SEO 101

Ross and John give their take and breakdown the ongoing JCPenney Linkuilding saga. They discuss their own perspective on buying links based on how JCPenney handled it.

Ross, John and David discuss how this impacts the Article distribution tactic of both linkbuilding and content publication, plus how this ties to the new REL tags Google introduced last month related to content attribution.

Learn what to do when you run out of link building ideas and how everyday experiences can lead to content creation ideas. A listener also asks is writing articles and submitting them to article sites a viable way to get links and therefore rankings?

Google Plans Algorithm Changes for Fixing Spam as Matt Cutts, head of the search quality team, wrote in his blog that he agreed about the increase in spam and detailed what the company is doing to keep it under the hood. Ross and John also look into Googles answer to Groupon, Google Offers.

Matt Cutts Goes to Washington, Testifies Google Has Integrity, Europeans Go Fishing for Bad Google Behaviour, plus Ross and John answer listener questions on sources for keyword analysis, WordPress plugins and more.

Search Roundtable for Affiliate Marketers as Ross and John answer questions from WordPress blogs to linkwheels in Part 2 of their breakout session from AffCon Miami 2010.

Search Roundtable for Affiliate Marketers as Ross and John answer questions from WordPress blogs to linkwheels in Part 1 of their breakout session from AffCon Miami 2010.

Sources for Keyword Analysis and local listings are some of the topics brought up by listeners this week. Ross and John discuss how they approach this plus they answer a listener question who is trying to break into Googles local listings.

Effective ways of Communicating the Benefits of SEO to potential clients, like local/small business owners that do not know anything about computers who are completely overwhelmed by the internet.

How do you do competitor analysis? A listener asks if it has to do with typing in your major keywords from keyword analysis and seeing who ranks well for them, then clicking on their site and literally reading content on the page and checking links to and from the page? David Ogletree from SEOFox.com also chimes in with his perspective.

New Google Local Search Results and How to Adapt. Listeners ask how to optimize for these new results, and how Title Attributes, Menu Labels, and Alt Image descriptions play into SEO.

Domain Geotargeting and Keyword Research are up for discussion this week. Ross and John talk about how to balance content across several top-level domains, Keyword Research, Google Instant, brand search and a new spam report extension for Google Chrome.

Increasing the level of indexation, plus Ross and John discuss what are factors that could lead to non-indexing of a single page, or group of pages if they are in the sitemap.

What are the top 5 things to focus on when starting an SEO Program on your own? Ross and John break down the question by recommending knowing your objectives/goals and setting up the factors for tracking success, competitor research and Keyword research, site optimization based on results of research, content strategy and Link building through building social networks.

Ross and John discuss a recent blog post that said Google misplaced reviews, ratings, business listings on Google Maps that have since been fixed. They also discuss how Rich Snippets are now being supported in Google Local SERPs.