok, I’m still probably miles behind the time here, but I’ve not been actively posting and looking for twitter plugins for a great deal of time.

   Ok, so rather than re-writing it again I might as well post the email up as it says it all:

   Hey,

   I’ve found a way somebody could “exploit” twitter’s nofollow attribute if you are interested (I know how you feel about nofollow and follow links).

   Anyway, if you make a twitter update from a plugin of some sort, whether browser, mobile, website, etc. it gives a follow link to what made the post…

   I made a post from a plugin within my WP blog which has given me a follow link to my website – the anchor text can also be manipulated through the plugin settings on the blog itself.

   I thought even though you aren’t here you might like to hear my random thought of the day!!

   Have fun,
   Rob

   That pretty much says it all to be honest, but just to show that this does actually work, this is an email I recently got from Google Alerts:

   Google Web Alert for: link:www.robh.me

   Rob Hughes (_robh_) on Twitter
   Decided to change the styling on my twitter profile… don’t like the colour of the normal text but can’t decide what to pick at the moment!4:08 AM Jul 10th …
   ________________________________________
   This as-it-happens Google Alert is brought to you by Google.

   Remove this alert.
   Create another alert.
   Manage your alerts.

   This is the link documented been seen in Google (no cocky responses about it being the only link there, I have never and am still not motivated to try and get links to my blog because, apart from this post, I never really post anything that I care if people read or not!)

   link:www.robh.me

   This is the Tweet that was associated with the link strangely as there is no link on this tweet:

   http://twitter.com/_robh_/status/2566535015

   Here is an example of a dofollow link from my twitter:

   http://twitter.com/_robh_/status/2842997329

   Well, there we go, that’s pretty much the culmination of what can be done – I personally don’t agree with using this technique and would class it as “blackhat SEO”.

   I thought I should publish this post so that at least everybody that reads here (not many people admittedly) would be aware of this fact and then hopefully Twitter would make a modification so that people can no longer exploit them for links in this way.

   I presume Twitter will combat this soon after people start majorly taking advantage of this, they seem to be pretty quick on the uptake so far with things like this!

   Unrelated Paragraph:

   The annoying thing for me really is that I’ve changed the URL of my blog, so now all these links are getting created they do my little good anyway as the whole domain www.robh.me is just 301 redirected to www.falconpunch.co.uk anyway! (I really need to go my links on my site as well and make sure they are pointing to the right place).