Scott over at SeoMoz peers into his crystal balls, and penetrates the future and sees a hard time ahead for SEO engineers. The climax is the video below (have a cigarette and enjoy it!).

Scott believes Accessibility and Content issues will remain contant – and continue your best practises for crawling, sitemaps , great content and unique content.

He foresees big changes in “social graph metrics” – for example, web 2.0 properties such as twitter, facebook, linkedin will have a bigger impact within the algorithm. In the same vein Usage Metric (query volumes, visitor tracking) will have greater impact.

Verticalization of Search – Google will not be the default search engine for some vertical markets. Consider where you migh search for airfares, city apartments, etc – probably not Google.

SEO engineers will be more data driven – analysis of data will drive SEO development of websites.

Give us your opinions please!

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – The Future of SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

What does the 137 Small Business Twitter Tips manual include: well a whole range of twitter tips and tricks for beginners and more advanced users.

• Getting Started: How would you suggest other small businesses get started on Twitter?
• Smart Marketing: What’s the right way (or wrong way) to promote your business on Twitter?
• Observing Etiquette: What is your #1 Twitter etiquette tip for small business owners?
• Spreading Your Message: What is your best tip for getting re-tweeted?
• Time Management: How do you manage your time on Twitter?
• Advanced Strategies: What is your best kept secret (something not widely known) for using Twitter in business?

The manual can be downloaded here >>  137 Small Business Twitter Tips Manual

Canonical Tag Guide

It has been annouced that the 3 big search engines have come up with a new canonical tag to help with canonical issues.

Here are the announcements:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
http://ysearchblog.com/2009/02/12/fighting-duplication-adding-more-arrows-to-your-quiver/
http://blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/archive/2009/02/12/partnering-to-help-solve-duplicate-content-issues.aspx

Example of use:

So we want to create a page named duplicate-copy.html ….  So in the tag part of the HTML header area on duplicate-copy.html (the same section you’d find the Title attribute and Meta Description tag). In fact, this tag isn’t new, but like nofollow, simply uses a new rel parameter. For example:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.seoadviser.info/something" />

This would tell the SearchEngines: Yahoo, Live & Google that this page, duplicate-copy.html , should be treated as though it were a copy of the URL www.seoadviser.info/something and that all of the link & content algorithm data the engines apply should technically flow back to that URL.

Matt Cutts – guru and prolific blogger – from Google explains how to use the new Canonical Tag

Submitting to Directories

One of the recognised ways of getting one-way links to your website is submitting to Directories. However, there is a right way and wrong way to submit successfully. There are literally 1000s of directory websites. Do you submit to all of them? No – do not waste your time. OK, how do I choose?

What information do I submit?
What information should I supply?
Are some directories better than others?

Well these questions are answered (plus many more) in the A to Z Directory of Submissions:

Content:

INTRODUCTION TO SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
INTRODUCTION TO DIRECTORIES AND DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS
THE IMPORTANCE AND BENEFITS OF DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS
COMMON MYTHS ABOUT DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS
HOW TO MAKE DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS YOURSELF
Compile a List of Directories
Check for SEO-Friendly Factors
Choose the Right Category
Submit Website Details
Read and Follow Directory Guidelines
Choose Your Directory Listing Option
Fill up the Submit Form
Enter the Code and Submit the Form
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER A SITE HAS BEEN SUBMITTED?
LINK PLACEMENT
How To Find Your Directory Links
OUTSOURCING DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS
RECOMMENDED DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS
Yahoo! Directory
Best of the Web Directory
DMOZ
TYPES OF DIRECTORIES
General Directories
Niche Directories
Regional Directories
Blog Directories
Bid or Bidding Directories
Article Directories
Podcast Directories
Brick and Mortar Directories

You can DOWNLOAD this FREE directory here: A to Z Directory of Submissions

Related Free Download: Free SEO Guide
Recommended Software: SubmitEaze reviewed

SeoAdviser.info are proud to offer a FREE manual to Successful SEO.

Manual includes:

• Optimisation Principles & Traffic Advice
• On Page SEO factors
• Off Page SEO factors
• How to get a Top Search Engine Ranking today
• How to do Keyword Research
• Keyword Competition.
• Top 10 Free SEO Tools
• Social Bookmarking
• Linking Tips
• Why is it easier to rank with long tail keywords?

There is no catch – this is a FREE DOWNLOAD << click here; no email registration!

Enjoy!

Free Guide to Submitting to Directories

If you have enjoyed our SEO Guide, we also highly recommend our Free Guide to Submitting to Directories.

One of the earliest steps, when deciding to launch an online business (or an online presence for existing business), is to find a Domain name.

For existing businesses, the domain name process may be straight forward! So if you are Widgets Unlimited, then the choice should be WidgetsUnlimited.com! Of course, the domain name may not be available: assuming you do not want to resort to the law, you will need to choose a different domain name! So, for example, the AA (Automobile Association) chose theAA.com.

New companies have to make a stark choice – do you go for the “keyword” approach or “catchy name” such as Google, Amazon, etc.? Well catchy name is fine if you have a big marketing budget to establish the brand name.  In most cases, budget will be the overriding factor. So in many cases opt for the keyword rich approach.

One of our clients wanted to launch a Chateau Real Estate site – so after some initial research, SeoAdviser found that ChateauxProperty.com was available. One HUGE tip, keyword-rich names do help to get top rankings in Google. Within 10 days of launch ChateauxProperty.com was on page #1 of Google for “chateaux property”. See our Case Studies.

Our Top 10 Domain Name Tips

1. Choose a keyword rich domain name.

2. Buy an existing / expiring / expired domain name. The older, the better! Google ranks old domains higher. Use Checkpageranking.com to check the domain – including a false page rank.

3. Choose a TLD (top level domain name) – namely: .com or .net or .org or .info The country specific TLD is also good – so for United Kingdom: .co.uk

4. Check to see if all the TLDs are available for purchase. The extra cost will prevent issues further down the road.

5. Purchase the main Domain name for 10 years – Google likes to see commitment!

6. Short and memorable is better for return visitors: easier to remember. If you can include something that promotes an action. So for example, if you are promoting digital cameras – which of the following would you click in a search result (if you were looking to buy a camera): DigitalCameraReview.com or PetesBigShop.com? Yeah, the “review” domain name would pull you in.

7. Choose a domain name ideally with no hyphens – so chateauxproperty.com is better than chateaux-property.com. If there is no suitable alternative, choose a domain name with NO more than one hyphen. It will look spammy and there is evidence that Google is penalising NEW sites with lots of hyphens.

8. Do not choose an existing Brand / Trademarked name – you will not win!

9. You can only use letters, numbers and hyphens. No spaces! We think numbers are spammy – so 1key.com or key1.com are not good choices.

10. Use one registrar for purchasing / parking your domain names. It is much easier when you have to update contact information, re-new domains, etc. Use a trusted provider such as godaddy.com or 123-reg.com. Keep your contact information up to date on the Registrar site especially the contact email address. Who wants to lose a valuable domain because you never received the renewal information?

Local Markets

If you are marketing a product or service to a specific country and you want to attain top search engine rankings, then choose a domain TLD for that country – so if the UK is your market use .co.uk domain names or if Germany is your target market, then use .de domains. We would also recommend hosting your server in the target country as well.

If you need further help, please contact SeoAdvisor

Useful Links:

• New York lawyer ad rules — “retention” and more – Hanno Kaiser at Antitrust Review reported on Jan. 4th that the new advertising rules for New York lawyers have been finalized by the State’s judicial governing body, and will be effective on Feb. 1, 2007. …
• California State Library changing Internet Service Provider – All of CSL’s domain names, such as www.library.ca.gov, will remain unchanged. See updated connection specifications if your library catalog connects to ours via Z39.50 using an IP address.
• Premium Domain Names Including Love.Me and MovieRentals.com To Be … – Nearly 168 million registered domain names are effectively out of circulation, leaving few descriptive or memorable names available for businesses to use to launch a new product or service, or to drive traffic to an existing product or …