Friday Update & Recommended Reading #2

TFI Friday! Have you had a good week?

The end of the traditional working week means another quick round up on what’s been happening here on Top 5 SEO over the past 7 days, plus some recommended weekend reading.

Highlights This Week

Traffic has been pretty consistent and since the spike a couple of weeks back has remained solid.

A quick look at analytics comparing October to September tells me that traffic for the month is up by 330% with pageviews up by 390%, so that’s nice to see!

Social Media continues to be the biggest source of visits (just under 50%), followed by organic traffic and then referrals (which pleasingly is increasing as a percentage as I pick up more editorial links).

I’m also continuing to pick up new email subscribers on a daily basis (hello to all my new subscribers!) and a steady drip of new twitter followers.

Posts This Week

I have published 4 new posts since the last update (a total of 4,256 words), the most popular of which so far has been my article on growing search traffic through long tail keywords.

I had a bit of photoshop fun yesterday afternoon after writing up my post on launching a new web brand. Had been doing a standard flow chart illustration and then decided it would be much more fun to turn all that boring information into a game of snakes and ladders…

new_site_snakes_ladders

My post on growing an affiliate site from the 9th of October continues to be the most visited and shared page on the site.

So what have I been reading this week?

Long Tail Traffic

Brett Dixon wrote a great post for socialmediatoday about how you should forget targeting ‘main keywords’ for your site as the real traffic is in the long tail.

I happen to agree with him.

Future Of Search

Eric Enge talks google hummingbird, conversational queries and how google wants to read your mind in this excellent article for copyblogger.

Online Privacy

With all the recent revelations regarding prism et al privacy is a big concern online at the moment. In this article for search engine watch Gary Przyklenk looks at 9 ways to prepare for a future without cookie tracking.

Wikipedia

And finally, I really enjoyed this article titled is wikipedia for sale, which looked at the growing demand for companies offering a wikipedia reputation management service.

Be sure to check out the great articles above and share them on your social media and if you have an article you think should be included in next week’s Friday update then drop me an email or tweet.

That’s it for this weeks roundup, I’m off to the pub!

About the Author

I'm a web developer, programmer, blogger and SEO expert from Glasgow, Scotland, with over 15 years experience in the industry. When I'm not writing about marketing and SEO you'll find me strumming the guitar in my band or listening to Revolver on repeat. Follow me on twitter, connect with me on google+ and add us on facebook to keep up with all the latest trends in SEO and online marketing.

John Gibb - October 25, 2013

Friday is my favorite day for learning new stuff

You may wonder why would a SEO master want to dabble with new information. I’d say, anything that has the power to enhance my business and grow my niche sites next level, is worth paying close attention to.

Do you guys agree?

    David McSweeney - October 28, 2013

    Of course John… every day is a school day!

Brandon - October 26, 2013

Solid articles — I found the wikipedia post to be the most interesting one… I think it’s just a product of the times, if you don’t have a good reputation you need to pay for it.

Then again… people have been manipulating Wikipedia for a long time, you can still purchase *permanent* (or at least that’s what they say) links from Wikipedia on blackhat seo forums.

Thanks for the roundup,
Brandon

    David McSweeney - October 28, 2013

    yeah, I thought the wikipedia post was very interesting. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers as they say!

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