Although blogging seems to be the way of things these days, other new sources of information such as podcasts must not be overlooked. Podcasts are basically radio type broadcasts which can be downloaded and listened to whenever someone wants as opposed standard broadcasts which must be tuned into to when they are on, with standard broadcasts if you miss the exact timeslot you miss out.
Don’t let the name podcast mislead you into thinking they can only be played on Apple’s Ipod. They are in fact usually just plain MP3 files which can be played on PCs, Macs and of course all kinds of MP3 players. I’m not sure why these type of files ended up being called ‘podcasts’ but presumably it was to do with the popularity of Ipods at the time. Wikipedia’s podcasting page has more information for those that are interested.
Many useful search engine optimisation podcasts are available for download over the Internet. A good place to start looking for podcasts is Yahoo Podcasts, for this post though I have picked out four podcasts which I think are quite helpful.
The first two podcasts are published by Joe Balestrino, the self proclaimed Mr-SEO. The first of the two broadcasts covers how to avoid the sandbox or indeed minimise the amount of time spent it it and is about 22 minutes in duration (although the sandbox talk only lasts for about 14/15 minutes). I like how Joe Balestrino suggests that pretty much as soon as you get your domain name throw it up there on the web, with say even just three or four pages of raw content with no regard for design, layout or aesthetics. The point being that when you have finished your design/development and launch your site for ‘real’ you will spend less time in the sandbox. It is located at Mr SEO, how to avoid the sandbox.
The second podcast from Joe Balestrino located at Mr SEO, listener questions lasts over 45 minutes in duration. In it Joe takes listener questions which cover issues such as linkbaiting, domain registration, articles as duplicate content and more. Good stuff from Joe, not so sure about the very cheesy intro to his podcasts though, oh well nobody is perfect.
The third and fourth podcasts of interest include interviews with none other than Matt Cutts. Cutts is the guy that works in Google and is the person many of us webmasters turn to for the latest ‘inside scope’ on the Google algorithm.
The third podcast is as mentioned above an Interview with Google engineer Matt Cutts. It’s about a year old, but don’t let that put you off as there is some pretty good information to hear which is helpful to both the newbie and experienced search engine optimizer. Matt talks about how the net judges your content, why targeting small phrases initially is the way to go, keyphrase density and some other issues too. It is located at Matt Cutts Interview #1 and lasts just over 13 minutes.
The fourth podcast is another and later interview with Matt Cutts, where he again talks about a varierty of issues. Matt talks about duplicate content, the Google sandbox, hiring SEO companies and a couple of other things. This podcast is almost 24 minutes long and is located at Matt Cutts Interview #2.
Hopefully you find the podcasts interesting and helpful. I personally think it’s a nice change to be able sit back and listen to all the information rather than constantly be reading through all the search engine forums and blogs out there. If you would like to save a podcast rather than listen to the streaming version be sure to right click on the podcast link and click ‘Save Target As’. Saving the podcasts one by one has the advantage of allowing you to a) listen to them offline and b) to put them onto your portable MP3 player so you can listen to them pretty much anywhere.