Weekend Wrap 15 – Google Insider Secrets, Evil Link Building, Epic Content

Alpacas

Some real goodies this week from our search for the best around the Web!

See what Google are  really doing (!!) in this in-depth interview with an ex-member of the elite search quality team, the current state of SEO from those who know and where to from here… how to rid your e-commerce website of those errors that hinder your ranking, a humorous, refreshing post on evil link building methods, a look at the views of 35 powerhouse social media personalities on how to be influential on Facebook, a great post on how epic content or long-form posts in content marketing get big rewards and much, much more – plenty here for your week’s reading to keep you up to date.

A little bucolic scene this week – visiting family enjoying feeding the alpacas

 

SEO / Search Engine Optimisation

What better way to get insights on what Google is really doing than to interview an ex-member of Matt Cutts’ search quality team. The first interview caused a bit of a storm with Google saying that this ex-Googler didn’t really work for them and disputed some of his claims. This follow-up is just as interesting and contradicts some of Google’s public inferences.

Top SEO Tips Straight From the Industry Experts [INFOGRAPHIC]

Some of the biggest names in SEO share on Hubspot their insights and opinions on what is the current state of search engine optimisation as well as giving advice on the best approaches to take. Insights from Rand Fishkin, Darmesh Shah, Stephanie Chang and Greg Shuey.

This post on Kissmetrics is a must-read for anyone working with an ecommerce website. These errors are almost the default setting for many ecommerce sites when they are first built and they will seriously hinder your chances of ranking well on Google.

And here is one just for fun. Peter Attia has put together a follow-up of 9 nasty ways to build links (and recommends you don’t do any of them). Good to see someone having a bit of a laugh when so much SEO commentary is dead serious.

Social Media / Content Marketing

A brilliant post from Copyblogger that examines what it takes to create epic content and uses the example of The New Yorker magazine to illustrate how long-form posts are the holy grail of content marketing strategy. Don’t miss this one!
Unbounce have collected 15 great posts on the psychology of sales and marketing. A great set of resources covering behavioural marketing, ecommerce, psychology for bloggers and SEOs, eye-tracking and mouse movements, conversion rate optimisation, A/B testing and so much more.

How To Write A Scannable Blog Post That Will Keep Visitors On Your Page

People are time-poor and prone to feelings of overwhelm when they are on the web. So your posts have to be immediately scannable so that your visitor will be able to sum your post up quickly and make a decision on whether to read in more depth. Good tips here from SEO.com

Mark Schaefer has collected the views of 35 powerhouse social media personalities and asked them “What do you think it takes to become powerful on Facebook?”. There are a ton of insights here from some of our favourite bloggers and social media personalities.

That’s us for another week! Thanks for visiting and reading the Weekend Wrap!

Let us know what your favourite post is and don’t forget to share with the social media buttons at the top.

Til next time…

Midge