Semantic Variance is a concept that (I think) I coined to refer to simple idea of not repeating exact phrases over and over. Where do we repeat the same phrases over and over? I can think of four common places:

1. In the title of our article
2. In the body of our text
3. In the anchor text of the internal links within our site
4. In the anchor text of the external links to our site

Let's look at a concrete example to get my point across more clearly. I'll use a page on The Dog Guide to show you what I'm talking about.

Take a look at this article on the Affenpinscher breed. So the first thing to note about this page is that the title tag is not well optimized:

Affenpinschers: A guide to dogs and puppies of the Affenpinscher breed

Take note of how we repeat the singular and plural forms of the breed name: Affenpinschers and Affenpinscher. All indications are that Google sees this as keyword duplication and diminishes the value of the second instance. It turns out that since the Affenpinscher breed has a nickname, The Affen, it would be much better to reshape this title to replace one instance of Affenpinscher with Affen. Remember, the intention of SEO is not to cater towards Google but to cater towards the user. Many users will know the nickname of this breed, and we shouldn't leave them out. Here's a possible alternative title tag:

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My FeedReader always provides me a wealth of content that I can't consume on a daily basis but within that content lies a myriad of tips and tricks by many, many different blogs out on the net. Here are a few articles which I noticed in my travels.

Add Breadcrumbs to your WordPress Blog - BloggingTips reviews a plugin which adds breadcrumbs to your WordPress theme.

Podcasters Wanted: Will Work for Show Promotion? - Blogger And Podcaster magazine are offering up the opportunity for readers to help create the podcast edition of the site. Those who are selected will receive the chance to plug their own show or service and will obtain a 1/4 page ad in the magazine.

7 Certain Ways to Crucify Your Content - Shilpan Patel of Success Soul provides seven ways to help steer your content from an immediate negative vibe while also providing techniques from which to improve your writing.

Are You TrustWorthy - CopyBlogger goes over the importance of being trustworthy with your readers.

ProBlogger Headline Writing Contest - Darren Rowse is at it again and this time, his group writing project centers around creating a killer post title. Up for grabs is an identity logo created by David Airey. Sweet prize!

Proof positive that you should not post negative things about your coworkers on a blog.

5 Ways to Imitate the 10 Most Popular Blogs - Easton does a good job covering five things which the top 10 blogs all seem to have in common.

Here is a video about creating linkworthy content. Check out the whole post to get the links and notes of the video.

[If you're using an RSS reader, please click on the permalink to see the video.]

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PerformancingAds was recently launched a few days ago and since then, a number of people have written about the ad network. Let's see what a number of bloggers have had to say.

Powerful Ad Service with PerformancingAds - David Peralty does a great job going over all aspects of the service.

Monetize Your Site with the New PerformancingAds Network - Char explains how to monetize your site with the PerformancingAds network.

Performancing launches Performancing Ads - Kevin Muldoon over at BloggingTips provided an in depth review of the ad network.

Performancing Ads - What’s that? - NSpeaks.com also has a detailed overview of the ad network.

Performancing Ads: The Ideal Ad Network - RandaClay.com

WinningTheWeb has also published their own review of PerformancingAds.

Have you jumped on board the PerformancingAds bandwagon yet? If so, let us know how your experience is going.

While we strive to give you well researched thoughts, opinions and strategies to help you become a better blogger, we realize there is a ton of noise out their on the internet which is hard to wade through. This post is my weekly link dump which contains links to articles which caught my eye during the week in relation to blogging.

Keywebdata - Google testing Digg Like Interface. Let's users edit search results If Google really rolls out this social search feature, could this be the end of the line for social media sites?

Onecoolsite - How To Become A better Blogger Part 3 - Ethics And Links In part three of an ongoing series Onecoolsite takes a look at two things all bloggers must face. Ethics and links.

DailyBlogTips - Behind The Scenes: Check Out The Desktop of 30 Bloggers DBT has screenshots of 30 different desktops from 30 different bloggers. What fascinates me is that some of these desktops are filled to the brim with icons. How do these bloggers get anything done with organization like that?

CollegeDegrees - 100 Useful Web Tools For Writers Laura Milligan compiled a list of 100 different tools to keep in mind if you're a writer. The list covers a variety of topics such as, organization, inspiration and getting writing gigs.

ChrisBrogan - If You Intend To Blog Seriously Just about everything this man writes is link worthy and this post is no exception. After reading this post, you may think twice before hitting that publish button.

I am like a hawk when it comes to news feeds. While I don't have thousands of feeds to monitor, I do manage to keep an eye on the big players. What does this have to do with anything? Well, it is a prelude to the fact that after I see something from a paper like The New York Times, I also end up seeing similar content from blogs. Most likely those blogs are using that very story. This is a natural progression of many blogs—especially technology, political, culture, gaming, and financial blogs; among others. However, I do have an issue when these blogs fail to do something that keeps things honest.

This means that, reluctantly, I have to point out the fact that many bloggers—even some of the more respected amongst us (I won't disclose names)—fail to give proper credit to their sources of content. I also notice blogs only crediting other blogs for sources. This all becomes a giant problem as we must ask ourselves a few questions—where exactly did this content originate from?

Now, is most of what the blogosphere doing illegal? Absolutely not, and I don't believe it should be, but I do think there needs to be some sort of standard set for things like this. I want the professional blogging industry to keep things honest and fair.

This is why I urge all bloggers to give credit (in the form of a link; even a simple text link at the end of a post is sufficient—in my opinion) when posting content that originates elsewhere. There are also other scenarios where you should give credit for content that is being used under fair use laws.

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Cases in which you should give credit:

A while ago people would submit every story they wrote to Digg. Not just to get it voted up, but because "just being on Digg" was apparently good for SEO. I wasn't always convinced of this but I heard it so much I started to believe there might be something in it. Still, I didn't follow the practice.

Fast forward a little while and Digg reorganizes the way pages are generated, particularly where member profiles are concerned. One of the effects of this was that fewer pages per story were created, and the knock on effect was fewer links just for being on the site.

Now today I get a question from a reader who has been following commentary about a social media marketing video that is doing the rounds that recommends you submit stories to Digg just because Digg has great pagerank.

My answer was, as usual, to ignore Page Rank, aim to get links through secondary effects, and to not abuse social media sites because they WILL bite you in the ass. But what if I am wrong?

Over to you guys; Does just being on Digg give you a juice boost?

After five years of development PhpBB 3.0 is available.
Already about 500 extensions available.

For some blogs a forum can be an essential add-on!

PhpBB 3.0 'Olympus' comes with many new features and improved security. The new features include UTF8-Support, better treatment of search engines, temporary banning of users, multiple anti-spam features, better log and reporting functions, guidelines for user names and passwords, attachments, speed increases by using multiple caching mechanisms, and loads of other improvements. The number of available translations increased from 50 to 61, including languages written from right to left.

Let's check the PhpBB 3.0 news and see some other nine solutions...

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In this article, I won't talk about how to network. There are great articles out there about that subject. Here are two that have helped me.

Ahmed just wrote a great article about 3 ways to immediately improve your networking skills. Also, check out Caroline Middlebrook's 7 Ways to Connect With People in Your Niche.

Networking is becoming more important in link building because the web is more socially oriented than before. Also, webmasters are much less likely to give links away for free. Many webmasters today know about SEO and link building. They're hesitant to freely link to a competing site. Unless you're a friend or have cash, it's hard to get links these days especially from quality sites. And cash is losing it's effectiveness, because Google's been cracking down on paid links. Many sites are cutting down on selling links.

But the biggest reason networking helps is because it forces you to focus on other people. Quality networking means taking time to know your contacts. Follow their blogs for awhile. Read their posts. Find out which subniches they're passionate about. Find out which topics they would like to learn more about.

Through networking, you can figure out what your contacts want.

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Let me start off with, I was very surprised to learn that not everyone knows how to market their ebook or digital products.

Time and time again, I find a nicely decorated website going on and on about how great their ebook is. The website is nicely laid out, has nice pictures, a sample of the book, there are reviews, etc. I am ready to look at the actual book and even considering buying it, when all of a sudden...the book is not there.

Now why build a site around an ebook that you aren't including on your website? I'm thinking it's a lack of knowledge or something; otherwise you would have that nice link to the sale of your ebook. Most of the sites have a link to Amazon or something and tell you to find their book on the site. Not very handy...probably lose a lot of sales that way.

This got me to thinking, that perhaps not a lot of people know how to sell their own digital products. Well I do and I find it is way more effective than having your potential customers search for your product.

But I am not going to reveal to you how to sell your product online. Why should I? I did my homework and discovered after days of searching how it can be done, and you might as well do a little digging for yourself.

Enjoy! And good luck. But if you want to effectively sell digital products online, they need to be on your site, it needs to be easily accessible.

Or if you want someone to hold your hand and tell you step by step how to do it, buy my ebook at branding yourself online.

I just received the Search Engine Facts newsletter in my mail which comes with a very nice guest article from Stoney deGeyter (Pole Position Marketing). I have no idea what polepositionmarketing.com is good for but the guest article is a nice call for ongoing action in the link love section of SEO.

Reciprocal links are (still) not dead

Reciprocal links are not dead. Weren't dead before. Aren't dead now. I know it and you know it. But for just a second let's pretend otherwise.

A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going around the SEO industry about how reciprocal links were dead. I had a potential client once tell me that so-and-so-big-name-in-the-SEO-industry told them that reciprocal links were dead. I've said this before and I'll say it here again.

There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links. It's all about how you use/implement them that matters. No, reciprocal links are not dead and now I have the proof.

Last year I decided to run my own test so I could refute what I already knew to be true. Yeah, I know who cares about reciprocal links now, right? (...)

Source / Read the rest of the article here: Reciprocal links are (still) not dead

Just read the whole thing and go on to link back to people you like and make sure that the linked sites offer quality to your readers.

My good old three golden rules

Basically the onpage SEO is what it always was:

1. See every single permalink article in a blog as ONE single website which has to build up link love and reputation for a very narrow subject. My tip: Use internal keyword linking if you don't do it yet. Every single keyword will result in an internal keyword search result page (with excerpts!) pointing back to the main article.
2. Don't have too many links on every page (the typical sidebar) linking everywhere. Make your internal links for the article (keywords, categories) show up first followed by the article body containing valuable external links.
3. Show link love and receive link love but make sure that the landing page content fits to the ONE single page or article.

Side Kicks (building external links)

And I still love my article 10 Tips for More Blog Traffic which is one of the best ways to create external backlinks with a high authority yourself.

The important comment backlink

Never forget when commenting on another blog that it is always worth the extra seconds to post a fitting backlink and not only a link to your homepage!

This post was written by Matt Jones, the author of Blogging Fingers

As I'm sure you know it's that amusing time of year when the displayable Google Page Rank is about to be updated and bloggers run about like headless chickens making sure everything is ready. There are always those that mock the bloggers who get over hyped up about the update, but deep down we all know they are exited too. It's like a special Christmas just for bloggers and webmasters to enjoy.

I decided to ask, "What have you done to prepare" over at the BlogLight.ning forum where I received some interesting responses.

"I've done a lot of commenting on high PR 'dofolllow' blogs, and I've made sure to keep posting every possible day, often more than once."

Jeremy Hobbs, who is hoping for a PR3 or above.

"I wrote some good articles that caught some attention links, I did a few link exchanges a while ago and also got mentioned in some high PR websites ."

CristianR, who is hoping for a PR4 or above.

"The only thing that I have really done is participate in a few memes/trains that were making the rounds. To pay the favor back to others, I've continued with my weekly Speedlinking feature to spread the link love out to other blogs as well."

Derek Semmler, who is hoping for a PR5.

What Have I done?

1. Purchased a single PR5 link, but only because it was an absolute bargain. I don't normally buy any links.
2. Taken part in Probloggers group writing project, which is a great opportunity to gain links, traffic share knowledge and discover new blogs.
3. Posting at the Digital Point Forums, with a link to Blogging Fingers and BlogLight.ning in my sig. Forum sigs are worth little in the eyes of Google but it's a good way to spend those idle moments.
4. Continued the same strategy as usual. Guest Blogging has been a key part of this and so has 'networking' and making blogging contacts.

A Note about Page Rank Agreements

It seems that every 3 months when the Page Rank update comes about, people start squawking about how it does not increase traffic and we shouldn't get so obsessed with it. There’s always 1 person who 'cleverly' points out that PR is constantly being updated behind the scenes anyway.

While I agree obsessing over a single statistic (or any statistics) is a bad thing, its a fact that the higher your displayable page rank you have the more you can charge when selling sidebar links, in post links, reviews or even when selling the entire blog. Other than traffic, Page Rank is the most important factor in deciding how much money can be made from your blog.

What have you done to prepare?

I've been running a number of experiments over the last few months and closely monitoring the effects of various types of links for new blogs.

Here are my conclusions:

1. Always start out your link campaign with a week's worth of article or page level links.
2. Never start off with run-of-site links
3. Leaving your link in the no-follow comments section of a blog works wonders, especially if you do it on about 5+ blogs
4. Only add run-of-site links if you're desperate
5. A few good page level links can get you killer results
6. Too many run-of-site links can literally sink the short-term effects of you linkbuilding campaign
7. A mix of about 35/65 between main page and deep links seems to work very well.

So there you have it. A recipe for quick linkbuilding success (in terms of SERPS not PageRank) consists of getting about 10 main page links (within fresh content...not old, retrofitted content), 20 deep-links, and participating in the comments section of 5-10 thematically related blogs.

The order of your linkbuilding campaign should be something like this:

* Start by getting deep links in fresh content on other blogs
* Next participate in the comments section of a few blogs where your name on each comment links back to your main page
* Next get a few main page links
* At this point, you might start doing some social media promotion via Netscape, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon.

And for God's sake, only do run-of-site links as a last resort (if SERPS are your main concern).

Google's rumored (and now confirmed) purchase of FeedBurner has gotten plenty of press, but for all the wrong reasons. While everyone is weighing in as to whether the purchase is more about mindshare or monetizing RSS feeds, there has been very little said about the implications of this move on the future of SEO in general and link building specifically.

Now that this deal has gone through, Google has gained access to millions of pieces of user-data which collectively is a very reliable separate indicator of user preferences. Coupled with their SE algorithm, these RSS subscriber figures will provide Google with a set of end-user preferences which is far more comprehensive and thus difficult for SEO's to game.

For example, if a site has a top-notch backlink footprint but less than a dozen feed subscribers it's a certain red flag to GOOG that the site might not be as trustworthy as its backlink profile suggests.

If Google is planning on incorporating feed subscription figures and Google Toolbar browsing data to go along with with a site's backlink footprint into SE rankings, we're going to be looking at an entirely new and far more complex game for SEO's and traditional "link builders".

While this change, if it occurs at all, is still six months out, now is the time to start considering the implications of this shift and how it will affect ranking strategies. I can think of a few things we're likely to see the day after this shift in the algo is made public:

+TLA Feeds - "Publishers rent out your RSS subscriptions"

+PayPerTraffic - "Rent regular traffic by users with active Google Toolbars"

+Accessibility becomes a more central component in SE rankings as having your site render properly in obscure browsers means more feed subscribers.

+Under the table RSS subscription rings replacing Social Media voting rings

+Every Webmaster switches their RSS feed to Feedburner

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but as I see it, those of us that make a living off of ranking well are about to have to step up our game.

Here's a question for you:

Should Performancing have to worry about the consequences of putting 20 outbound links to its top 20 pMetrics blogs in the sidebar?

Google has been known to ding sites for link-lists in the sidebar and footer. Now we all know that blogrolls and whatnot are natural web behavior that should not be penalized. But as we know, Google and the Link Nazi are cracking down on paid links. Will their algo be able to handle something as benign and community oriented as a list of top 20 sites that use our stats program?

Another way of putting this: you know somethings messed up when you're worrying about something as stupid, trivial and foolish as this question.

So what's messed up?