Some topics are so shrouded in mystery, they can divide the very SEO experts themselves. Nowhere is this more true than the ubiquitous meta tag. Sure, you’ve written a fantastic meta description, volunteered some of your more important meta keywords (even if you are unsure how much impact the latter will have).

But what next? What other meta tags should you include? Here are just some of the meta tags I see in wide use on the web:

<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1“>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”meta tags, rogue meta tags, useless meta tags, dangerous meta tags” />
<meta name=”description” content=”The Manchester SEO Blog guide to meta tags, rogue meta tags and downright dangerous ones.” />
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”3;URL=http://manchester-seo-blog.co.uk/”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”would you pass the Turing test?” />
<meta name=”title” content=”Redundant Meta Title” />
<meta name=”rating” content=”unsuitable for homosapiens” />
<meta name=”distribution” content=”global” />
<meta name=”publisher” content=”Rogue Meta Tag Technology Ltd.” />
<meta name=”author” content=”John Doe“>
<meta name=”designer” content=”Jane Doe“>
<meta name=”copyright” content=”Rogue Meta Tag Technology Ltd. All Rights Reserved“>
<meta name=”abstract” content=”A brief overview of some of the more useful, the useless and the downright dangerous meta tags people use on their web pages.“>

In this post, I hope to provide you with a brief overview to the jungle of meta tags.

Useful Meta Tags and Robots

<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />
<meta name=”googlebot” content=”noimageindex” />

Some meta tags can be used to give the robots supplemental information about your page and modify their default behaviour. Meta keywords and description have already been discussed. Robots, is highly useful one which you can direct at all crawlers by specifying “robots” or to a specific crawler such as “googlebot”. You can use directives such as: noindex (do not index), nofollow (do not follow links on this page), noarchive (do not store cached copy of page), noodp (do not use DMOZ description), noydir (do not use the description from Yahoo directory). Not all robots are polite, and at the time of writing, only Googlebot, Yahoo and Bing/MSN/Live crawlers respect these directives. Googlebot also supports: noimageindex (do not index images on page), notranslate (do not offer to translate the page) and unavailable_after (will not recommend for search after a particular date)

Other Useful Meta Tags

There are a small number of other useful meta tags, such as:

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”3;URL=http://manchester-seo-blog.co.uk/”>
<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en-US,fr”>

The first will cause your brower to refresh the page after X seconds (where X is the first number in the content section). You can also specify a URL and use this to redirect your page. But this is the worst kind of redirect, as any SEO expert will say, you are better using a 301 redirect. The second meta tag allows you to specify the language content of the page itself. (see later for multiple language meta tags)

The Redundant Meta Tags

All major Search Engines will ignore meta tags such as: rating, distribution, rating,  author, designer and publisher. You may have your own reasons for including these, but do not expect them to make a difference in your websites rank! Some (such as the ‘rating’ meta tag) were genuinely proposed as a method for allowing webmasters to set the ‘age appropriateness’ of web pages. The difficulty is that without the backing of W3C, it is not standard. Without a set standard, we cannot expect search engines to habitually use meta tags like these. There is also an issue of honesty when reporting on the self :- if you are a webmaster who runs a site, would you wilfully restrict access to your website?

Meta Tags in Multiple Languages

The W3C consortium have proposed a method in which you may specify several different sets of meta tags in different languages within the same page, by using the lang=”" form. For example:

<meta name=”keywords” lang=”en-us” content=”vacation, Greece, sunshine”>
<meta name=”keywords” lang=”en” content=”holiday, Greece, sunshine”>
<meta name=”keywords” lang=”fr” content=”vacances, Gr&egrave;ce, soleil”>
<meta name=”keywords” lang=”ja” content=”空室, ギリシャ, 日照”>

Summary

If in doubt – leave it out! Google and most other search engines will make very good guesses about your page based on the content itself. If you are not sure how to use the meta tag, it is best not to! You may find interesting ways of shooting yourself in the foot by asking search engines to not index or cache your page. It is always better to err on the side of caution, and (as ever) look to W3C as a guide.

With the UK general election only weeks away, each party has been busy campaigning for your vote.  But just how effective has each online campaign been? In this special edition of The Manchester SEO Blog, we will be taking a look at some of the online promotional tactics employed by the parties, and identify the bizarre highlights and cringeworthy lows, as politicians increasingly rely on  social media to win your vote.  The 2010 UK general election may well prove to be the first election which was decided at home, by you, the users of the Internet.

Case Study: Tory Website and AdWords Campaigns

The Tories launched cashgordon.com, a website in which users can join and earn ‘action points’ for performing certain tasks such as inviting friends, signing up by email or for tweeting and Facebooking articles. It is certainly an innovative concept, but not one that appears to have been a huge success.  Besides not guessing the true value of each action (a Facebook post is far more valuable than a tweet for example, because it comes from a trusted source), they made the fatal mistake of featuring all tweets that use the hashtag #cashgordon on their homepage.  This backfired disastrously, when users realised they could tweet Javascript code that was used to send obscene pop-up messages to visitors browsers, or to redirect users away from the site to porn, and to labour.org.uk. Eventually, the site was taken offline until extra security measures were put in place.

Alongside this, the Tories have been running  several Google AdWords campaigns for phrases such as  ‘leaders debate polls’ / ‘leaders debate results’ using the following advert:

This campaign has temporarily been discontinued, but they are still running one on Gordon Browns own name, which features David Camerons’ official YouTube channel.

This black hat technique is not likely to influence anyone and will prove to be quite a waste of money.  Most searchers using these types of phrases will be looking for information about Gordon Brown, or up to date, official poll statistics.  Any visitor won by these means are not likely to be in a receptive mood to the types of messages the Tories would like to convey.  It might just prove an effective way of negatively influencing Google’s search quality!

Case Study : Sudden Surge of Support for Liberal Democrats

Realising the effectiveness of Internet irony, the Lib Dems set up the website www.labservative.com – boasting: ‘more of the same’ for Britain if either of the major parties are elected.  To accompany this, they posted an entertaining series of YouTube videos.

This seemed to find great resonance with the British public, as the first leaders debate unfolded.  Half way through, it became clear from the flurry of Tweets that the Twittocracy had spoken in favour of Nick.  Viewers picked up on both David Cameron and Gordon Brown saying: ‘I agree with Nick’ during the first televised debate. The hashtag #IAgreeWithNick quickly started to trend on Twitter.  Worried by the surge in online popularity, the mainstream media machine unleashed a belt-fed burst of negative headlines which questioned everything from the party’s financial dealings to Nick’s views on British patriotism. This seemed to have very little impact, and the Twitter hashtag #NickCleggsFault began  trending  as Internet users started using it ironically in response to the mainstream media attacks.  Search Engine Land believes that the origins of this hashtag came from a guy named Justin McKeating after stubbing his toe shortly after tweeting about some of this negative Lib Dem press.

Case Study : Labour Party Social Media Campaign

The Labour party have also heavily engaged in social media, with Twitter Tsar MP Kerry McCarthy leading the way.  They have an entertaining and informative string of YouTube videos – including an comic summary of the Labour 2010 Manifesto.  While it has certainly not been a faliure, they have not been able to produce the sort of online viral success of the Liberal Democrats.  (I mean really … a stubbed toe … Nick Cleggs Fault?)


These are interesting times we live in, and as time goes by we can expect more focus to be turned on the Internet as it plays an increasing role in our lives. Social media in particular is likely to become key to winning hearts and minds of online voters. I suspect these debates will be dissected and analysed for years to come.

Google have announced the launch of a government censorship tool that shows requests made by the world governments to remove websites and content. The tool also shows any freedom of information requests made for personal user data.

Google made the announcement while delivering a poignant message to the governments of the world – that freedom of opinion and expression are not liberties to be trifled with. Quoting article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Google warns of the alarming growth of censorship on the Web:

…”‘everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ Written in 1948, the principle applies aptly to today’s Internet — one of the most important means of free expression in the world. Yet government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content.”

Here at the Manchester SEO blog, we are delighted at the move, and wanted to take this opportunity to openly thank Google for their protective gaze. Recent revelations over our MPs expenses have demonstrated just how unfit our leaders are to police themselves. At the very least, this tool will prove a highly effective safeguard against further abuses of power. With the controversial passing of the UK’s Digital Economy Bill, the timing couldn’t have been better.

The Manchester SEO Blog is currently running a series of anti-censorship tutorials explaining how proxies and Google’s DNS might be used to get around web censorship.

Above all, this message reminds us that intellect will always triumph over tyranny. I would not trust our government to decide what search results I see. But if Google stood for parliament, I would vote for them.

Six months ago, I blocked Russia and China from all my personal web servers. My friends said this was a bad idea – not only for search engine optimistion (SEO) purposes, but also claimed I had managed to create a ‘racist server’! I was not proud of this decision, which was made after careful observation that the majority of all hack attacks, brute force ftp attacks, spoofs and intrusion attempts came from Chinese machines and IP addresses. Taking this action has cut my monitoring and maintenance times to less than a tenth of what they were and relieved much of the strain on my computers.

Due to the scale of these operations, I had become certain that this was more than a band of geeks doing their thing. Such elaborate hacks with seemingly limitless resources suggested someone was systematically providing them these resources, intelligence and a safe haven for their activities without fear of prosecution.

Google Hack Targeted Human Rights Activists

Until now, these have been paranoid thoughts I have been kept locked away in my own mind. But today, this all changed when Google announced a recent ’sophisticated’ GMail attack on their servers from China. They claim to have uncovered evidence that the goal of the attack was to access the private GMail accounts of Chinese human rights activists which have long been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. This suggests that my worst suspicions may not be far from the truth, raising broader questions about free speech which Google cover in today’s announcement.

The purpose of the Internet that Tim Berners-Lee envisaged was – of course – about bringing people together. But people invariably bring ideas with them, and many of these ideas do not agree. Geographical distance provided a convenient partition space for these ideas to co-exist, but these partitions dissapear on the Internet.

A Pivotal Moment for the Internet

I believe this recent clash between Google and China will mark a pivotal moment for the Internet itself. From a political standpoint, we will see the cooling of already chilly relationships to all-new sub-zero temperatures. Google’s next move will leave a lasting imprint on the history of the Internet itself. In today’s official post, Google reminded China that they were not happy censoring results in the country – a move designed to appease the Chinese government some time ago. They went on to say they will revisit this decision, and the broader idea of all their operations in China:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China

Google’s message could not be clearer – they are considering withdrawing from China altogether. I hope this is not the case, as this is not allowing the humans to resolve their differences, but avoiding the question altogether. Any webmasters who are interested in being able to block an entire country such as China should visit Okean.com, which gives the .htaccess rules for Apache. This will obviously not protect your other services though! I will certainly be watching Google’s next move with baited breath.

Google has been gradually rolling out some exciting new features over the last few months: from real time search and social search to music and image-driven searches. They even gave Google a face lift with some nice fading text on the homepage and a tweak under the hood with the Google Caffeine update.

But the real biggie for the SEO world is Google’s personalised search results. For the first time ever in search engine history, everyone will be given slightly different search results.  This is true even if you are not logged in to your Google account.  This week the Internet was bombarded with a flurry of posts by mourners proclaiming that SEO was officially dead. I was particularly worried that my results might start to lack variety, or that I would only get to read news that Google thought would please my interests and political palette. Variety is the spice of life, because without the bland, spice loses all meaning. Just what will these updates mean for SEO? I am pleased to announce that SEO very much alive and well, and that – today - The Manchester SEO Blog can reveal the reality of tomorrows SEO and what these recent updates will mean for you.

A Poorly Expressed Search Will Be Affected More

Imagine opening your phone and searching for ‘John’ in your contacts. I have Johns in my phone too… But mine are not likely to be the same as yours, and yet they are all John. I have been vague and expressed this search rather poorly, knowing that only a handful of Johns feature in my life on a regular basis.

Now imagine searching for ‘plumbers’ in Google. This is also a poorly expressed search because most plumbers only operate in a relatively local area. Now imagine that Google has built up a history of my searches, and knows that services in MANCHESTER are the ones I will be interested in… Google can supplement the missing information in my search to give a bias to Manchester based plumbers. If however, I search for ‘plumbers in Manchester’ I am likely to see similar results, even if I lived in Sheffield, even if I was a totally different person with a different search history.

Not All Searches Will Be Affected Equally

Each search results pages will be affected differently, and some will be affected more than others. If your website was optimised well, you will already be ranking well for some good long tail phrases and local searches anyway, so we can expect to see little or no change with 8 out of 10 search results pages.  Of these, most will be an adjustment by only one or two places, not the complete overhaul which has led to this spate of SEO doomsday proclaimers!  After all, a great website with plenty of traffic and a horde of good back links is still a great site.  To suggest that the old methods are now totally ineffective is akin to standing in Manchester centre with a sandwich board that reads: “The End is Neigh!”.

The reality is more likely to be a very slight skew in some searches and a change of one or two places in other cases.  For the most part, it is these general and ambiguous search terms that will see the biggest shift.  Mostly Google will draw on your search history to fill in any blanks on your current search. Anyone who feels SEO is dead, should go ahead and leave the industry. It will mean a bigger slice of the pie for the rest of us!

One question I get asked quite often, usually comes in the form of the statement : “I’ve found company X offering to do Y-thousand back links over Z weeks for some fixed amount of money” (adjust variables as necessary!).  You might think such information helps you assess the value of such a service, but it does not.  Today I will be asking : just how effective are link buying tactics?  What are the potential risks?  And how do these compare with links won for good quality content?

Well, it really depends on who is acquiring the links for you. Unless you know for sure how and where they plan to obtain these links, there is always a degree of risk to your site and domain.

What Are The Risks of Link Buying?

Google is very smart, and is aware of these tactics.  In the worst case scenario, your link building company has no ethics and will use link farming and spam techniques to obtain the sheer volume of links for you. If Google notices this sudden influx of poor quality links, your domain name may be penalised, impairing it’s ability to rank – or worse – may actually be blacklisted altogether.

How Can I Judge The Quality of Paid Back Links?

When I used to work for Tescos, one of their slogans was: ‘would you buy it?’ – do you feel the standard of service and presentation of the product meets your own personal standards? I like to think the same is true of the Web : ‘would you click it?’. If these links come from a site which someone may find helpful, and the links contribute to the usefulness and structure of the Web, then you have nothing to worry about.  If however, the referring sites include nonsensical gibberish, repetition of keywords and features links that appear to be going around in circles, then be afraid! Be very, very afraid!

The page rank of the referring page is also another important indicator. Google will not assign a page rank at all if it suspects foul play is afoot. If the referring page has a Google page rank other than zero, you are probably quite safe. This is why I often advise people to go for a smaller number of higher PR links, rather than sheer volume alone. There is significantly less risk, and potentially more for you to gain!

Advantages of Buying Links vs. Quality Content Linkbaiting

Recent updates to Google’s algorithm, mean that more weighting is given to relevance and quality of content that surrounds the link. I believe this is one fundamental cornerstone that has ushered in the current era of SEO blogging. If the link is surrounded by well written, rich and informative text content, you will find the link does several times more for you than a series of generic business directory listings. Not only this – but the traffic it conducts is likely to stay longer, be more interested in the topics you discuss and will improve the overall health of our SEO itself.

The (Current) Verdict?

In a perfect world, I think Google would like everyone to keep their links very context-relevant, and would like to encourage all users to freely contribute as much information as they possibly can to the Web. But in reality, not everyone has time to get very involved in generating rich content – particularly if you have a business to run! Be sure you have an idea what type of links your link broker will build.  Go for quality not quantity - 5 good back links will do more for you than 50 generic ones, do not be swayed by sheer volume alone!  And – as always – be very cautious.

A few days ago Google announced the launched of Chromium OS, and like an excited kid on Christmas Eve, I just couldn’t wait! Yesterday, the firstly publicly available developer build of the operating system was released. If – like me – you already have several other operating system installed (but use Windows as your primary system), you will probably find that running VM Ware Server from within Windows will make your life a little easier.

Installing Chromium OS on VMWare Virtual Machine and Player

You can download the VMWare virtual images for this operating system from gdgt (you will need to create yourself a login, but this only takes a few seconds!).  Alternatively you could download the torrent.  Next download the VMWare Server here. You can install this on Windows, enabling you to run your virtual machines from your Windows desktop.  Alternatively you can use VMWare Player which I find is a lot faster, however GDGT did not supply this virtual drive with a VMX configuration file,
so I generated one using EasyVMX (I chose ‘other’ operating system).  EasyVMX will give you a zip file, which you just need to unpack into one of your Virtual Machine Folders.

Then, simply open up the folder you extracted the VMX files to, and rename the VMDK file to the same file name as the other files (they should share a similar base name, although they will have different extensions), then Then turn your virtual machine ON!

Google Chromium OS Review – The Verdict

What can I say? Google Chromium OS is the only operating system that looks and feels exactly like a giant version of the Google Chrome browser.  It seems to evolve around the Web, using your Google account login to access the system, running all applications through an instance of the browser. It is incredibly fast, and even in VM Player, you have a responsive system only seconds after pushing the on switch.

The trade off appears to be having less functionality.  Google Chromium OS does not carry all the clutter of utility programs and drivers in the background, making it fast.  But I have no obvious file explorer, or terminal console available for running commands.  At first I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. On the plus side, Chromium appears to be skinnable, and users of Linux’s X Windows will be pleased to note it is distributed with the GTK+ Appearance theme.  I immediately turned this on to give me some feeling of normality.

The concept of having an OS running entirely on the Internet clearly belongs to the new generation of thought.  Google have made this OS open source, and have welcomed contributions from developers.  While yesterdays developer launch may provide little more than a bare framework, I would like to reserve judgement until after the masses have contributed.

Getting that all-important click in the search engine results page (SERPS) is a vital part of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). People will naturally judge a book by its cover in the same way they will judge your article by their first impressions. Even if you have the greatest article in the world, it won’t necessarily attract any readers if it is not presented properly! You only have a couple of sentences to convince the searcher they need to read your article, so how can you optimise your chances of getting that click?  How can you improve your click through rate?

• Baiting Your Hook with Juicy Titles

  The title is often the first text your readers’ eyes will be drawn to, making this a vital element to get right!  There are several important factors to consider:  Besides the obvious inclusion of poignant keywords, just how interesting is your title anyway? Sometimes it is the subtler, psychological factors that determine who gets clicked.  A good copywriting tactic is to include one known concept and introduce one unknown which will integue your reader.  Curiosity killed the cat!

• Carefully Crafting and Sculpting URLs

  Both your domain name and page address gives the searcher a clue about how informative your article is likely to be and how authoritative you are on a topic. URLs need to be as concise as possible, while including important search phrases that accurately describe the content of the article. Although most people will not be consciously aware of it, the URL also helps indicate your area of expertise and will have an impact on your SERPS click through rate.

• Marketing to Popular Trends

  Socio-economic factors will influence both peoples’ searches and clicks in the same way it will affect shopping habits. Being aware of this before you write your article will help you better tailor your message to the widest audience possible:

  Short Term Search Trends

  
  Imagine this week brings some news that has everyone talking. This will stimulate  more searches and clicks for this topic.  Is there anyway this trend could benefit your site? Could you somehow mention or make reference to the topic or find a way to incorporate this into your news or blog entry? Be careful not to go too far and end up with a title that has nothing to do with your article, or this will increase your bounce rate!

  Long Term Search Trends

  Some factors will cause trends that will be felt much deeper and over longer periods. For instance, consider the current state of the economy. Over a period of many months there has been a gradual increase in the number of searches relating to ‘cheap’, ‘budget’, ‘affordable’, ‘economy’ and ‘bargain’ phrases.  Some trends are slower to change and will last longer.

  Because SEO is a relatively slow process (especially for static web pages!) you are best using your static pages to target long-term search phrase trends, and news or blog articles to vacuum up some of the briefly-trendy search terms.

• Comprehensive Descriptions

  Try to give as much detail as you can in your META description, feature as many keywords as you can and avoid turning it into a mindless list of stuffed keywords. Also remember to keep it fairly brief. Google will show the searcher up to 70 characters from your description in the search results page, but it will also ’scroll through’ your description to ensure the most relevant section is visible to the searcher for their search terms. If your article deals with multiple topics, it would be a good idea to ‘cluster’ the key phrases in similar ends of the description and not to double back on yourself.

• Avoid Anything That Might Look Like Spam!

  It may sound obvious, but even subtle oversights can easily turn a well-meaning document into an apparent piece of spam.  Try not to repeat keywords more than a couple of times, and ensure that the grammar has not suffered due to crow-baring keywords into the sentence!  Keyword stuffing in this way is a false economy and risks putting your potential visitors off, having a negative impact on your SERPS click through rate!

We would all like a little more control sometimes. We’re so used to accepting things the way they are we often don’t recognise a choice when we see one. One of the great creative freedoms of search engine optimisation (SEO) is that you actually get some kind of choice over who your competitors are.

I like to think of each search term like a market, and within this market are competitor websites. Even if you provide a similar product or service to your next competitor in the real world, you still have the freedom to adjust the wordy pitch you use with the search engines, allowing you to carefully pick your fights. It may sound like I’m stating the obvious, but this paves the way for The Manchester SEO Blog’s guide to choosing your keyword competitors carefully.

• How Well Searched for is Your Target Search Term?

  It may be the first phrase you thought of, but this does not automatically mean it has a large search volume behind it. Consider the number of searches done on this phrase as the prize you stand to gain. Does the extra work required for a competitive keyword justify the potential gain you stand to make?

• Could You Pick Up Long Tail Phrases Around Your Target Phrase?

  Following from the previous point – would you actually benefit more by picking up a range of long tail phrases around your target phrase? The search volume behind long tail phrases will be lower, but they will also be easier for you to pick up, working out better value to you.

• Is Your Search Term Ambiguous or Introduce Unnecessary Competitors?

  If your search term lists competitors who don’t actually supply the same product or services you do, it is worth refining your target phrase to something more specific. Remember, that if you accidentally draw clicks for people looking for something entirely different (but ambiguously similar to your phrase), your bounce rate will go up and your listings will suffer! To test this, simply have a careful look the websites listed for your target phrase. Are there any competitors you didn’t expect to see? Why is this and could you perhaps refine your search term to something a bit more specific?

• Are Brand Names Important?

  If your industry has big brand names, it would be worth including these. It is very easy to focus on the new customer by optimising for general phrases, but there will be searchers out there who already know what they want and will be searching for a particular brand or model! Obviously, be sure to optimise yourself for things you actually supply, and avoid search terms in the hope to gain other peoples’ customers. This will not work and will just cause your bounce rate to go up!

• Have You Given Enough Detail?

  It is always best to include as much detail as possible. Even if you sell ‘scarves’ be sure to include the material (are they wool scarves?) and also the colour. Each product and service is different, and while this example is probably a little generalised, the same is true of almost every industry. More detail is better!

• Can You Offer Something Your Chosen Competitors Cannot?

  It is worth putting yourself in direct competition of a website if you notice it is lacking in some way. If you provide the most comprehensive information on a topic, then it is in Google’s own interest to place you first! If you notice a particularly weak series of sites in a particular area, deliver the knock out blow with your information!

The best overview is to analyse your real-worldly competitor websites carefully, identify weak areas that you will be able to make significant progress in, and avoid general phrases and big competitors!

In the fantastic Star Trek Voyager series, a Borg designated Seven of Nine is ‘rescued’ and disconnected from the collective. This causes her great distress, as the voices in her head suddenly fall silent.

This weekend I think I understand how this feels. Most good SEO news sources are corporate blogs, causing a sort of giant blogging vacuum to open up once the weekend rolls around. Not being one to disappoint, I realise that this void might actually represent an opportunity in disguise.

Content Marketing is About Giving Your Audience What They Want

SEO never sleeps, takes a break or any kind of holiday. This is doubly true of content marketing. The information blogs and websites contain might be better thought of in the more traditional supply and demand model – the more writers for a topic, the less readers per writer there will be and (therefore) the more difficult it is likely to prove to find your niche. Perhaps there are very good reasons for choosing the timing of your blog posts?

Content Marketing is About Timing

In many ways, the key to SEO content marketing lies in predicting the future. Foreseeing upcoming trends and identifying the need for particular articles before others have a chance to supply them, enabling you to manoeuvre yourself into a prime position ready for when the readers come. Getting there first is easier when you only have a couple of competitors to worry about.  Once you have the top spot, it will become increasingly difficult for newcomers to challenge your position.

One Case Study

On another site I run, I endeavour to provide the solutions to a popular Lucasarts game series called the Tales of Monkey Island before anyone else. By making the solutions available on the day of the games release, not only does this make it easier for me to get into the top position in Google for phrases I suspect people will be searching for, but I actually generate traffic I would have missed if I had released exactly the same article only a couple of days later.

The graph below shows the traffic generated for these solutions, shortly after the release of the latest episode on the Friday the 30th of October 2009.  The shaded area indicates extra traffic that only the speedy writer can achieve.  If the solutions were published only a few days after this, the traffic would go to someone else.

Traffic For Game Solutions After Launch on the 30th October 2009

When it Pays to be Different

In a nutshell, it pays to be different.  Whatever you can contribute that others will struggle with, is something you can turn into a great traffic source.  Being the first to provide will ensure others are constantly playing catch-up and will be lucky to scrape second place.  Going with the crowd is likely to get your voice lost amongst other  similar messages.  But if you jump to the left while everyone is jumping  right, someone is bound to stop and take notice!