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    “New School” Search Engine Optimization

    Todd Malicoat has a nice write up on what he calls “new school SEO.” Danny and I (as others) have been talking about this form of SEO for a while, but I thought it would be nice to revisit it. So what does Todd consider to be new school SEO? (1) The classic vertical search […]

    Todd Malicoat has a nice write up on what he calls “new school SEO.” Danny and I (as others) have been talking about this form of SEO for a while, but I thought it would be nice to revisit it. So what does Todd consider to be new school SEO?


    (1) The classic vertical search optimization of utilizing the Google OneBox results, Yahoo Shortcuts, Ask.com’s Smart Answers and so on. So if you are a local business, Google may show Google Local results at the top of Google.com for a localized search. Optimize for those queries and you can have a number one spot for a competitive Google search term.

    (2) Leverage the social communities… More on that in our social media optimization category.

    (3) Video/Image/Audio optimization. Use YouTube as a channel to leverage traffic to your site. Optimize your Flickr photos and link back to the content you used it on. Leverage your podcasts to send your site’s more traffic.

    (4) Be sociable and participate in your industry through online communities or in person events.

    (5) Classic reputation management (or the reverse) can be nice method for targeted traffic.

    (6) Driving traffic from offline sources…

    (7) New ideas and executing on them can send traffic to your site.

    While all these ideas are not 100% directly related to SEO. They all can help your search optimization ventures.


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    About the Author

    Barry Schwartz

    Barry Schwartz

    Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

    In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

    Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.