New SEO Course - Advanced SEO Training for Managers. The best SEO course you'll attend in 2014.

Could your business survive a manual or algorithmic Google penalty? That's the most important question for SEOs in 2014.

Over the past two years we have seen the number and frequency of algorithm updates and manual penalties increase as Google's Webmaster Spam team gets better at identifying tactics. This only looks set to continue over the next two years.

So how can you adjust your tactics to get results without risking everything?*

In this post I'm going to run through an SEO strategy that meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines, takes advantage of new and developing technologies and diversifies your traffic sources so that you're not so heavily reliant on Google search traffic.

If you're completely stuck with SEO or unsure you're going about it the right way then you can learn everything in this post on our hands-on, workshop-style SEO training courses.

I've included tips for content, link building, technical, offline, local, social and mobile considerations to create an overall picture of what search engines see as a 'good' site and help you give your SEO strategy a makeover for 2014.

In 2013, most businesses realise the importance of content. That's why so many SEO agencies are repositioning themselves as content agencies, or at least offering it as a primary product. Our Content Marketing courses used to attract mainly bloggers, but since the Panda and Penguin Google updates we have seen a large increase in SEOs wanting to learn about content.

Yet this mass conversion to content brings up some issues - there is too much noise. Most businesses are still stuck in an outdated content strategy - regular, mediocre quality blog posts with little intent. The content is happening, but is it working?

With content at the forefront of so many marketing strategies, it seems at first glance that big businesses have a massive advantage. Whole in-house marketing teams as well as high profile agencies on hand to craft incredible content. How does a small business compete against this with a 1-3 person marketing team?

Big Evergreen Content

The idea for this post was sparked by Hannah Smith's talk at BrightonSEO 'Go Big or Go Home'(excellent write up on State of Search), which prompted me to revisit Dr. Pete's SEOmoz post at the end of last year 'Why Big Content Is Worth the Risk'. Both Hannah and Dr. Pete explain why big content is necessary and how it can help your business stand out in a very crowded world of below par blog posts:

"We all want the low-hanging fruit, but let’s be honest – the low-hanging fruit is rotten, bruised, and covered with the grubby fingerprints of all the other spoiled brats pawing at it."

The consensus of both the talk and the post is that big content takes around 40 hours to produce. Hannah compared this to an average 12 hours for 'small content' but I think that's a huge overestimation for the majority of businesses. James Carson recently alerted Twitter to the existence of a job ad for an agency looking for a Marketing Executive who for £18,000 a year had to write 25 blog posts a day. That's well over 6,000 articles a year on a range of topics, written by somebody with little knowledge about the subject and obviously no research.

With that much noise, it's important to be different to break through, and that's where big content comes in. But I'm going to go a step further and ask you to consider another element - sustainability. Another popular topic at BrightonSEO, and a common phrase in marketing blogs at the moment is Evergreen Content.

In the rest of this post I'm going to try and convince you why your content should be both big and evergreen for the holy grail of content marketing.

The famous and fabled are always reeling off catchy one-liners.

Some of them mean nothing, some are just funny and some are life-altering.

Most of these quotes were concocted prior to the existence of the internet, let alone blogging, but in many ways they’re appropriate as guidelines for online writers in the modern age.

None are steadfast rules but all contain something insightful.

Of course, to become a great blogger, you should come on our Blogging and Content Marketing Training which is ideal for both businesses and individuals.

So without further ado, here are 20 famous (or almost-famous) quotes that have nothing todo with blogging but which every blogger should remember.

Update 09/07: Search Engine Land have reported that Google's John Mueller has twice stated that if you are guest blogging for links, then those links should be nofollowed. This is stronger proof than ever that Google considers guest post links a violation of their Webmaster Guidelines and it's a matter of time until we see some sort of 'guest post link penalty'. I think this should be taken with a pinch of salt so you shouldn't rush out and nofollow all your posts, but you should definitely think about the kinds of sites you are writing for and the quality of your content.

Nearly two years since we wrote about guest blogging as the next big thing for SEO and link building, it's time to look at how guest posting has changed, the impact of scaling and whether it's still a valuable SEO technique.

It's important to remember that content marketing is not just guest blogging. Find out exactly what it is on our Content Marketing Course or read our Content Marketing Guide.

Planning a content marketing strategy for 2016?

Looking for useful content marketing guides that hit the marketing spot?

There have been countless blog posts and guides written on the subject, and the list grows daily. But the problem isn’t a lack of knowledge or how-to information. The problem is finding a content marketing guide that meets your needs at your level of expertise. And dare I say who’s got the time to trawl through numerous guides. Isn’t it better to just get on with it?

While it’s tempting to get stuck in, one of the key things about content marketing is having a solid plan and editorial calendar. By investing the time to align your content marketing efforts to your business objectives you will reap the rewards - Google absolutely loves quality fresh content. There are loads of comprehensive guides but some are overwhelming for content marketing newbies. With this in mind we’ve produced a round up of the top 5 content marketing guides on the interwebs to save you time in planning your 2016 content marketing plan.

BrightonSEO usually ends with a 'Lightning Talks' session but this year Kelvin switched up the format and introduced a 'Greatest Tips Session'.

The idea: every speaker from the day shares their top actionable SEO tip that attendees can start using when back in the office on Monday morning. We particularly liked the idea because it meant a chance to catch tips from speakers which we'd missed on the day.

We came away with 21 fantastic tips which we couldn't help but share with those who couldn't make it on Friday.

You can watch the full video, skim through the quick tips, or read the full transcript with our thoughts below.