If you haven’t heard of it before, Trello is an online collaboration / project management tool.  We’ve been testing it on a few projects at Distilled and personally I really like it.  Most people who I’ve spoken to use it differently, its very flexible.  In this post I’ll talk a little bit about the features and how I use it to manage multiple SEO projects.

Why I like it

Trello allows you to create a “board” for each of your projects, you can then break this board down into various stages in a project life cycle.  This tends to lend itself well to web development / software development projects where you have stages such as in progress, testing, live etc.  You can see a good example of this as well as other Trello features by looking at the public board for Trello itself -

Another great feature which makes it great for collaboration is the easy assignment of cards to team members.  You can do this just by dragging their profile picture into a card.  So you can easily see at a glance who is meant to be working on what within your project -

Update: Thanks to Marc for pointing out this nifty little Chrome extension which lets you copy a Trello board including the columns, preferences etc.  This is really cool for using the same board template across multiple projects.

How I use Trello for SEO Projects

At first glance, Trello doesn’t lend itself well to my SEO projects.  Particularly as some tasks are ongoing and happen once a month.  For example these may be tasks which you repeat every month or continue over the course of several months -

• Review Google Webmaster Tools
• Link building
• Competitor analysis

However you can break these tasks down and make them more precise and actionable.  For example, just having a card for “Link Building” is never probably never going to get moved to the done pile.  Its probably going to be ongoing.  However you may have different types of link building which are more precise -

• Red widget infographic outreach contact list creation
• Scrape competitor As links and order by DA
• Survey SEO team for existing contacts in client industry

You can make these into cards and they can be moved to your done column.

My Trello Setup

I try to keep my setup as simple as possible and will tend to only have four columns -

• Deliverables
• In Progress
• Delivered
• Waiting for Client

I make sure that at the start of an SEO project, the Deliverables column includes EVERYTHING that the client has requested as part of our contract.  Of course these may change as the project progresses, but as a starting point, I make sure I have written down everything we have agreed to do.

I’ll tend to order the deliverables roughly in order of which ones I’ll work on first.  Then when I’m actually working on that deliverable, I’ll move it to the In Progress column.  I try to make sure that I have no more than 2-3 deliverables in progress at one time.  Otherwise it can be too easy to spread yourself too thin and end up not finishing anything.

When working on multiple clients, I’ll often come across relevant opportunities for clients I may not be working on at that precise moment.  For example I may find a good link opportunity, but I don’t want to get distracted away from my current work.  So I’ll quickly pop over to Trello, find the card that is relevant and add a note on the back.  If a card doesn’t existing, I’ll just add one and come back to it later.

Possible Additional Column – Ideas

In relation to this, you can also have another column for “Ideas” which can be things you think of which may not be part of an agreed deliverable.  You still want to capture these ideas somehow and make sure you don’t just forget about them.  So an ideas column which you check every few days can be very good for this and possibly adding extra value to your SEO project.

This also sits well with the Getting Things Done system which encourages some kind of way of capturing all your ideas into one central place.  You can just do this in a single column and if an idea becomes a deliverable, you can just move it along the columns and delegate accordingly.

You can combine this with another nice feature of Trello – the ability to vote on cards you like.  You can see this on the public Trello board I linked to above, each card has a number of votes which can help the guys at Trello see what ideas people want the most.  This can be a great way of collaborating on ideas you have for clients and seeing which ones your team think you should work on next -

Where Trello could be better

The one thing I’d love to see Trello do is create a way of filtering cards across multiple projects. For example if I want to see all the cards that are currently “In Progress” across five projects, it would be great to filter and see what I should be currently working on.  Right now, its a case of going through each project one by one which isn’t terrible, but can take time.

Overall I really like it, its not perfect, but most tools for project management are not perfect for everyone.  If you use Trello, let us know in the comments what you think of it and any tips you have for using it.

Firstly a quick bit of clarification – scaling link building != spam.

Sometimes it can be easy to see the words scale and link building together and immediately think the worst.  Sure, some link building on scale is spammy, but it doesn’t have to be and thats not what I’m talking about in this post.

What I want to talk about in this post is efficiently getting volume of links for your site.  This is probably a tip more for agency SEOs and work across multiple sites all the time, I’m going to talk about how to us various features of Buzzstream to do this.

The fact is that right now, sites still need volume of links in order to rank well in competitive industries, I personally think this will change very soon and Google will turn the dial down a bit (more on anchor text than volume I think), but right now, its what we need to do.  Of course, you need to combine volume link building with higher quality links too, so don’t neglect that side of things.

The type of links which I think are scalable which aren’t spammy include -

• Quality directories
• Quality content submission sites
• Infographic submission sites
• Ecommerce store submission sites
• Local citation sites

I’d class these types of sites as easy win link targets, sure they are probably not going to get you to number 1 on their own.  But they do allow you to get several important parts of a good link profile -

• Linking root domain diversity
• Anchor text (branded and non-branded)
• Volume of links

Now all that is a bit clearer and we know we aren’t talking about spammy links, let talk about getting them easily and on scale.

1. Collecting your list and organising

This is by far the hardest bit, but it is worth it.

You simply need to start collecting the sites where you can submit multiple clients, such as the ones pointed out above.  Here are a few to get you started -

• List of infographic sites
• List of US citation sources
• List of UK citation sources
• List of web directories

Now an important bit – you need to use the Custom Fields feature within Buzzstream to classify your sites.  This will serve two purposes -

1. Find types of links quickly and easily assign them to people
2. Easily copy types of links to other Buzzstream projects (ie your other clients)

To edit and add Custom Fields, go to Settings > Customise Fields:

So now you can go through websites such as the ones I’ve linked to above and add them to Buzzstream.

A sidenote here, you can also do this in bulk by importing a spreadsheet into Buzzstream.

Once you have all your sites in Buzzstream, its time for Step 2.

2. Copying to other Projects

This is the bit that is most useful for agency SEOs working across multiple clients.  There are going to be times when you have clients who need volume of links as part of their link building campaign.  So having easy access to a list of quick wins for this will always be useful.

To do this, go into the project where all your links are currently kept and filter by the type of links you want to copy.  For example you may choose to filter by “Infographic Sites” if you are about to launch an infographic for another client.

Once you have filtered, select the checkbox on the left hand side to select all of the list.  Then click on Projects > Copy to Project:

From the dropdown menu, select the project you want to copy the links to then click ok:

3. Assign the links around your team

This is another bit that can allow you to scale this part of your link building.  You can even assign to external outsourcers if you set them up with a basic Buzzstream account.

To do this, select the link targets using the checkboxes on the left hand side, then go to Edit > Assigned to:

Thats it for this post, let me know in the comments if you are using this or any other ways you are using Buzzstream to help with your link building.

I wanted to talk a little about the system I use for (trying) to get things done.  I say trying because I’m aware that my system isn’t perfect.  Well, actually, the system could be totally fine.  The problem is probably me!  I feel that this topic isn’t covered very often in relation to SEO, one of my previous similar posts went down quite well so I wanted to (finally) do a more tip focused follow up.

I get distracted easily which probably doesn’t help me get things done no matter what system I use.  However, since I started using this system and adopted GTD principles in general, I’ve noticed a change in my productivity and general happiness at work.  I have always loved my work, but now when I walk away from it, I feel much more in control of my projects.  I think the following is true and key to all of us -

I’m in control of my projects – they’re not in control of me.

I wanted to share my system to try and help others and also to get feedback on this one.  I’m always looking to improve it so any thoughts are welcome.  This system is heavily based on the principles outlined by David Allen in Making It All Work, I’d highly recommend you getting a copy of it as well as David’s original book Getting Things Done.

There are basically 3 stages to my system

• Get Clear
• Get Current
• Get Creative

I run through this system every Friday afternoon, I actually block out the time in my calendar so no one can book meetings during this time.  This helps me make sure I actually do it.

Get Clear

This involves making sure you’re caught up on everything you need to be and that you are aware of the big picture.  Only when you know you have everything you need to do in one place can you decide what to do next.

Step 1) Inbox=0

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of Inbox=0, take a look at this presentation that Merlin Mann gave to Google on the topic.  I’ll also briefly explain the principles below.

For now, I’ll give you the fundamental principles and benefits of getting into the Inbox=0 mentality.

• Your inbox should NEVER be your to-do list
• If you can reply to an email within 2 minutes, do it straight away
• If a reply will take longer than 2 minutes, it is a task and should go onto your to-do lists, then archive the email
• You shouldn’t be distracted by emails in your inbox also known as “stuff”
• Getting to Inbox=0 gives you a sense of calm which strangely makes you feel more in control

I’ll eventually get around to writing a post all about Inbox=0, but for now the points above will do and of course you have the video from Merlin to take a look at.  You should also take a look at the series of blog posts he wrote:

Step 2) Go through all my notes from the last week

Like many of you, I use a notebook to capture meeting notes, random thoughts, as well as my daily tasks.  I actually undervalued the power of a good notebook.  At the start of last year I started using a Molskine notebook and it makes it a pleasure to take notes.  I’m going to go into more detail about good note taking in another post.

Step 3) Get everything onto your to-do list(s)

To-do lists is a whole other topic, again which I’ll cover another time.

I’ve recently changed my to-do list management and have started using Trello.  I used to use Remember the Milk which is simple and has lots of cool features if you need them including an iPhone App.  I changed mainly because I was getting a bit bored and wanted a change, not because of any issues with Remember the Milk.

Update: I’ve written a blog post on Using Trello to Manage SEO Projects

I have a few different to-do lists for different projects that I work on, each project then has different lists which are usually along the lines of “to-do”, “doing”, “done”, and “waiting for”.

At this point I should have absolutely every task on my to-do list.

Ideally, you should have captured any actions from meetings etc in your notebook.  But sometimes this won’t capture everything, such as a meeting that got cancelled and needs to be rearranged.  So its best to review your past meetings to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.

Step 5) Review next weeks calendar for actions to be taken

If you have meetings coming up, there may be some actions to be taken in order to prepare for those meetings.  These are easily forgotten about.  The last thing you want is to be preparing 5 minutes before a meeting starts – although we’ve all been there!

So if you have actions, these should be moved onto your to-do list.

Get Current

This involves organising your tasks and upcoming events so that you know exactly what needs to be done next and when.

Step 1) Review ALL to-do lists and capture tasks for the next week

At this stage you want to go through all of your tasks and pick out the ones that need to be done over the next week.  This can be tricky but you need to learn to prioritise.

Step 2) Decide my to-do list for Monday

As I do this on a Friday, I make a to-do list for the following Monday.  There is a lot of value in deciding your to-do list before the day.  It helps you a lot to keep things clear in your head.  I’d highly recommend getting into this habit, arriving into work and having your tasks already written out is a great feeling and much more efficient.

So I go through my tasks and choose 5 that I want to get done on Monday.  I write these into my notebook.

3) Review ALL projects I’m responsible for – make sure each one has an action next to it

This is more of a good project management tip rather than strictly GTD.  But it is still good practice for this time.  I have a wall in the Distilled office with all my teams projects and I keep this up to date with cards which are the next actions for each.

4) Review tasks that I’ve delegated to others

I also have a list of tasks that I’ve delegated to other people.  It is good to review this list and see if you need to check in with any of the people you’ve delegated to and check the status of the tasks.

Get Creative

This allows you to have some fun and get creative with your projects.

1) Review ambition list

I have a list which I call my ambition list.  This isn’t necessarily related to work, it can be just about anything you want.  Reviewing this list doesn’t mean you’re going to take any actions, but it helps to keep your long term goals in perspective and in your mind.  But the key is that it shouldn’t matter if you don’t take action, you should rest assured that you will get to this someday and you should trust yourself that you will.

2) Go through your projects – what cool, creative ideas can you add to them?

Here I can add any new or creative ideas to each of my projects.  This is good because in the course of my day-to-day work, I may not have time to do this.  But at this time when I review projects, I have the perfect chance to pull out these ideas and add them to my lists.  It doesn’t mean I’m going to action them immediately, but it does mean that creative and different ideas do get onto your list and you can review them at the right time.

Conclusion

I know this seems very long winded, but its not.  It takes me 20-30 minutes to do this, the main time is taken on getting to inbox=0.  If my inbox is already empty, this whole process takes 15 minutes or so.

I’d love to hear how you guys approach getting stuff done, particularly managing multiple client projects at the same time which is always a challenge.

Quick and easy link building post today. Hat tip to John Doherty for mentioning the awesome Boomerang Gmail app to me whilst we were in New York.

Update: Looks like great minds think alike! John published this post a few hours ago over on SEOmoz which talks about Boomerang and other great ways to use Gmail to boost your outreach efficiency.

I originally installed for these reasons and to aid to my inbox=0 and email processing efforts, then quickly realised a couple of the features could come in handy when doing link building outreach. I started using it as part of my own outreach and it has worked pretty well thus far, so I thought I’d share.

Letting you know when you don’t get a reply

Its always nice to get a reply from your link targets first time, but sometimes that doesn’t happen and you’ll need to follow up. Using Boomerang, you can get a reminder if someone doesn’t reply using this setting:

Scheduling emails

I haven’t used this one loads to be honest but if you are doing some advanced link building in terms of timing your outreach, then this could come in handy. I know that some people (mainly journalists and high level bloggers) can sometimes be more likely to respond at certain times, so this feature could help with that.

Basically, you can compose your emails, then set them to go out at a certain time:

Going through outreach replies at a specified time

I haven’t used this one but it occurred to me that it could be useful depending on how you manage your time on client projects.

If you get a reply to an outreach email, but you are buried deep in another client project, then you can tell the email to come back at a time when you are planning to work on that client. I know some of you are thinking “why not just leave it in your inbox until you’re ready?”. Well those who are thinking that may want to watch this video on inbox=0

As I said, I don’t do this but I can still see how it would help some people.

If you use Boomerang, please let me know if there are other uses for it which I’ve not mentioned here (including non-link building uses!).

My dislike of (bad) infographics is pretty well known.  The fact is that even bad ones can get links, so it would be very silly of me to totally ignore them given the amount of time I spend on link building.  To make things easier for other SEOs and myself, I’ve put together this list of sites that focus on promoting infographics.  I’d still ask you not to submit bad infographics to these sites, give them a good reason not to say no to your submission.  Thanks to the guys at Linkbuildr for giving my list a kick start.

If you have any additional ones, or if you own an infographic / data viz site that you’d like added to the list, feel free to leave a comment below.

http://dailyinfographic.com/
http://fuckyeahinfographics.tumblr.com/
http://iheartinfographics.tumblr.com/
http://iinfographic.com/
http://infographic.co.za/
http://infographicsbin.tumblr.com/
http://infographicsgenerator.com
http://infographicsite.com/
http://infographipedia.com/
http://infographr.tumblr.com
http://submitinfographics.com/
http://theinfographics.blogspot.com/
http://videoinfographic.com/submit-infographic/
http://visual.ly/
http://www.bestinfographics.co.uk/
http://www.bestinfographics.info/
http://www.cloudinfographics.com/
http://www.infographicas.com/
http://www.infographicgallery.com/
http://www.infographicpost.com/
http://www.infographicsarchive.com/
http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/
http://www.pureinfographics.com
http://www.omginfographics.com/
http://www.coolinfographics.com/
http://chartporn.org/
http://www.fastcompany.com/tag/infographic

If you have any more to add, just drop a comment below and I’ll add it to the list

As universal search becomes more and more part of the main Google web search results, it is becoming more important for businesses to understand how they can leverage universal search results to gain more traffic and revenue for their website.

A few examples of Google universal search (aka blended results) are -

• Google Shopping Results
• Google Maps
• Google Local Results
• Google News Results
• Google Blog Results

The point of this article is to discuss the possible factors that influence where a website shows for searches on Google Product search – previously know as Froogle.

Google Product Search Ranking Factors

The following factors are in no particular order and I can’t back any of them up with solid data – they are formed purely from my own experience of Google Base optimisation for clients and my own opinion.

Data Freshness or Upload Frequency

Your products will expire after 30 days so this is the bare minimum length of time that you need to upload your data feed.  However I’d try to upload the feed as often as possible – even every day in ultra competitive markets where product prices ( € ) and details will fluctuate.

Google don’t say that uploading your feed more regularly will help your position in search results.  However uploading as often as possible indicates that the data is more up to date and accurate for their users.  I’ve often come across products on Google product search that have a price displayed, then when I click through it is a different price.  This isn’t what Google want.

Therefore it does make sense for Google to look at the freshness of the data and the age of the feed in determining placement.

Image Quality

I’ve always believed that the quality of the images in your data feed is important.  After all one of the main factors in a persons decision to buy is the image of the product.  I think this is even more important now that Google have started to show product images in their universal search results for products as well.

Data Quality

The quality of the data you provide as well is also important.  This gets displayed in the title and description of your listing almost like the META data of organic results.  Accuracy, spelling and relevance of this data is very important as well as there not being any unusual or non-standard characters in the text.  Suffice to say, keyword stuffing is also a big no no!

Feed Age

Not to be confused with data freshness, feed age is what I call the overall age of the feed in terms of how long you’ve been providing data feeds to Google base.  Almost like authority or trust rank in the organic results.  If you’ve been using Google base for a long time and consistently getting clicks, providing good data and good user experience, then chances are Google can measure this and give you a little more preference over brand new advertisers.

Website Reviews

Again I believe this to be very important to your placement in the search results.  A seller who has a history of positive reviews should be placed above a seller with the opposite – common sense right?!

Google pull their reviews from a number of sources, differing on whether you are based in the US or the UK.  To save replicating them here, take a look at this article by Tom Critchlow where he provided a good list of these sites on his post over at SEOmoz.

Keyword Usage

I used to believe that this was a major factor, in particular use of a keyword in the first few words of a product title.  However I’m seeing more results now where the exact keyword I used is no where to be seen in the product title.  So whereas I’d still recommend using a popular keyword in the product title where possible, I wouldn’t obsess over it nor would I compromise an accurate product title for keyword stuffing.

Additional Fields

Google point out several times in their guidelines that using additional fields isn’t going to improve your positioning in search results.  Whilst I’d agree that stuffing loads of additional fields won’t always help, I’d say that carefully selecting relevant fields and including those would help.  In particular fields that include data that might be searched for as an attribute of that product.  So if you were selling garden sheds, you may include measurements such as 7×5 or 8×6 which are searched for.  Or if you selling clothing, you may want to include standard sizes such as small, medium or large.

These additional fields could certainly help you rank better and you are doing exactly what Google wants – helping them better understand the product you are listing.

Site Security

I’ve never seen this one mentioned online but to me this is important.  No matter what you are buying online, you need to feel comfortable that the site you are ordering from is secure and reliable.  Google will not want its users to be scammed, have their credit card details stolen or anything else like this.  I’m not quite sure how Google will determine this, you are not required to provide secure certificates directly to them but its perfectly possible for them to check a websites certificate if they wanted.

Using their very own Google Checkout is another signal of a sites security if they’ve been approved to use it .

Google Checkout

The official stance from Google is that the use of Google Checkout does not effect anything, similar to their stand on it affecting Adwords positioning.  So this one is a little more far fetched really.  However if having the Google Checkout logo present on your shopping results increases your click through rate, this in turn could improve your ranking.

Additional Resources

Google Product Search for Webmasters

A video from Maile Ohye of Google on some basic guidelines on how to use product search.

Google Base Blog – Official Google Base Blog

How to Rank in Google Product Search – Post on SEOmoz by Tom Critchlow

If you haven’t been following any interviews so far, they are designed to show off some of the young SEO talent we have in the UK.  So far we’ve interviewed Paul Rogers, Anna Lewis, Illiya Vjestica, Peter Unitt and Daniel Bianchini.

Next up in my series of interviews with young UK SEOs is another SEOptimise team member – Marcus Taylor.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into SEO and social?

Oddly, I got into SEO and social via the music industry. Prior to joining SEOptimise I was running an independent record label called Starharbour Records, where I was developing music marketing strategies. I’ve always been a bit of a geek (built my first website when I was 10 years old!) so as soon as I heard about social media and SEO I became fascinated and tried to get my artist’s music as much visibility on Youtube, Google, and social networks as possible. I then became a bit too fascinated with online marketing that I decided to move into it full time.

What advice would you give to any young SEOs who are just getting into the industry?

As a young online marketer myself (20 years old), my best advice is to just be insanely proactive. Meet as many people as you possibly can, go to the online marketing meetups, conferences, write useful blog posts for your own blog and other people’s blogs, get involved in speaking – put yourself out there! In my experience, the juiciest SEO and social media knowledge comes from building a strong and varied network of people who are heavily experimenting with what works and what doesn’t work. In an industry where there are so many rumours and hearsay, it pays to go beyond just reading blog posts.

Do you have any tips for working with clients and making sure SEO and social projects are delivered effectively?

My three top tips for running a successful campaign are: keep things simple, set goals, be positive about everything. First of all, it’s important to keep things simple – as an industry I think there’s a tendency to overcomplicate things with tools and techniques as there is so much data available to us. Some of the most successful campaigns I’ve worked on have been almost entirely managed out of a single spreadsheet with just a few tabs such as ‘KPI progress’ ‘to-do list’ – keep it simple.

Secondly, set goals. As William Edwards Deming, the famous statistician once said “You can’t improve what you don’t measure”. When running a social media or SEO campaign, you must know what your ultimate quantified goal behind the campaign is, so that you can always ask yourself “Is what I’ve done or what I’m doing moving me closer or further from my goal?”

Finally, be positive about projects! It’s hard for a project to go well if you dislike the client or tell yourself you can’t achieve targets. Motivating yourself to achieve great results from campaigns is so important and often has surprising outcomes.

In terms of social media, what are the key principles that should be remembered when coming up with a strategy?

I think one of the most fundamental aspects to get right in a social media campaign is the tracking of ROI and knowing what your goal is. Many social media monitoring tools are pretty inaccurate, especially the free ones, so it pays to have good accurate data and to track the value of your campaigns, whether it’s through incentivising customers to point out that they came via social networks and storing that data in a CRM, or tracking them electronically using an analytics package. Without a way of saying “this campaign earnt us £x amount” or represented Y% of progress towards our goal, it’s very tough to convince the client that what you’re doing is having a positive impact for them.

We’ve seen recent changes in how social interactions influence search such as Plus One and Google’s acquisition of PostRank, do you think there are any other social elements that Google are looking at to influence search results?

I think the +1 button is going to be Google’s main push to collect user data that can influence search results, simply because when a user +1s a webpage Google can take into account all of the contextual data about that person (Youtube viewing history, e-mails sent, Google analytics etc.). One of the main challenges I imagine Google will have with this is building a fair and complete data set by getting +1 data on all web pages that exist, therefore it would not surprise me if Google partnered with dominating web services such as WordPress, Disqus, or Drupal to try and make +1 integration a standard feature for new and existing websites.

Finally, where do you see social media and SEO going in five years? Will they still exist as we know them?

In 2016 I think the grey area between social media and SEO will be much greyer than it is today. SEO will still have its place, but I imagine it will focus largely on the on-site technical aspects of making sure the site is relevant and well designed for users. As far as link building and off-site SEO, I think the distinction between SEO and social media will blur as links become replaced (to a large extent) by social voting such as +1s to control SERPs.

Thanks a lot to Marcus for taking the time to take part in this series, you can follow Marcus on Twitter here.

Change of topic for todays post, I wanted to do a quick blog post about my recent trip to New York with Ellie.  All photos in this post were taken by her, she is an amazing photographer as you’ll see!

In a word, New York was amazing.  It certainly lived up to expectations and we managed to fit loads of stuff into the week we were there.

Where we stayed

Rather than opt for a hotel, we decided to stay in an apartment in Brooklyn.  This turned out to be much better than a hotel and much better value for money.  If anyone is looking at staying in New York for more than a few days, I’d certainly recommend taking a look at The Box House Hotel in Brooklyn.  Its about a 10 minute walk from there to the nearby Subway station, from there it is one stop to Grand Central Terminal and three stops to Times Square – so it was dead easy to get into Manhattan.

As you can see from the picture, we had a lot more space than the average NYC hotel room.  Plus this was the view from the apartment window which greeted us when we arrived -

What we did

It felt like we did loads (we did!) but at the end of the week we realised just how much we hadn’t done!  New York has so much to do, we could have probably spent much more than a week there.  There were a fair few highlights.

Helicopter Trip over Manhattan

I booked this as a surprise for Ellie on her birthday and used Liberty Helicopters (thanks to Richard Shove for the recommendation!) and it was a great trip.  The flight lasted around 20 minutes and started with a trip over to Ellis island which took us pretty close to the Statue of Liberty -

Then we flew down the Hudson river which gave us some amazing views -

We also took in some views of Madison Square Garden and the new 9/11 Memorial site.

Central Park

I love how New York have an amazing park right in the middle of a busy, congested city.  When you walk deeper into the park, it doesn’t feel like you are in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world.  However I didn’t exactly fall in love with Central Park instantly if I’m honest, mainly because of much of it being taken over by the New York marathon on the first day we visited!

We went back a few times though and it is a great place, if I lived in New York I could imagine myself spending a lot of my free time in Central Park relaxing.  I think what made it even nicer was the amazingly good weather combined with the autumn colours of the trees.  I’ll let some of the pictures show things better than I can -

We ended up going to Central Park a few times but we barely scratched the surface really, the place is huge.  The ice rink had also been setup which looked great but I wasn’t feeling brave enough to try it

I think this is my favourite photo, it shows the combination of a stunning park, set again the skyscrapers of an amazing city -

Rockefeller Centre

On our second night we wanted to take advantage of the clear weather and went to the top of the Rockefeller Centre just before sunset so we could take in some views and watch the sun set over New York -

Another attraction of the Rockefeller was the plaza and the ice skating rink which had just been setup.  We were a few weeks early for the famous Christmas tree unfortunately but it was still a very nice area -

Times Square

I really loved Times Square.  I know that it is super busy, congested and full of people trying to sell you stuff, but I loved it.  We ended up going there a few evenings and often found ourselves sitting on the red steps with a coffee.  There was something nice about relaxing in the middle of such a busy area.

Times Square also gave us some of the best food and bars we had in New York.  Famous Daves BBQ was amazing -

On the left is a huge beef burger which is topped with shredded BBQ pork, on the right is a 1/3 rack of ribs, brisket and a muffin (yes a muffin!).  I don’t think either of us were able to finish our meals, they were definitely the best ribs I’ve ever tasted.

We also found a great Irish Bar (they are everywhere!) just off Times Square called O’Briens.  What we loved about this bar was that despite being so close to the tourist area of Times Square, it was mainly used by the locals which made for a great atmosphere.

The Brooklyn Bridge

This was one of Ellie’s favourite parts of our trip.  It was another stunning day so it made it even better when walking from Manhattan to Brooklyn -

Personally I was fascinated by the engineering side of the bridge, you can touch the suspension cables as you walk across and appreciate the workmanship that went into the creation of the bridge back in 1883.

There is probably more that I could include but I think thats it for now!

Overall, I loved New York and it had the added bonus of meeting the awesome Distilled New York team for dinner and lunch.  Would love to hear your comments and experiences / questions of New York in the comments

Following on from my previous interviews with young SEOs, today we have Daniel Bianchini.

Daniel is an experienced Search Marketer currently working on a number of SEO projects for clients including Trafalgar, SnowdropKCS and M&G. As well as working for SEOptimise, Daniel is co-founder of an Oxford based online marketing group called OxonDigital.

Tell us about your background, how did you get into SEO?

I first got into SEO back in college when I was building websites that nobody ever visited. I wanted to change that and since I had limited funds SEO was the answer. I began reading every blog that I could find on SEO and implemented various techniques to try and see any improvement. After a while of getting nowhere things started to pick up which only ignited
my passion for SEO.

I started working as an SEO in a professional capacity when I was employed at PC World (DSGi), working alongside the search manager. There I continued to learn and implement what I had learnt through my own research to help them achieve a record return on investment through the search channel.

After a successful time at DSGi I was asked by a colleague to help set up a small search agency called iThinkMedia. As I was young and had no major commitments at the time, I thought that it was a great opportunity to learn another side of SEO whilst also helping to improve my business skills. I stayed at iThinkMedia for 2 and half successful years expanding the business to the size of 7 people and clients that included National Express, Blacks Leisure Group and Mothercare PLC. At that time I decided it was time to move back to my home town of Oxford, and successfully applied for a role at SEOptimise.

Since arriving at SEOptimise, I have continued my learning and have managed to get my first speaking slot at A4U London this October. In the past few months I have founded a local networking and social event called OxonDigital, bringing together digital professionals across Oxfordshire.

You recently spoke at Oxon Digital on tips for web developers and designers, what tips do you have for improving relationships with them and getting SEO work done?  

One of the first things I do when starting any SEO project is to go and introduce myself to the development team. I do this because during most SEO projects you will be working closely with the development team, and it is always good to have a strong relationship with them when that time comes.

Constant communication:

Ensure that you have a good relationship with the developers. When you start any SEO I would recommend going and introducing yourself to them and begin building relationships.  The closer that you get to the developers the easier it will be when you want to make some changes to their platform/website.

Show them results:

If you have asked the development team to make some changes and it has attributed to an improvement in some of the SEO metrics that you are following, then make sure that you let the developer know about it. Once they have seen that the changes they have made have an impact on the business, they will be more receptive to help out in the future.

Give them some opportunity:

Telling the developer what to do might not go down very well with them, but making suggestions and asking them for any possible solutions will make them feel more part of the project.

If you could go back to the start of your SEO career and give yourself one tip, whatwould it be?

This is a difficult question as I can think of so many different things. If I was to pick one it would be to be active in all SEO communities. What I mean by getting involved in the SEO community is going to conferences, getting involved on Twitter and going to SEO meet ups regularly even if it means travelling a little bit.

A perfect example for me was when I went to SMX Advanced earlier this year. I thought the conference itself wasn’t the best, but it was all made worthwhile by a conversation that I had with several SEOs in the pub afterwards.

For me, being involved in the SEO community is the biggest tip I would give myself if I was starting out again.

What ranking signals do you think will become more important to an SEO over the next 12 months?

Maybe not directly seen as a ranking factor at the moment, but I think Social Media will become something that will become more important. There have been lots of tests to see if Social Media has any affect on ranking factors, with the majority returning negative results. I just feel that with the way things are going, Social Media will start to impact the rankings whether that is social shares or shares from an authority in the industry.

If you were hiring a young SEO, what qualities would you look for if they have no hands on SEO experience?

Apart from the standard requirements, including experience using Word, Powerpoint and Excel, a basic knowledge of what SEO is, and having good numerical & written skills, I think you need to have the following qualities:

• Common sense
• An interest in online marketing
• Being a bright individual

A lot of SEO techniques that are used on a day-to-day basis can be taught or picked up via research and testing, but the individual needs to have common sense to be able to use what they have been taught and put it into practice in their jobs.

On a day to day basis, where would you say you spend most of your time? Link building, outreach, technical etc? 

My days are generally mixed due to my clients being at various stages of the SEO project.

Finally, where do you see the SEO industry in 3-5 years time? Will it still exist as we currently know it?

I think the core of what we do will remain the same for the foreseeable future. Although with Google constantly changing, tweaking and updating their algorithm I think we need to keep being innovative and pushing the boundaries on what we do. As I mentioned earlier I think Social Media will become a bigger ranking factor that we need to continue to monitor closely.

I love Buzzstream, if I could choose one piece of software to help me with link building, it would be Buzzstream.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, take a look at my Buzzstream review to get up to speed.  I’ve also blogged previous about using Buzzstream as a searchable database of links.

In this post, I want to outline a very simple process for quickly gathering, filtering and contacting link prospects.

Step 1 – Gathering Lists of Link Prospects

There are lots of ways of gathering link prospects, many people will just look for sites using advanced search operators on Google.  This can work fine, but isn’t really that efficient because there can be a lot of low quality results when you get past the first few pages of results.  A better method that I’ve made lots of use of lately is to use lists that have been created by others.  The advantage here is that if you find the right lists, the link prospects will have already been curated which means you have more chance of finding high quality sites to contact.

Finding these lists is so simple, I often laugh at some of the fancy tools and search queries that crop up when I get great results using something like this:

Seriously, its that simple.  Just that one search query gave me a few links that gave me hundreds of link prospects.

You don’t just have to rely upon Google to give you these lists either.  Take this search on Dmoz for example:

Or you could take a look at this page on Best of the Web blogs:

I’m sure you get the idea.  But meh, here is one more for you

These lists are absolutely everywhere, you just need to have a good look for them.  Once you have these lists, you need to add them into Buzzstream using the Buzzmarker.  At this point, its worth adding in any notes that hit you straight away or any contact details you spot.  Don’t worry if you don’t find anything at this point, the next step gets into more detail about this.

2. Cleaning the List and Finding an Angle

At this point, you will have lots and lots of link prospects saved into Buzzstream.  Now we need to start going through them and qualifying them for outreach.

A quick note at this point.  Some may say that you should qualify prospects before adding them to Buzzstream so that you only end up with high quality sites within Buzzstream.  I can see what they mean, but there is a good reason for adding everything to Buzzstream and cleaning them afterwards.  That reason being that you can reject sites and add a note as to why.  Then if you come across this site again in the future, Buzzstream will tell you that it is already saved and you’ll be able to see that its been rejected.  This will save you lots of time and allow you to build a list of sites you definitely do not want to contact.

Right, so the first way to sort your list of contacts is to sort by a metric such as PageRank or MozRank highest to lowest:

After some time, Buzzstream will start to suggest contact info that it has found from your list of link prospects:

As I go through each link prospect, I’ll usually click on these and if the contact details look accurate, I’ll add them straight away.  Next I’ll start visiting each site and seeing whether its one that I feel will be interested in the piece of content I’m promoting.  Its worth noting that the first thing I tend to do is look for contact details if Buzzstream hasn’t already found them.  Reason being that I do not want to spend ages looking through a site and deciding its a good one to target for a link, only to find that I can’t contact them.

Assuming I like the look of the site and feel it could be a good one to contact, I’ll usually do the following:

• Find a previous blog post of piece of content similar to the one I’m pitching them (assuming mine is better!) and add a note to Buzzstream
• Add a note to Buzzstream with the angle I think I can take, I’ll sometimes even write the opening lines of the email I’m planning on sending, so when the time comes, I can just copy and paste and I will have made my templated email unique to the link prospect

I know what you are thinking – this sounds like a lot of work and time.  Well, it kinda is.  High quality link building outreach is like that.  But I bet that after you get into the swing of it, it will not take anywhere near as long as you are thinking.  For me, I can probably tell if a site is good quality or not within ten seconds of it loading.  Assuming it is good quality, it will probably take me another minute or so to figure out if there is a good angle I can use to pitch my content.  At this point I’ll change the relationship stage to Qualified / Rated.