Out of the box, Tumblr is a great way to quickly get a blog up and running. It’s slick user interface means you can get content live in a snazzy format within seconds, without having to invest in web development wizardry. I love it for that.

But it’s a serious mistake to consider is part of an SEO strategy.
I’ve started classroom fights with fellow nerds and been given after-school detention for this opinion. As always, there is a lot of bad advice in the search universe on how to hack-and-slash the Tumblr platform to improve it’s borked SEO abilities.

Granted, it does have a few SEO tricks, but it’s not enough.
Will your posts get indexed? Yes, will they rank for pointless terms that nobody searches for? Probably.

Tumblr = Simplicity (Not SEO Friendly)

You see, Tumblr is designed to be a simple blogging platform by nature and as a result – a Tumblr blog sadly misses a lot of key details to really make an impact on search engine visibility.

I’ll admit it, I launched this Blog on Tumblr to get things started (what it’s good at) – but boy, did I regret it. Let’s have a look why.

6 Reasons why Tumblr SUCKS for SEO

1. Tumblr will strip out any attempt to put the rel=”nofollow” attribute on links, free links anyone? #SEOFacepalm
2. You can’t set custom META Tags on each individual post, I know this isn’t 1998 SEO, but META descriptions are a great way to improve clickthrough-rates. You can hack the theme to auto-generate META based on your post summary/tags but that’s just sloppy.
3. No Category Structure – You can’t set a category structure to Posts or URLs (e.g. /recipes/italian/meatballs/) dampening the chance of gaining mid-tail rankings or building up authority to a ‘parent’ page
4. Forget about gaining Google Images rankings – all image uploads in Tumblr will be stored on a separate sub-domain, with no reference to your Blog’s URL
5. All Tumblr blogs come with XML Sitemaps & Robots.txt files which is great – but there is no way to customise them.
6. Messy HTML & CSS code – Tumblr has some awesome custom themes, but lack of FTP access to your blog means all CSS, Javascript etc. has to be either coded within the page, or hosted externally – both of which will hurt a blogs load time

In time, Tumblr hopefully will do right upon these wrongs, but in the meantime, just use WordPress. It does everything, including making your morning cup of tea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS8uFKoZSx0

Sadly, there is a lot of confusing and complete nonsense advice on the web when it comes to the world of Mobile SEO.

You may of seen this Matt Cutt’s video, or this infamous post on the Google Webmaster Central blog. Ignore them both for a minute. I’m here to muck up the rubbish, and set the record straight for so-called Mobile SEO.

Firstly, the unknown truth is that the term is arguably pointless, as Google search results on a smartphone are the EXACT same as the Desktop version of Google.

Google Search Results for 'Mashable' on an iPhone & Desktop Computer.

Only the site-links slightly vary based on screen-size.
So, why are they the same? Think about it.

“For now, we expect smartphones to handle desktop experience content so there is no real need for mobile-specific effort from webmasters.”
- @PierreFarr (Google Webmaster Team, I’ve met him, nice guy!)

A Brief History of Mobile SEO

Mobile SEO as a term originally meant ‘Best SEO Practices for WAP/iMode compatible websites’ aka mobile internet on pre-smartphone handsets.

For me, I’m talking about my old Nokia 3310 that had Snake II built-in (what a game) and a browser that proudly displayed my first ever (aka awful) WAP website. I was 13.

In a response to a growing Mobile Web, Google developed a seperate search crawler (Googlebot-Mobile), advocated XHTML Basic markup and launched google.com/m indexed with mobile-friendly search results perfect for my wicked Nokia. Any of these standards sound un-nervingly familiar?

These aren’t the Droids your looking for

If you have ANY questions about working with Googlebot-Mobile, Mobile Sitemaps or XHTML Basic – STOP! LOOK & LISTEN! – all of these standards were created to support websites designed for older handsets NOT smartphone compatible sites.

Of course, not everyone has a smartphone, but near-enough all mobile browsing is made with one. So ignore those OLD standards and get with the times grandma.

Mobile SEO is actually ‘Mobile-friendly SEO’

The truth is, SEO for smartphones and ‘regular’ SEO are near enough the same bloody thing, so breathe a little. It’s the same set of search results, so for the most part, you can play by the same rules.

How to choose the right  URL for your Mobile Website

The biggest Mobile SEO concern is the URL structure that is used for the smartphone version of a website.

Usually, mobile websites have either of these URL Structures:

• The exact same URLs as the full website
• Host the Mobile site on a sub-domain/folder e.g. http://m.domain.com/ or http://domain.com/m/
  

But, which is best for Mobile SEO? Every single time, hands down, the answer is use ONE URL (to rule them all). Don’t believe me? Let’s fight it out.

Why Mobile Sites should NOT be on Sub-Domains/Folders

#SEOFacepalm

Most one URL solutions are achieved by serving a seperate CSS stylesheet built for smartphone users, but the page itself will still have the same HTML code. Yuck?

This works great for smaller, static websites, but is a bloated solution for larger, more complex sites. Take a Shopping website for example, the ‘shelf space’ to advertise products on a smartphone is much less – hence the need to create an entirely new HTML/CSS layout.

Using CSS only to achieve this is sloppy, resulting in high load times due to lots of hidden, un-used code (display: none; isn’t always your friend).

As a result, the easy way out can be building two seperate sites, with yep, different URLs. Doing this can cause massive SEO problems and naive user experience mistakes.

Mistake 1) Split Link Equity & Social Shares

If a mobile visitor shares a page across Twitter, Facebook or their Tumblr/Wordpress App, they’ll unknowingly be posting a link to the mobile-version of the page.

Not only will this piss off a desktop-user, who upon clicking is forced to see a mobile-formatted page – it also will result in split link equity – where you have two different groups of links pointing to two different urls, both of which have the exact same content.  #SEOFacepalm.

Mistake 2) Duplicate Content

Oh dear. Split links, different URLs & same content = duplicate content. Not good at all. Besides the mythical ‘trust’ ranking factor, all these elements will result in a page having a weaker keyword ranking, or the wrong version of a page indexed, or neither at all.

Having one canonical URL for a website page, regardless of how it looks, is better your visitors and your rankings.

How to keep ONE URL for both your Full & Mobile Website

Solution 1) CSS3 Media Queries

Of course, if you’ve got a simple, basic website – using a seperate CSS stylesheet with CSS3 Media Queries is likely the way to go. Smashing Magazine has a great tutorial on this.

Solution 2) WURFL Device Detection <– THIS ONE!

But, this is better. WURFL is an jaw-dropping set of open-source API’s that can be used to detect a visitors device (desktop, smartphone) and then serve the relevant template for that user e.g. load the smartphone theme for iPhone users.

As all of this is figured out server-side, it won’t affect the page URL, meaning yes, ONE URL for both your mobile & desktop sites – GENIUS!

WURFL has API’s for PHP, .NET & Java, check them out, and to get started, check out this superb tutorial from the Nokia community.

Bonus Solution No. 3) WPTouch for WordPress

Got a WordPress Blog? Install the WP-Touch plugin immediately. It’s a great out-the-box solution, works like WURFL and is completely free.

If you HAVE to keep both Mobile & Full Sites on Seperate URLs

Already got a mobile site? To late to switch camps? I begrudingly hear you. Go implement these ‘band-aid-fix’ Mobile SEO guidelines.

Quick Fix 1) Handling Duplicate Content on a Mobile Website

Use the rel=canoncial tag (more info) in the <head> section of a mobile webpage where you’ve got the same content both on the Mobile & Desktop site.

Use the URL of the desktop version. This will tell the Search Engine the canonical page it should index and rank.

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.domain.com/full-site-version.php“/>

Quick Fix 2) 301 Redirects for Mobile & Desktop Users

Implement 301 Redirects so that if a Desktop user or Googlebot lands on a smartphone-formatted page, they are sent to the desktop version. You should also do the same for mobile visitors who visit a desktop page.

For Apache servers, this is a job for .htaccess. If you can’t do this, at least ensure there is a link on the page to switch between each version.

Quick Fix 3) Social Media Sharing

If you offer the option to socially share e.g. Tweet, Facebook Like a page on your Smartphone website, make sure it’s actually sharing the URL to the desktop version of the page.

This will stop the desktop version of page, the one in the search results, missing out on any potential link juice!

Summary

Ultimately, Search Engines only want to have one version of the web to deal with, and so do your visitors. If you have any feedback on the above, please leave a comment!

Thanks to @bennoislost, @lucirebecca & @joewilcox for all the help on this post. Make sure you also read this blog post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog by @pierrefar.

I’m currently moving my old site (http://pete-campbell.com) over from Tumblr to WordPress – why?

Because Tumblr sucks for SEO and it was always the intention to switch over. If you disagree with me, I’ll argue this out in a future blog post and politely prove you wrong.

To get technical, I’m importing Blog Posts over, setting up WordPress Extensions for SEO Magic, doing a bit of 301 redirect lovin’ – all the good stuff, again that will be ranted about at somepoint.

So, in the meantime, have a browse, check out the new snazzy SEO Training Courses page and I’ll be back with you shortly with a new blog post.

Today, I’m on my way to Brighton SEO.

Brighton SEO is a free search conference (organised by Kelvin Newman from SiteVisibility) where some of the UK’s finest SEO nerds get together in what I call the ‘Southern Capital of UK SEO’ (Brighton) and share the love with tips and advice on all things SEO.

With tickets ‘sold out’ within 26 minutes of registration opening, I think the event speaks for itself!

Many thanks to Kelvin sorting me out with a ticket after I cheekily emailed him pleading for one, beers owed I think.

If your at Brighton SEO today, please drop me a tweet @petecampbell- would love to say hello to everyone!

Just a few weeks back, I luckily attended MozCon in Seattle, USA. For the unaware, it’s an SEO Conference ran by SEOMoz.org – developers of nifty SEO Tools and providers of great SEO resources for beginners AND uncool nerds like myself.

In a sentence – MozCon is like Disneyland for SEO’s, jampacked with super-geeky SEO Magic Tricks and great chances to meet and say hello to others in the search industry (the open bar afterparties helped).

Highlight sessions included great Link Building tips (@wilreynolds), inspiring speeches (@randfish, @bobrains, @avinash) and in particular Martin McDonald (@seoforumsorg) ranked Pos 1 with a goldmine of examples how Google COULD be manipulated/broken (if that’s your style, a few people gave him flak, but bravo I say).

MozCon left me with some great geek-level SEO ideas I’d like to share – some from speakers, others manically concutted in my head during sessions, which were then scribbed in my infamous SEO bible.

If your the sort of person (like me) who punches the air in glee when you did a cracking bit of internal linking, you’ll find these useful.. (I hope)

My Top 5 SEO Ideas Learnt/Scribbled @ MozCon

1) Using ‘Mention’ Finders for Link Building

Tools such as Google Alerts, Rowfeeder & Topsy can be used to easily find mentions of your business name and brand terms across Websites, Blogs & Social Networks. Email or even tweet the webmasters and bloggers who mention you in the webpage, but don’t link to you.. yet.

Google Alerts will auto-emails you mentions of brand terms in search & google news results. Topsy will find business-mentions in Blog Posts that have been virally shared across Social Networks and Rowfeeder will create a spreadsheet of all keyword/hashtag/username-mentions on Twitter & Facebook.

2) Learn Competitors Keywords with N-Gram’s

Looking to find out what SEO Keywords your clients competitors are targetting without having to delve into backlinks or maybe, a dusty old META Keywords tag? The Gramanator uses n-gram model sequences to identify the most-recurring words or phrases on a page. Great little app!

3) Run Blog Competitions for Industry-Relevant Links

If you work with an industry that has a passionate community surrounding it, try this. Publish a competition on your Blog inviting the community to post on their OWN blog to tell you (this is the linkback) and their readers why they ‘love’ the industry they are in – if you can think of a better question, go for it.

Incentivise the competiton with a relevant giveaway-prize (e.g. a free copy of Adobe Photoshop for budding Web Designers) and you may end-up with several industry relevant links, at a low cost, all ‘naturally’ gained.

4) Getting your Twitter followers to give you Links

Export.ly (http://export.ly) creates a downloadable excel spreadsheet of all Twitter a profiles followers, including their Bio & Website URLs. Contact your clients followers who follow their business, but don’t currently link to their website.

5) Add Automated-Internal Links to your Twitter-Widget

Using a script to auto-link the first suitable mention a of specific keyword in body copy to a relevant SEO page isn’t a brand-new idea, but this was. If you publish your client’s latest twitter updates on their webpage, setup a script to auto-link every mention of a suitable SEO Keyword and link it to the relevant SEO Page.

Of course, these links maybe short-lived, but why wouldn’t you do it? You could consider begin archiving all your tweets on a webpage or subdomain, but you’ll need to consider duplicate content, robots.txt and rel=canonical management.

eCommerce brand Zappos have setup a twitter sub-domain which gives a few examples of the above in action.

—————————

Would I attend MozCon again? In a heart-beat, plus, I love free SEO t-shirts, USB sticks, pens and er.. ok, no wonder I get strange looks on the street.

That’s your lot!

Just a very quick post, while on a train, (How 2004 am I?) to say I’ll be off on my SEO geek travels again tomorrow!

This time, I’m heading to the legendary SEOMoz conference – MozCon – taking place in Seattle, Washington (USA) during July 27th – 29th 2011.

http://www.seomoz.org/mozcon

In true nerd fashion, I have to admit that I’m quite looking forward to (hopefully) shaking the hand of Rand Fishkin, the likely unofficial figurehead of the SEO ratpack (Sorry Danny Sullivan if your reading.. you won’t be).

I first visited the SEOMoz website about 7 years ago when I googled the then hip word ‘Link Building’ – poor young Pete had no bloody idea what he just let himself in for.

With speakers like Avinash Kaushik, one of the best SEO-related writers in the industry at MozCon – I’ll definitely be posting a writeup afterwards of more ‘SEO Jedi Tricks I should of knew already’

If your attending MozCon, please feel free to walk up, say hello or catch me on Twitter: @petecampbell

In May, I changed jobs from working for an SEO Agency to being the In-House SEO Manager for a large brand.

Since the switch, I’ve realised that at the time, a lot of the ongoing SEO ideas, experiences and techniques I developed came from working across a variety of client industries, or sharing learning’s with my fellow SEO agency geeks.

In other words, it partly stripped out the need to religiously to learn, for example, by reading SEO blogs each day, or enduring another uselessly vague Matt Cutts video.

This hasn’t changed completely, but my job responsibilities and workload have taken a huge step up e.g. solving SEO issues on very big multi-lingual websites, controlling SEO budget and making the most out of less team-support – of course, all great experience in itself though.

But, out of personal and professional SEO nerd pride – I still need to continuously identify/develop/action new SEO techniques (markup, link building, social etc.) but have far less time to do it in.

So I will admit, I do miss that ‘constantly-researching’ agency benefit sometimes – but in business, you learn to adapt.

To cut to it, to ensure I continue to stay ‘fresh’ with SEO – news, practices, google world-defining changes etc. – I have developed a few daily habits that I’d like to share – all of which help me keep expanding my SEO magician skills each day.

1)  Filling Twitter up with the *REAL* SEO Geeks

For me, I find the best nuggets of SEO knowledge from my Twitter stream come from tips and blog posts shared individually by fellow ‘slightly-under-the-radar’ SEO consultants, techies and lesser-known google employees. Of course, there is no shame in following the obvious SEO Blogs and ‘known’ figureheads (@RandFish, @DannySullivan, @MattCutts) – but that’s just scratching the surface.

SEO GEEKS TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER – DO THIS RIGHT NOW:

@pedrodias - Google Search Quality Team
@pierrefar – Google Webmaster Trends Analyst
@kelvinnewman – UK SEO @ SiteVisibilty
@richardbaxter – UK SEO @ SEOGadget
@rob_millard – UK SEO @ Distilled

2) Search Blogs as a Homepage via Multi-Tabs

I probably shouldn’t admit this – it’s like confessing that you have a burning passion for Eastenders. I’ve setup my Firefox browser homepage so that upon opening, multiple tabs load up with different SEO, Google & Geek Blogs I read.

As mentioned, It’s not often I have a free moment during the day to learn new SEO spells, but with this setup, it wilfully forces me to make sure I spend the first 15 minutes of the day reading the latest industry gossip (Rand Fish to launch Musical Career).

MY FIREFOX MULTI-TAB SETUP – JUST LOAD UP > SET AS HOMEPAGE:

• Google Inside Search Blog
• Google Webmaster Central Blog
• SEOMoz YouMoz (SEO Guest Posts)
• Mashable (To obvious? TheNextWeb is lovely too)
• My Twitterfeed

If you argue that a RSS Widget/Reader can achieves this better, with respect, you’re wrong

3) Creating a Google Doc of SEO To-Do’s
(aka Go Learn This Later)

If I spot a super-geeky SEO tip that is ‘new’ to me (aka I should know this already) which it isn’t time appropriate to research/action straight away – I type it into my SEO ‘to-do list’ Google Doc.

When isn’t an appropriate time? Well, my best SEO-related thoughts have a fantastic tedency to pop into my head at the most obscure times..

1. Driving to/from work while likely running red lights, parking in two spaces
2. Trying to fall asleep – but can’t as I’m stressing over SEO work
3. Rushing out the door, munching a cereal bar, as I’m running late for work, again..

Hopefully some of you can relate to that..
In serious, keeping a list, lets an app worry about remembering useful SEO gold instead of me – because when I fancy exploring a new SEO idea, a whole list is waiting for me. In all, it lets me stay focused on my current SEO headache while leaving another one for a different day.

On a #supernerd sidenote.. I’ve also literally emailed myself to achieve remembering SEO things before (To Pete@Work.com, you should really get on that schema.org stuff, love Pete@PersonalEmail.com). It amazes me I have friends sometimes to be honest.

That’s your lot.
Got any more?

Tell someone in Russia to ‘Google It’ and they’d probably give you a quick slap or the same stare fellow geeks give you if you say that Star Trek/Star Wars are the same thing? But why?

Yandex is Russia’s biggest Seach Engine (64% Usage), with Google in a forgettable second place (24% Usage). Last week, it went public – reigniting the ‘Yandex SEO’ debate. Besides Blekko, Yandex puts up a good fight to Google’s search dominance, with 15 years in the game and great quality search results to boot.

Should you optimise for Yandex? Lets be honest, I’d advise to tick the ‘easy’ boxes for now to make sure your site is A) Listed and B) Secure those rankings as every hit counts right?*

Yandex 101 – 5 Quick Tips for Better Rankings

1. Obvious Tip Warning: Submit your URL to Yandex (Duh!)
2. Check out Yandex Webmaster Tools – At least verify your URL & Submit your XML Sitemap  (ala Google Webmaster Tools)
3. Submit your URL to the Russian Yandex Directory, Yandex loves to figure out your websites ‘theme’ when determining SERPs (think DMOZ/ODP)
4. Grab the Yandex Toolbar for those rainy days – Whats your URLs Trust Rating? Works on a 0 to 15000 scale and specifies your authority (think PageRank)
5. Yandex’s Citation Index doesn’t count backlinks from places that can be easily spammed – yes, this means SEO Directories, Link Farms, Forum Sigs & Blog Comments – forget your Panda update, this is a sign of things to come!

* Reason C) to bother with Yandex - It will keep your boss happy, every business mogul and their mother probably heard the word Yandex last week! Everyones a Winner/Chicken Dinner!

Earlier this week, I luckily attended SMX Advanced London which was jam-packed with geek-friendly lectures and seminars on all things Search Marketing.

Sadly, there was a large part of the SEO content on offer that was a bit too basic for me (note: I have too much free time) – but the Link Building and Extreme SEO Makeover sessions in particular were superb, and gave a lot of great SEO tricks and advice that all SEO Geeks should be following.

To cut to it – the below tips are designed for my fellow nerds, those who dissect every tweet by Google’s Search Quality staff, those who eat advanced segments for breakfast and use Open Site Explorer like it’s an hourly routine.

Link Building

1) Making Viral Linkbait – Infographics, Polls & Surveys

For a few ‘quick ways’ to try/experiment getting backlinks via viral content, publish blog posts on your industry that revolve around interesting statistics. The ‘trick’ is to present them in a fun way – via a snazzy infographic, poll or survey – stuff that really gets people talking (e.g 8 out of 10 People think that Pete is a massive nerd).

Toluna is great for quick, cheap and fast-result surveys. Or just go rogue, publish a topic in an industry-specific forum to get your answers.

2) Getting Links on Blogs – Tweet not Email

I’ve emailed countless blogs over the years to approach them for a paid link. Most webmasters get constant link requests, so it’s hard to filter the noise out of regular dodgy link building emails.

Quick fix? Skip emailing the blogger, and try just tweeting them! Tweets are a lot more personal, and every bloggers loves public feedback – hence the response rate is far, far higher.

3) Link Renegociation

Changing anchor text on old backlinks is quite common, but one quick thing you can try is just googling your Client’s business to see if has been recommended on any websites that don’t currently linkback to your clients site. Drop them an email (or tweet!) and you might be suprised.

On-Page

4) Multi-Lingual SEO Keywords

Don’t use direct translations for your keywords when it comes to non-english SEO, even if the word is perfectly translated.I was suprised to learn that although ‘Flights’ in French is ‘Vols’ – in actual fact, the most searched ‘Flight’-related term is ‘Billet D’Avion’ (‘Airline Ticket’).

You really need to get to know the local market, achieve via an agency or a friendly non-english SEO geek.

5) Breadcrumb Microformats

Help Google understand your sites breadcrumbs/site hierachy using this specific Microdata/RDF markup format. Microformats aren’t a big secret, they’re widely used to mark-up Address/Reviews/Ratings on sites – but this is a great method to help a sites breadcrumbs appear within a Google listing.

SEO Tools

6) UberSuggest

Ever used Google’s query suggestions for a bit of cheeky Long-Tail Keyword research? UberSuggest does the hard work for you! Tap in your query and it’ll automatically show all of Googles suggested search terms sorted by A-Z! Great API usage.

7) Google New

Learn about all of Google’s new products and developments from one official dashboard – Google New, rather than having to watch the Google Webmaster Blog like a hawk. Perfect Homepage for Google fans.

NB. Many thanks to @davidburgess00, @richardbaxter, @rob_millard and @obanseo for some of the ideas above. All worth a follow on Twitter!

Next week, I oddly feel like I’ll be gaining my black-belt qualification in the distinct martial art of SEO. I’ll luckily be attending my first ever SEO expo – SMX Advanced London (rock and roll!).

I recently joined British Midland International (bmi) as their new SEO Manager and this will be my first official gig as part of the role.

Being an expo newbie, I’m really looking forward to possibly networking with other SEO’rs and just simply the chance to get as much info as I can from the event – both professionally and personally because of my blatant nerd passion for SEO.

Conference Details

SMX Advanced London
Millennium Gloucester Hotel & Conference Centre
May 16th & 17th, 2011

If anyone reading is attending, please tweet me (@petecampbell) as I would love to meet up and share SEO magic tricks and discuss other super-cool subjects.