Recently SEOmoz /a> about running a test that proved their thesis that nofollow PageRank sculpting still works (while actually only proving /a> & /a>). But the issue of “proving” things with SEO publicly is typically a misguided one.

It is so hard to control variables in tests, and even if you could set up a control set many test types would be isolated to fictional words. But the issue with that is that the relevancy algorithms can change based on your location, the location where a particular keyword is commonly searched from, how many other competing results there are for that query (and what those other sites are changing while you test), and whatever algorithm shifts happen in Google while your test is going on (like promotion of certain vertical databases, baking in new pieces to the relevancy algorithms, improvements in related vocabularies, introduction of new penalties and filters), etc etc etc

But lets ignore all the above and pretend there is a way you can isolate variables or you notice something new and different and important. What happens when you mention it? Typically people tell you that you are full of crap, /a>.

Even if the test they did was legitimately scientifically valid they still likely would have got /a>, just like I did in the above image (when I was right).

And the more data you share to “prove” your case all you are doing is lessening your competitive advantage over other market competitors. Lets say I wrote a blog post about “5 surprisingly strong links you can use to spam Google with great results” … well after I publish that the same day Google engineers will torch those link sources. The net effect of such efforts would be:

• wasting my time and money and competitive advantage

• harming a business model, business, and/or website that was helping me
• making Google look stupid (and having them dislike me)
• wasting your time (and a link source you could have used)

It is one of those rare lose/lose instance where literally nobody gains (unless it creates /a>).

In what other “science” could reporting your results instantly alter/destroy them?

One conference I went to a while ago I only went for 1 day instead of 2. And then I saw on Twitter someone complained about me not showing up. Then I looked and saw that one of their sites competed with one of our sites. Was I really going to benefit by speaking on a panel where I give a direct competitor (with VC backing, decades of cumulative experience, more algorithmic leeway, etc.) any SEO tips? As an SEO that also does publishing you are only sacrificing your future revenues and your future net worth if/when you review competing sites and tell them how to compete better against you.

In the SEO industry it is hard to land 5 figure clients. But it is easy to build websites that make that recurring. You just have to put the time and effort in. But the only reason to share new and useful tips publicly is self-promotion. But even that is often a misguided effort because earning money servicing the SEO market is a bit like squeezing water out of a rock. People have free in their mindset and are irrationally stuck on free rather than the benefits of spending to save time and grow and earn more. Sorta self-defeating and certainly misguided if you take it too seriously, which is why I have been looking to build out other sites in other fields too.

I used to dislike misinformation in the SEO industry, but I have since come to realize that the more misinformed the public is the more opportunity there is for me. If it wasn’t abstract and full of misinformation then someone overseas would be doing it for $5 a day and I would lose most of my income. So I say lets see some more bogus scientific studies. Let there be published book authors telling you that the best backlinks to get are the ones which are shown in the Google link: search.

If the end value is $10′s of Billions but the market sets a price of free, then misinformation is a big piece of the price…that is basic economics.

The money doesn’t care how it got into your bank account (as long as it was legal). And you don’t have to spend a lot of time backsolving everyone else’s success … a lot of that time would be better spent building your own success. Truthfully most people who are successful can’t even tell you why they themselves are successful. Worse yet, the “scientific” case study earns nothing while the non-scientific site with tons of traffic (built through small incremental daily improvements by an amateur) can earn a lot of money.

Years ago I gave away so many valuable tips that simply just created competition for myself. (And eventually I woke up to that when some of the people who would contact me begging me for discount SEO services while claiming they were broke also sent buy requests into other sites I ran that they didn’t know I owned). There are lots of other issues like non-disclosure agreements that mean nothing when someone has access to your stats + owns competing sites, fake investors who try to scam you for your information, etc etc etc.

I still love this site as though it is a child…it was the first site that really helped build me into a position where I had more options and opportunity than time. And due to our current pricing point filtering out most of the SEO market the forums are still a great place for me to learn more

But, truth be told, in the SEO industry (as a service provider) almost everyone who comes to you likes to pretend that they are poor. They want to discount the price to nothing to help discount risk, but rarely (if ever) do they want to remove all risk and give you a piece of the upside for the millions of Dollars worth of extra profits you create for them.

But the cool thing with search is you can start off small and grow to compete. Sure it is always getting more competitive, but publishing tools are improving rapidly. If a person could read the archives of this blog for years and not be able to make money from search it simply means they lacked effort. Search offers so much opportunity that even without talent eventually anyone can stumble into something that works for them.

And that is the thing about SEO. Search offers so much opportunity that even without talent eventually anyone can stumble into something that works for them.

But they have to have the right mindset to succeed.

Dear sirs explain me all link buildings method are crucial to make me riches. Is very important Aaron Walls personally answers me this free and promptys … well that is not the right mindset, is it?

Investing time and money and effort and blood and tears…that is the right mindset. /a>. Give it your all.

Lots of the most interesting bits that you learn are from accidents that happen with experience. Accidentally blocking a part of your site in robots.txt, doing something weird with a redirect, having your host go down and getting your site crawled in a weird state, etc etc etc. Screwing up is where you learn a lot because that is where a lot of the surprises are. And it is far easier to learn when you are working on a number of sites at various stages of development…it gives you lenses through which to view search.

What works for one site might not work for the next. What works for one person might not work for the next. But there are many models that work and paths to success. Some people succeed because they are simply the best, or they love what they do, or they show up every day for years and years and years. Others succeed due to their irrational bias and ignorance. And some people were just early to the market and sorta fell into success.

One company spreads hyped up misinformation to an audience of ignorant drones who spread the misinformation, the next buys old domains that are heavily linked to and then pours garbage content into them using an assembly line sort of production model, the next has a person who does black public relations and tries to take down other industries (while learning their business models and working to clone them).

And yet other people are popular just because they are popular. Or because they were born rich and launched a sex tape on the web (complete with bogus fake legal stuff just to suck in more press coverage and “build the brand”).

Is SEO scientific? Yes, in the same way that sociology, psychology, and economics are scientific. But economics is referred to as the dismal science.

Anything that involves understanding human behavior and trying to influence it is not just science. It is also an art.

Here is to hoping you have a healthy, happy, profitable, and ARTISTIC 2010

Read more:
/a>

To kick off the 2010, Google is currently exporting the /a> values to the Google Toolbar. Yes, there are /a> of a Google Toolbar /a> update taking place right now.

This may become a New Years tradition for Google. Last year, Google pushed out a PageRank update for /a>. I wonder why they make the push right before New Years? Maybe because it is slower for Googlers and less going on? I am not sure.

In any event, I hope that most of you can add this to your new years celebration. If not, I wouldn’t fret, see our explanation of /a>.

Credits to: /a>

img src=”http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png” width=”171″ height=”16″ alt=”Share/Bookmark” />

To kick off the 2010, Google is currently exporting the /a> values to the Google Toolbar. Yes, there are /a> of a Google Toolbar /a> update taking place right now.

This may become a New Years tradition for Google. Last year, Google pushed out a PageRank update for /a>. I wonder why they make the push right before New Years? Maybe because it is slower for Googlers and less going on? I am not sure.

In any event, I hope that most of you can add this to your new years celebration. If not, I wouldn’t fret, see our explanation of /a>.

Credits to: /a>

img src=”http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png” width=”171″ height=”16″ alt=”Share/Bookmark”/>
Continue reading here:
/a>

While analysts and practitioners have been prognosticating the imminent arrival of local search for the last several years, 2009 was finally the year that proved us right. A number of /a>, such as the widespread adoption of the iPhone, the release of Android, and a burgeoning number of location-based apps like Foursquare have certainly helped fuel local search’s rise. But local has gained mind share among SEO’s, marketers, business owners, and perhaps most importantly, searchers, in its own right as well.

Let’s take a look at some of the most significant developments that have contributed to the evolution of local search in the last year:

1) Local goes universal — big time.

Per Andrew Shotland’s /a>, Google made several moves to increase its already dominant position in the local search space — none bigger than its /a> on March 31. While its earlier release of the “/a>” and later refinement to the /a> were each noteworthy in their own right, the appearance of Local Business Listings across such a wide variety of phrases opened the eyes of Google users, observers, and competitors to the local frontier, and really set the tone for the year.

Yahoo followed suit in December with its own /a>, while Bing included an “8-pack” from day one of its June launch.

2) Tough times for the Yellow Pages industry.

Even before the introduction of the generic 10-pack, the ever-prescient Chris Silver Smith had /a> about how to adapt to the changing local search landscape — advice that still holds 11 months later.

But even for those companies whose properties are well-optimized for organic search (per studies by /a> and /a>), the 10-pack has /a> considerably, and even /a> for the industry as we know it.

Google’s /a> of Place Pages during their initial /a> had the /a> before Google rectified the glitch.

The annual /a> may not portend such a depressed view for the Yellow Pages as a whole, but certainly forecasts a continued decline for the print side.

/a>

img src=”http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png” width=”171″ height=”16″ alt=”Share/Bookmark” />

While analysts and practitioners have been prognosticating the imminent arrival of local search for the last several years, 2009 was finally the year that proved us right. A number of /a>, such as the widespread adoption of the iPhone, the release of Android, and a burgeoning number of location-based apps like Foursquare have certainly helped fuel local search’s rise. But local has gained mind share among SEO’s, marketers, business owners, and perhaps most importantly, searchers, in its own right as well.

Let’s take a look at some of the most significant developments that have contributed to the evolution of local search in the last year:

1) Local goes universal — big time.

Per Andrew Shotland’s /a>, Google made several moves to increase its already dominant position in the local search space — none bigger than its /a> on March 31. While its earlier release of the “/a>” and later refinement to the /a> were each noteworthy in their own right, the appearance of Local Business Listings across such a wide variety of phrases opened the eyes of Google users, observers, and competitors to the local frontier, and really set the tone for the year.

Yahoo followed suit in December with its own /a>, while Bing included an “8-pack” from day one of its June launch.

2) Tough times for the Yellow Pages industry.

Even before the introduction of the generic 10-pack, the ever-prescient Chris Silver Smith had /a> about how to adapt to the changing local search landscape — advice that still holds 11 months later.

But even for those companies whose properties are well-optimized for organic search (per studies by /a> and /a>), the 10-pack has /a> considerably, and even /a> for the industry as we know it.

Google’s /a> of Place Pages during their initial /a> had the /a> before Google rectified the glitch.

The annual /a> may not portend such a depressed view for the Yellow Pages as a whole, but certainly forecasts a continued decline for the print side.

/a>

img src=”http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png” width=”171″ height=”16″ alt=”Share/Bookmark”/>
More here:
/a>

img class=”alignleft size-full wp-image-8155″ title=”times square” src=”http://www.toprankblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/times-square.jpg” alt=”" hspace=”7″ width=”350″ height=”262″ />You don’t have to look far to find social media roundup posts this time of year. But what about the most effective one-two marketing punch for building community AND delivering conversions and ROI?  Social Media and Search Engine Optimization – or “Social SEO” as we like to call it.

Out of the 300 or so posts published in 2009, I’ve picked the best of the year based on a mix of my own opinion and metrics such as comments, inbound links, pageviews and social engagement off the blog through social news, bookmarking, Twitter and similar services using PostRank.

Here are TopRank’s Top 10 Social SEO Posts of 2009. Enjoy!

#1. strong>25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips – After interviewing some of the top social media and marketing experts in the industry (Charlene Li, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Scott Monty and many others) I decided to take the best questions and answers from each interview and aggregate them into one post. The result is a 360 degree view of how to plan, approach and measure social media.
(40 Comments, 1,617 Tweets, 896 Links, 38,528 Pageviews, PostRank 8.3)

#2. strong>Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing – Knowing that social media is increasingly intertwined with search engine optimization, this post compares the dramatic increase in interest in the social side of marketing and offers a mix of best practices and worst practices for readers in need of some social media demystification.
(54 Comments, 379 Tweets,  2,624 Links,  20,810Pageviews, PostRank 5.0)

#3. span>16 Rules For Social Media Optimization Revisited – Three years ago, Rohit Bhargava coined the phrase, “social media optimization” and wrote a post with 5 rules for SMO. I joined 3 other bloggers to expand that list to 16. Fast forward to 2009 and Adam Singer from TopRank revisted those original 16 rules to see which were valid and which were outdated. You may be surprised at the result.
(16 Comments, 486 Tweets,  249 Links,  8,059 Pageviews, PostRank 8.8)

#4. span>Social Media Marketing Tops Digital Marketing Tactics for 2009 – One of the useful applications of growing a blog community is the opportunity to tap into their opinions and provide insight into industry trends. This poll revealed that 6 of the top digital marketing tactics readers would emphasize were social media. SEO ranked number 3.
(32 Comments,  227 Tweets,  310 Links,  10,867 Pageviews, PostRank 5.0 )

#5. strong>Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success (Published on Mashable) – The intersection of search engine optimization and social media is often one sided. Social media practitioners see the relationship and community building benefits while many SEOs focus on promotion and link building benefits. This guest post on Mashable offers specific tips and examples of how to incorporate the best of both worlds: Social SEO.
(56 Comments, 784 Tweets,  1,094 Links, ? Pageviews, PostRank 6.2)

#6. span>50 Ways to FAIL On Twitter – This is pure and simple, linkbait. We fall more on the optimistic side of our editorial and content strategy, but I crowdsourced what NOT to do on Twitter via @leeodden and received some very strong opinions. Read this post as an optimist and reverse the tips and you have 50 things your SHOULD do to be more successful using Twitter.
(53 Comments, 698 Tweets, 381 Links,  9,233 Pageviews, PostRank 10.0)

#7. span>10 Proven Applications For Social Media – With millions of self professed “social media experts” regurgitating a handful of original ideas, a vacuum exists for practical examples of what social media can mean to advance business goals. TopRank’s Adam Singer delivers in this post that includes end benefits ranging from PR to SEO to, well, I’ll let you read the post to find out.
(22 Comments, 839 Tweets, 214 Links, 11,664 Pageviews, PostRank 8.2)

#8. span>5 Near Free Social Media Monitoring Tools – Effective social media and social SEO efforts begin and end (actually there is no “end” in social but you get the idea) with social media monitoring. Such tools can be difficult for marketing dollars strapped organizations to justify, so TopRank’ Michelle Bowles delivered with this review of 5 free and low cost tools. The stats on this post are amazing considering it ranks top ten for the year and was just published 2 weeks ago!
(37 Comments, 633 Tweets,  431 Links, 4,246 Pageviews, PostRank 9.1)

#9. span>6 Social Search Engines to Start 2009 - What better way to start 2009 than to compare the top social search engines? At the time, there was no “real time search” or deals between Google and Bing with Twitter or Facebook. Several of the social media search engines reviewed in this post have expanded a great deal and some have withered away into notgoingtohappen land.
(38 Comments, 27 Tweets, 677 Links, 14,563 Pageviews, PostRank 8.9)

#10. span>Social Media Marketing Basics: Facebook & Blog Promotion – “Build it and they will come” doesn’t work with SEO and it certainly isn’t effective with marketing on the social web. Research, planning strategy and building a social presence is important. But without content distribution channels and promotion, it can take a very long time to build a community or reach an effective level of momentum. This post gives specific advice for two of the most popular social applications in use.
(33 Comments, 199 Tweets, 137 Links, 4,680 Pageviews, PostRank 8.5)

What were your favorite Social SEO blog posts in 2009? What social web and search engine optimization topics would you like to see more of in 2010?