I have received a copy of an email that details some of the services provided by American Express Market 3D. In it, they explain the inbound link building, social bookmarking, and general directory submissions:

– Inbound Link Building: Targeted Blog Post Creation and Distribution (22)
– Our SEO content writers create an original blog post related to your industry and post on a proprietary network. One of the most important aspects of the written blog post is our control over the anchor text and the relevancy of the blog. This allows us to use your targeted keyword as the link back to your website which enhances your website’s credibility for the keyword in question. Please keep in mind that the blog post will be written in third-party form (your company not the subject) with the main purpose being a link back to your website.

– Inbound Link Building: Locate and Submit 10 Social Bookmark Links
– Links created from social bookmarking websites (such as delicious.com) allow users to access their favorite websites from any computer with an Internet connection. We add your website (create a link) to our highly used social bookmarking websites so that search engines can index a link to your website and members of these bookmarking websites can access your website.

– Inbound Link Building: Locate 15 General Directories and Submission
– General directories, such as dmoz.org, include various categories that make it easier for Internet users to find niches, products, or services (i.e, business, computers, health, etc.). In order for your website to be included in the directory, we will find the most relevant category for your business and submit your website (following the directory’s guidelines). Submitting to directories allows us to include your targeted keyword within the titles and descriptions, and when accepted, create a high-quality link back to your website.

While I do not have a problem with blog posts, social bookmarks, and directory submissions, there is a “right way” and “wrong way” to do it. Certainly working with prominent, well-known industry bloggers to receive mentions (or review your product or service) is a viable and recommended solution. And encouraging social bookmarks to your site’s “shareable content” and quality content is reasonable. Sure, when I have a new blog post, I tend to tweet about, add it to Google+, and to my Facebook page. I fully expect good websites to be listed in DMOZ.org, the Yahoo! Directory, and Best of the Web. But that, unfortunately, is not what we’re talking about here. After all, this is American Express putting their name on a service that they should be proud to offer their customers, right?

Not exactly. The problem lies with the entire execution of this process and service, which is so bad that even Google is getting involved here–telling these website owners that they have detected “unnatural links” to their website. Google also details, in their message, that after everything is cleaned up, the website owner must offer an explanation and request reconsideration. This is hardly the value-added service that I think American Express had in mind. The following is a copy of the message received from Google by a website owner as a direct result of participation in the American Express Market 3D program (I have purposely removed the name of the website):

Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.com/

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.com/,

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

I personally took the time to review all of the backlinks to the website in question, as well as all of the anchor text of the links to this website. I have seen direct evidence of the link building efforts by American Express Market 3D, and after analyzing the backlinks in detail, it is clear which anchor text that American Express Market 3D is using–and it has been very easy to identify the websites of where these backlinks have been created. Furthermore, other emails that I have received detail the exact anchor text that’s being targeted by American Express Market 3D–which is not even anchor text that appears in the title tag of the website in question. My understanding is that it is just not a keyword phrase that this website is targeting at this time.

I have also received a copy of an email report sent to the website in question from American Express Market 3D, which I’ve copied below:

Dear XXXXXXXXX,

SEO Update – Link Building

Completed Task: 1 professionally written & posted blog post

Client Website: XXXXXXXXXXXXX.com

Blog Post Title: Tips in Planning Your…..

SEO Service Category: Link Building

Benefits: By having a professional SEO writer blog about your website, we are able to control the anchor text. This allows us to use your keywords when we make links back to your site. These links help build your search engine credibility and are very beneficial to your SEO campaign.

Keep in mind that the most important part of this blog post is that it is relevant and the right keywords are used in conjunction with linksto your site.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a blog post?
A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. Therefore, a blog post is an entry on a blog.

What is anchor text?
Anchor text is the text that you click on to activate and follow a hyperlink to another webpage or another web site. Search engines use this text to determine the subject of your page and the targeted page. By using your keywords in the anchor text, we’re able to help the search engines rank you for the appropriate search phrase.

Have Additional Questions?

If you need additional help, please contact your Campaign Management Team with the information provided below.
Market 3D Search Marketing
1-877-492-9520
www.search.market3d.com
Market 3D Search Marketing Service executed by OrangeSoda Inc.
Contact Customer Service | View our Privacy Statement | Add Us to Your Address Book

This e-mail is a customer service message that has been sent to notify you of important information regarding your account. To learn more about e-mail security or report a suspicious e-mail, visit us at americanexpress.com/phishing.
© 2012 American Express Company. All rights reserved.

I generally do not have a problem with adding a blog post and including the link. I am, though, not a big fan of using the same exact anchor text, over and over again, on numerous low-quality blog posts. I personally don’t have a problem with what American Express Market 3D is doing–it’s just the execution and the fact that these links are such low quality they were flagged by Google–and the website’s search engine rankings are suffering as a result.

As a result of my detailed backlink research of the website in question, I was able to identify at least 50+ links to the site in question. Some of the blogs that were “professionally written blog posts” are currently banned in the Google search engine, which is not a sign of “quality”. Let’s take a look at two of the blog posts that were written. Again, this apparently a “value-added” service for American Express customers. Keep in mind that this is a random screen capture from the actual blog, not a blog post that is pointing to the website in question. The blog post in question is very similar to the one shown below, and was located on the same blog.

This is a prime example of the type of blog post that Google does NOT like, and the kind of blog posts that should NOT be pointing to your website. This is a prime example of the type of link building that you should NOT do. These links will get your website banned in the Google search engine (and most likely in Bing.com as well).

I believe that you, as a website owner you have a responsibility to monitor the links to your website–especially if you know if anyone is doing any sort of link building on your behalf. At the same time, if someone is building links to your website, you have a right to know exactly where those links are appearing (with the exact URLs) and where “submissions” or any other online marketing is being done, on your behalf. After carefully reviewing the links and URLs that were built by American Express, I am not surprised that the website in question recieved the message they received from Google–and why their website is suffering in the organic search results.

Let’s take a look at another example of a blog post that posted by American Express on as a “value added” and courtesy service for their customers:

This blog, called “Aloha Travel Vacation”, that not only contains blog posts about travel topics, but even blog posts about plumbing. What does plumbing have to do with Travel? Take a look at the plumbing blog posts. Here is one of the sentences: “These are places that need to be joined to as soon as one is aware of them to avoid a larger harm from developing.”. Huh? C’mon American Express, this the quality that you giving your customers? Does this really deserve to link over to your customers’ websites? By the way, the website in question, the one who received the message from Google about unnatural links, has a blog post on this particular blog. It appears that the blog is owned by Orange Soda, Inc., the SEO firm who apparently is executing these SEO campaign(s) on behalf of American Express Market 3D. This particular blog is one of many of the unnatural links built to the website in question. Here is the whois data for this domain:

In my extensive review of all of these links to the website in question, it is clear to me that this is not just an isolated incident. There are literally tons of other websites who have had these low-quality, unnatural links built to their websites by American Express. And they continue to be built, hurting not only the website in question, but hurting the search engine reputations of literally every customer who has allowed American Express to engage them in this program. This absolutely has to stop. Immediately. Before any websites are banned in the search engines as a result.

So, what’s the bottom line here? If you have a website, you owe it to yourself to immediately download and review all of the backlinks to your website. You can use the MajesticSEO.com Site Explorer to review your backlinks. I also recommend monitoring of your backlinks on a regular basis. And if you have received one of these site-devaluing messages from Google, don’t ignore it–take action.

Did Apple just reveal the name of the next Apple iPhone, the iPhone 4N via a new domain name registration? Based on whois records, Apple has apparently purchased the domain name iPhone4n.com:

What is interesting (and perhaps suspect) is that this domain name, iPhone4n.com, was registered through Godaddy, and not MarkMonitor. A review of the Apple iPhone.com domain name shows that the registrar is MarkMonitor and not Godaddy. This might just be a formality, as once you purchase a domain name it can be transferred to another registrar in the future.

The timing of this new domain name, iphone4n.com, is interesting, though, as the next WWDC is coming soon, and it would make sense that this domain name would be purchased ahead of time. And, given the fact that the last Apple iPad went from the Apple iPad2 to the New iPad, and not the iPad3 like some suspected. The iPhone 4n name is inline with Apple’s past history of naming their devices.

Fusible also picked up on this new domain name registration, as well.

LeadRefs.com is a website that works to bring owners of expiring domains, and potential buyers together. When I first visited the website, almost immediately I was hit with this banner showing the site’s various promotional leads packages. This kind of turned me off since I hadn’t heard of the website before, and wouldn’t know whether or not the packages being offered in the pop-up banner would be worth the money. Once I closed the banner, I was taken to the main page of the website. At the very top of the page you can put in a URL to check to see if a domain name is available. Just for fun I tried “Facebook.com”. I got the error message “Our internal risk system has prevented us from finding leads for this domain due to its material”. This made me REALLY curious to see what I would find if I tried “Google.com”.

Doing the “Google.com” search came up with much better results. I was given a list of various websites that had “Google.com” in the domain name that were set to expire such as ratings-google.com, answer-google.com, and desktop-google.com, and also the email address associated with the domain name (please keep in mind that if the domain owner has set their “whois” information to private then you will just see a generic email address). It made sense that the domains that I came across would be set to expire since creating a domain name with the word “Google” in it is just asking for trouble. But the experiment did show some of the great features of this site. You can test out groups of keywords, and see if there are domains that contain those keywords that are set to expire.

Expired domains usually already have some search engine rankings associated with them, and also have some domain age as well which is great for SEO. At the present time, you can get 100 lead searches per day without signing up for an account. If you do decide to sign up for an account, there are three levels you can choose from – free 3 day trial, Search Package, and Expired Package. Signing up for these packages will give you the all the regular functions, and some added extras like being able to save your search history, get an email of your search results, and access to SnapNames exclusive leads, and GoDaddy pre-release leads.

LeadRefs.com has some really strong potential. There are lots of expiring domains that people would love to sell if they only knew someone they could sell them too. This particular website brings buyers, and sellers of expired domains together in one convenient place. I also really liked the “Yesterday’s Expiring List” section. With that said, here are a few suggestions that I would humbly like to offer:

– Change the number of searches you can do without signing up from 100 a day to 5 a day. Once that limit has been reached, take the site visitor to a new page where they can try out the service free for 3 days which gives them 100 searches per day, and also show them the other packages available.

– Rename the package levels to something other than Search Package, and Expired Package. Maybe Gold / Silver, or Expanded / Premium.

– There needs to be an “About Us” section. Just looking at the site, it is hard to figure out what the site is all about. A short intro video would also work wonders.

– Clean up the grammar on the first page. Ex: “Find premium Pending Delete expiring domains with the most Leads.”

– What does “Pending Delete” mean? It may be helpful to have an FAQ available on the site. Also, make it so that a site visitor could hover their mouse over a term, and the definition of the term would show up in a message bubble.

– Are there any wildcard characters? For example, if I am interested in a domain that starts with “internet-marketing”, is there a way to find these types of domains?

Website flipping is a hot industry, and getting into the expired domain name business seems like a good idea that has a lot of potential for profit. Hopefully, the LeadRefs.com website will become a well respected place to buy and sell expired domain names. If something can be done to give more information to explain to visitors what the site is about, I’m sure that this website will get much more traffic. With that being said, LeadRefs.com does give you a way to find out what is available among expired domains, and information in regards to getting in contact with the domain owner to possibly purchase the domain. With some work, this website can become even more in the future.

You may have a link in the footer or the sidebar of someone else’s web site. Yet you need to find out what the surrounding text is around those locations. You don’t want to appear to be nothing more than on a list of paid links located on another site. Instead, you want those links to be promoting you as a trustworthy site that has something of value to offer them. You want the links to your web site surrounded by text, as if the other site is “talking about” and thus pointing to your web site.

Let’s take a look at an example list of links:

- Search Engine Watch
- Search Engine Land
- Search Engine Roundtable

That above is a list of links. Although it is a list of some of my favorite search engine related web sites, those links are not really the “ideal” type of links. Sure, they all include keywords related to “search engines”. Let’s take a look at the next paragraph of text:

The search engine news web site that has been around the longest is Search Engine Watch. SEW was run by Danny Sullivan, who now operates Search Engine Land. Barry is in charge of Search Engine Roundtable, which updates their site several times each day–and tends to have information that you won’t find on those other search engine sites.

The text that is around the links in the paragraph above provide context and are relevant to the paragraph. So, the search engines (mainly Google) tend to “like” those links better than if the links might appear as a list (as shown above). While there are other factors involved, such as whether or not those links appear on a sidebar, in a footer, or somewhere lower on the site (perhaps you have to scroll down a bit to see them), it is always preferred to have your link surrounded by text.

If you already have links to your web site, or are analyzing your current links, you may want to see the the text that surrounds your links. If you aren’t happy with it, or if the text that surrounds your link is not on-topic, take the time to talk to the web site owner that’s linking to you–you may be able to get it changed.

Read more of my search engine optimization tips for more info about link building and overall SEO.

Based on figures released in January of 2012, YouTube now reaches 4 billion hits per day. Needless to say, there are a ton of people watching web videos on a daily basis. Furthermore, people now expect to see video content discussing the types of products and services they are looking to purchase. So, if you are a company who is looking to reach your audience online, how do you get started with web video content?

Before developing your web video content, do these five things

Video can be fun to watch and produce. Most people are just excited to get started with video and integrate the material throughout their website. However, there are a few things you should think about before venturing down the video production path. Here are five things you should do before starting a web video:

1. Identify your audience – First and foremost, determine who you are speaking to with the video. Are these new website visitors? Are they returning customers? What is their mindset? How much do they know about your product or service already?
2. Develop key messages – Video is fun to create, but it can also get expensive if you don’t focus. By developing a set of key messages, you give yourself a solid foundation for a concise message. People don’t like long articles and they don’t enjoy long videos either.
3. Draft a creative brief – There are some videos you can self-produce. However, in most cases you should enlist a professional to complete the job. Develop a creative brief, or a short description of the project objectives, to share with potential video vendors. This type of information helps ensure all parties are on the same page before the expensive production process begins.
4. Create a schedule – If your project doesn’t have a target date, then you’ll likely get frustrated. You should match the excitement of video by developing a firm project schedule.
5. Determine where the video will be distributed – It’s funny, but many organizations don’t plan out where the video will be shared online. This is certainly something you need to consider before the video production begins. Figure out the sections of the website where the video will be included. Identify the content that will surround the video. Think about the information that will be available to the viewer once the video is complete.

In summary, you should just plan out your video production before jumping in. The costs of video increase when you ignore key elements like the audience, schedules and key messages. Save yourself some money and get the most out of your video production vendors by going through this 5-step checklist.

Tristan Pelligrino is the co-owner of 522 Productions and specializes in developing web videos. Tristan also runs 522 Digital, a marketing agency in Northern Virginia.

That’s why I continue to post these search engine optimization tips, so we can get back to the basics here of SEO. So, let’s take a look at heading tags and remember that your heading tags should include your keywords.

The heading tags you create fore ach of your web pages should have keywords in them for effective SEO. These are the headings for the body of your web page. You should have at least three heading tags for each page. This is how you inform the search engines and visitors about what you have to offer on your various web pages.

You definitely want to put the 1st heading tag, called, H1 around the name of your product. This is so that it targets what you are selling on that particular page of your website. You want to use the keywords that are the most important so that you will be able to have those important words at the top of the web page.

You want to do this for every single web page, even those that you don’t end up being pages where you sell items. This includes your blog pages too because they will often get a great deal of traffic. You can use the H2 and H3 headings for any subsections where you can use keywords effectively as well.

If you have many web pages, you want to adequately have headings for all of them. This includes your about us page, your frequently asked questions, and your testimonials pages. By effectively using these heading tags, you will be able to give your site plenty of structure which is professional. You will also be able to get higher search engine rankings and far more traffic than before.

According to BrightEdge, “Share of voice is an innovation from BrightEdge that helps companies understand how their search rankings stack up against the competition. This unique and now patented capability allows companies to discover the entire competitive landscape for a group of keywords, what percentage of the keywords in the group they rank for, and the number of keywords for which they rank. This patented capability helps companies discover new competitors and create winning competitive SEO strategies.

The number and types of digital channels that a marketer can leverage to out-rank their competition has exploded. Beyond their web site, they can also leverage blogs, social media, video sharing, mobile content, and many other channels. Until now, business owners and designers of web pages had to guess their share of voice and relevance manually, without a proven system. The new patent bridges the knowledge gap between guessing and knowing who has the greatest share of voice in organic search, which is incredibly useful information for any SEO practitioner.”

Here is more info on the patent:

Abstract
A method for managing reference to an entity on a network includes determining shares of voice for an entity and other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to a plurality of search terms. The method also includes correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities. Thereafter, shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels may be correlated to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels. The relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities and the relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels may then be displayed.

Inventors: Yu; Jimmy (Foster City, CA), Yu; Sammy (San Mateo, CA), Park; Lemuel S. (Cerritos, CA), Yip; Rolland (Foster City, CA)
Assignee: Brightedge Technologies, Inc. (San Mateo, CA)
Appl. No.: 12/855,668
Filed: August 12, 2010

What is claimed is:

1. A method for managing references to an entity on a network, comprising: determining shares of voice for an entity and other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to a plurality of search terms, wherein determining shares of voice includes determining rank positions for the search terms with respect to the entity and the other entities and multiplying the rank positions by products of estimated click rates and volumes of traffic on the network for the entity and the other entities; correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities; correlating shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels; and displaying the relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities and the relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining shares of voice includes retrieving search results associated with different geographic locations.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein calculating shares of voice includes determining volatility of search results for the search terms.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising correlating shares of voice with historical changes in search signals.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the channels include at least one of display advertisements, organic searches, page searches, linked advertisement networks, banner advertisements, contextual advertisements, e-mail, blogs, social networks, social news, affiliate marketing, mobile advertisements, media advertisements, video advertisements, discussion forums, news sites, rich media, social bookmarks, paid searches and in-game advertisements.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the search terms are determined by a process including: determining a grouping for actions related to the entity, the grouping including a plurality of terms; searching the network for the terms associated with the grouping; and analyzing results of the searches to determine the rank positions for the entity within the results.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein analyzing the results of the searches includes crawling the results of the search.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising performing a keyword frequency analysis on the pages crawled during the crawling step.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising grouping keywords identified during the crawling step with the terms of the grouping.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein crawling the results of the search includes identifying page types of references within the search results.

11. A system for optimizing online references to an entity, the system comprising: a processor configured to execute computer instructions to cause the system to perform operations, the operations comprising: searching at least one channel on a network for references to the entity and other entities using a plurality of search terms to generate search results; scoring the references associated with each of the plurality of search terms to generate scores for the references within the search results with respect to the entity and the other entities; correlating conversions by one or more visits to the entity with the search terms that directed the visits to the entity to determine a conversion rate; determining shares of voice for the entity and the other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to the plurality of search terms, wherein determining shares of voice includes determining rank positions for the search terms with respect to the entity and the other entities and multiplying the rank positions by products of estimated click rates and volumes of traffic on the network for the entity and the other entities; correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities based on the scores for the references; and correlating shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels based on the scores for the references.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein searching at least one channel includes searching at least one of: display advertisements, organic searches, page searches, linked advertisement networks, banner advertisements, contextual advertisements, e-mail, blogs, social networks, social news, affiliate marketing, mobile advertisements, media advertisements, video advertisements, discussion forums, news sites, rich media, social bookmarks, paid searches and in-game advertisements.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein using a plurality of search terms to generate search results includes using a plurality of keywords.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein using a plurality of keywords further includes crawling previously returned search results and conducting a keyword frequency analysis to identify at least some of the plurality of keywords.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein scoring the references associated with each of the plurality of search terms includes determining a keyword rank.

16. The system of claim 11, further comprising scoring the references associated with each of the plurality of search terms to generate scores for the references within the search results with respect to competitive listings; comparing the scores of the references within the search results with respect to the identify with the scores for the references within the search results with respect to competitive listings; and displaying the search terms, the competitive listings, and the scores for the references within the search results with respect to the competitive listings.

17. The system of claim 11, further comprising determining costs for improving the scores of the references within the search results with respect to the entity.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising determining values for improving the scores of the references within the search results associated with the search terms and selecting references to be improved based on determining the costs and values for improving the scoring of the references associated with the search terms.

19. The system of claim 17, further comprising optimizing scores based on the steps of determining the costs and values for improving the scores of the references associated with the search terms.

20. The system of claim 11, further comprising performing a compliance analysis for the entity.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the compliance analysis includes defining rules for the entity, defining constructs for the entity, determining owners for the constructs, and applying the rules to the constructs to determine compliance of the constructs with the rules, wherein applying the rules is performed in a distributed network in the cloud.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein applying the rules includes applying the rules by way of a virtual private network.

I posted February 2012 search engine rankings, as well, if you would like to compare February 2012 with March 2012.

During March 2012, according to comScore, “Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in March with 66.4 percent market share, followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.3 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 13.7 percent. Ask Network accounted for 3.0 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.6 percent.”

18.4 billion explicit core searches were conducted in March, with Google Sites ranking first with 12.2 billion (up 4 percent). Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.8 billion searches (up 5 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.5 billion (up 4 percent), Ask Network with 555 million (up 4 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 285 million (up 7 percent).

Home Depot, the home improvement “big box” retailer, has been caught promoting what I call “questionable” link tactics and providing false information to their vendors. In an email to their vendors (specifically those who provide installation services), a representative from Home Depot encourages their vendors to link to specific pages on Home Depot’s website using specific anchor text–and then encourages those links to be “hidden”. Furthermore, Home Depot’s email tells the vendor that linking to Home Depot will essentially increase their website rankings in the search engines.

Several “big box” retailers have been outed recently, including JC Penney, as well as even Google, for using questionable linking tactics in an effort to increase their search engine rankings. While those cases have been questionable because the companies either bought anchor text links from other websites or paid for links to their website on blogs, the Home Depot, in this case, is encouraging their vendors to link with specific anchor text and [b]encouraging those links to be hidden[/b].

The following is the email that I have obtained from one of Home Depot’s vendors. I have only edited a few parts of it (specifically the email address of the user it was sent to).

From: The Home Depot - Home Services
Sent: Monday, April 9, 2012 PM
To: [email address removed] xxxxxx
Subject: Online advertising for Installation Services

SERVICE PROVIDER COMMUNICATION
Date:             April 9, 2012
To:                All US Service Providers
From:            Home Services Operations
Re:                Online advertising for Installation Services

SUMMARY

The Home Depot is in the process improving our online
advertising efforts for our installation services.
We are using our brand authority and marketing power
to increase traffic to our site and convert customers.
We would like to extend this benefit to all of our
business partners and are requesting that you add
a link on your site to relative key words that will
aid our related installation page authority.
Please note that the hyperlink does not have
to be visually indicated.

Linking to The Home Depot website will benefit
our business partners by increasing the page
authority of your website.  Page Authority
predicts the likelihood of a single page
to rank well in search results.  Ranking high
in search results will assist with driving
more relevant traffic to your website.

We look forward to working with you on this
mutually beneficial marketing endeavor.
Please refer to "Action Required" for next
steps and instructions on implementation.

ACTION REQUIRED

* Create the link using the following format:
  [Link Text]

URL:http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/
servlet/ContentView?pn=SV_HS_Home_Insulation

 

Link Text: "Carpet Installation" or your
preferred text.  Please request the
Keyword List spreadsheet for a larger
sample of keywords to use for your
preferred text. Below is a sample of
preferred text to use for flooring: 

Carpet flooring
Carpet install
Carpet installation

Below is an example of the HTML Code
necessary in order for the link to
appear properly on your web page:

carpet installation 

* Ensure that the link is displayed in the
correct format and located on the appropriate
page related to The Home Depot's corresponding
installation category. Provide us with the
URL of the page where the link
will be once it is live on your site. 

* Please send a confirmation email to Joy Tyler at
Joy_M_Tyler@homedepot.com once you haveimplemented
the link on the appropriate page that includes the URL. 

CONTACT

Please email Joy Tyler team at joy_m_tyler@homedepot.com
if there are additional questions or if assistance
is needed choosing the appropriate
page for the link to be displayed.

2455 Paces Ferry Rd., Atlanta, GA 30339

While I do not have a really big issue with Home Depot using their own internal network of vendors to increase Home Depot’s search engine rankings, it appears to me that just doing so–and encouraging specific internal anchor text–is a violation of Google’s Acceptable Webmaster Guidelines. Furthermore, the fact that the Home Depot is encouraging (or even mentioning) the fact that the links do not have to be “visually indicated” is again a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. You should NOT hide links from users, under any circumstances.

Another issue I have is the fact that Home Depot is almost “demanding” and REQUIRING that the vendor place the links to Home Depot’s site. What if they do not comply?

Finally, Home Depot is spreading false information to their vendors: in the email, they say that “Linking to The Home Depot website will benefit our business partners by increasing the page authority of your website.”. Well, in fact, that statement is completely false. I do not believe that linking out to someone will increase YOUR page authority of YOUR website, it will in fact potentially increase the page authority of the site that you’re linking out to. Granted, I do believe that it is a good practice to link out to trusted sites, especially when you mention them by company name or want to provide an example to your readers (such as I have done so in this post).

However, with so many rumors and false information being spread nowadays by so-called “SEO Experts” and “Internet Marketing Gurus” out there, we don’t need a big box retailer spreading false information like this–and it’s just flat out WRONG to encourage hidden anchor text links to your website.

Hat tip goes out to John W at Rank Solid for help with this post.

As an internet marketer, the primary function of your job is to drive high quality traffic to your site, with the ultimate goal of converting that traffic to either a sale, completed lead form, newsletter subscription or some other conversion point. So for your site to generate more revenue, you need more relevant traffic, right? Not necessarily. We often overlook one of the most important factors that we have complete control over and can provide instant results: our landing pages. Whether you’re a small business with a tight advertising budget or a large company spending tens of thousands of dollars on search engine marketing, making very simple changes to your landing page can show tremendous boosts to your ROI. This means you can increase your sales from the same amount of traffic you have coming to your site today. Take it from us, we made a series of changes to our already high converting pages, and further boosted our conversion by 42%, in a matter of weeks!

When it comes to maximizing the design of your site and landing pages, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with where to even start. An entire site redesign can be expensive and time consuming, so instead, focus on your landing pages and where the majority of your conversions occur (for example, the shopping basket or contact us page). Start with the key points below and you’ll quickly be on your way to capitalizing on more conversions without having to increase your advertising budget!

1. Trust – In today’s day and age, where our inboxes constantly get filled with spam and identity theft is a major issue, it’s no wonder why you must “sell” the trustworthiness of your site and your brand. Do you have a security seal through a third party? Make sure it’s prominently displayed on all pages, especially during checkout. Are you BBB accredited? What about any awards and accolades? Don’t forget about including testimonials or visually showing the logos of some of the companies that you work with. Remember, once someone is interested in your product or service, they need to know you’re legitimate, so show them you are.

2. Consistency – In my opinion, this is the most overlooked factor. Your site must show consistency, from fonts, to colors, layouts, images, copy, etc. If you’re landing page has many different style fonts, in different sizes and colors, to you it may look good, but to a user it can be confusing, which is never a good thing.

3. Call to Action – We all know that your call to action must be clearly defined, right? (If you didn’t know that, now you do!). Not only should your call to action be clearly defined, it should stick out and be easy to find, preferably above the fold. Try changing the color of the call to action, the location and the copy associated with it. In addition, is your phone number easy to find on your site? What about your contact us page? If you’re an organization that receives calls, make sure your phone number is prominently shown at the top of the page and your contact us page can quickly be found.

4. Conversion Testing – Now that you’ve made changes to your landing page, you have to test them to make sure they work! A/B testing should be an ongoing practice for every website. There are tools that make this very easy for you, such as Google Website Optimizer. Test every element you can, including sales copy, colors, call to action location and page layout. This is exactly how we boosted our conversion rate by 42% in a matter of weeks. We tested, analyzed data, made adjustments, and repeated the process over, and over, and over (matter fact, we’re still testing!).

The incremental increases in conversion rates can and will add up to a large boost for your website. Remember, the process is simple: make changes, test, analyze and repeat.
Matt Powers is an Internet Marketer at Blue Soda Promo, an online promotional products company. BSP imprints logos on items like sunglasses, tote bags, stress balls, koozies and polo shirts at ridiculously low prices. We make your brand POP!