Peter Vatistas

It’s funny how private I’ve been about my SEO techniques and where I spend my money to help optimize my clients sites. It’s not so much that I tried to hide some secret SEO technique that makes my client’s sites rank #1 on Google, its more resources than anything (which is my secret weapon).

The most valuable thing I spend my money on by far is events, website memberships and books. Of course I buy links, I pay for analytical services, content and etc but those come secondary to my budget and many times I never spend a single dime on them.

So what resources I spend my money on and recommend?

SEOmoz - Get the premium membership, well worth the money.

SEO Book Training Program & the SEO Book - Either is fine, I find the training program is a lot like the book with updated content & a community presence.

For resources that is basically it; I’ve read probably close to 100 books on internet marketing and I’m a member of probably every SEO forum on the internet but with everything I know now the only two resources that actually teach me new things are the two listed above.

As for events (physical conferences, forums, etc) I recommend the following:

SMX: The Search Marketing Expo - $1395 for an all access pass.

SES: Search Engine Strategies - $1795 for a platinum passport.

PubCon: Search Marketing Conferences - $799 for a full pass.

Forums I recommend:

Search Engine Land

Sphinn

The V7 Network

Search Engine Watch

SEO Guy

Another thing I like to do is track the experts in search engine optimization. Here is a list of people I highly respect and follow religiously:

Aaron Wall

Chris Hooley

Andy Beal

Matt Cutts

Andy Hagans

Danny Sullivan

C.K. Chung

Lee Oden

Neil Patel

Patrick Sexton

Todd Malicoat

There were a couple good posts written a while ago about URL canonicalization and it’s importance for SEO. If someone wants to link to my blog for example, there are several ways they could do so:

http://peter-v.com

http://www.peter-v.com

http://peter-v.com/index.php

http://www.peter-v.com/index.php

https://peter-v.com/index.php

https://www.peter-v.com/index.php

The problem here is Google sees different links and weighs page rank on individual links, not on the domain (Google ranks pages, not sites). The solution to this issue is canonicalization using Mod-rewrite expressions in Apache or using a tool like ISAPI_Rewrite for IIS ($99).

Web servers running Apache, just open your .htaccess (I recommend just contacting your host) and add the following expression (remember to replace peter-v with your domain):

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond % ^peter-v\.com

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.peter-v.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

The Rewrite expressions above state that the URL http://peter-v.com permantly changes to http://www.peter-v.com.

Web servers running Windows IIS with ISAPI_Rewrite, edit the .ini file and follow the same expressions:

# IIS Mod-Rewrite configuration file

#Turn IIS Mod-Rewrite engine on

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond Host: ^peter-v\.com

RewriteRule (.*) http\://www.peter-v.com$1 [I,RP]

There you have it, now you can stop worrying about how people link to you and worry more about the anchor text they are linking to you with!! Here are a few real good posts and articles about canonicalization:

Matt Cutts

Chris Hooley

Also a good link that explains more about ISAPI_Rewrite expressions:

Scott Hanselman

This has to be the funniest interview ever and if you haven’t heard of Chris Hooley your missing out. Chris is employed by NextStudent and has set the bar very high when it comes to SEO & SEM in the student lending industry. I find Chris both hilarious and informative with a talent worth following.

 Here are some funny parts, be sure to click the link below to see the full interview:

- “Cool. I have to admit, this interview is riveting.

   Before you ask, it’s huge. ”

- “I used to be able to dunk and freestyle rap.

    I thought you were supposed to wait for me to ask you a question.

    Oh yeah sorry I just wanted everybody to know that. “

Now, for the funniest SEO interview ever: Chris Hooley interviews Chris Hooley!