Everyone hates link building. It’s the truth. It’s tedious, time consuming and often a long-term high effort project. What if I told you there is something you can do now, today, that will drastically change the way you build links tomorrow? Welcome to the world of user generated content.

Do you think Youtube has to build links? How about Facebook, or Twitter? How about Digg or Amazon? The answer of course, is no. While you may say “But, but, but they’re huuuuuge!” Yep, they sure are — but they didn’t start out huge. What do these sites have in common? They’re Web 2.0 (admittedly, amazon is kind of a stretch). More specifically, they’re built on user generated content (UGC).

What is user generated content? Any content that is just that, generated by users. Youtube allows users to upload videos. Twitter allows users to post status updates. Facebook allows users to do similar and network with friends. Amazon allows users to sell, review and discuss products.

Now for our efforts we’ll assume there are two types of user generated content to leverage: autonomous UGC and marketable UGC.

Autonomous UGC is something like Youtube or Blogspot. Users post content and then they will promote their own content. Others will promote the content as well without any real incentive on behalf of the site. Essentially, with autonomous UGC, links are built for you, naturally, automatically. Sites like this leverage their users for content, links and promotion.

Marketable UGC is a bit different. A site like Amazon (or any ecommerce site) doesn’t get links because of their reviews.. but they rank for a variety of terms through them (and build trust, authority and a variety of other things too). They leverage their UGC primarily for its intrinsic value.

Autonomous UGC is obviously the goal here, but in the case of an ecommerce site, it’s just not likely. However for the more adventurous of us, here are a few ideas:

• Create a “widget reviews” site and create a badge of some type (or automatic notification sent to brands mentioned) to acquire links from competitors to redirect or pass link juice to your main site.
• Create a section of your site to allow users to upload content of them using the product. This works well for musical instrument retailers or food sites. Often the users will do this and promote it on their own.

Here’s a real life example for you, regarding the SEO for Associated Content — From SEOmoz Comments:

If you run an article directory or media outlet online, collect email address for web sites that are mentioned in your articles. For instance, when I was doing SEO for Associated Content – www.associatedcontent.com – one of the best link-building tactics I used was to send out “Local Top Ten” article requests to our authors. After receiving a hundred or so articles, each discussing ten small businesses (most of which had web sites), I would find the business’ web site, put the email address into an Excel file and run off a mail merge that said something like:

Dear ((contact name))

This is a courtesy email to inform you that someone has written about ((Business Name))) on Associated Content, a new media outlet for the people, by the people. Your business is mentioned in an article titled: ((Article Title)) . Please point your browser to: ((article URL)).

Feel free to link to this article from your “News” or “Media” section, or send it out in your next newsletter. For your convenience, I have provided the html link code below:

((insert link with title as anchor text))

Kind regards,

Everett Sizemore

- – - – This was our #1 strategic link-building initiative and was a big help in building our more than 120,000 incoming links.

As a bonus to all of the other SEO benefits, it seems those leveraging UGC are going to be getting an extra benefit – I’ve been noticing on my sites that when someone posts a comment or review on an older page, the page jumps up in the SERPs (albeit often briefly). The caffeine update is thought to place great emphasis on freshness as well. Perhaps this ties into some type of QDF related piece of the algorithm? I’d like to hear your thoughts, or if any of you have experienced anything similar — please comment below!

One of my favorite quick fixes to kickstart a conversion rate campaign for my clients is to incentivize newsletter signups. By adding a great incentive that they’ll receive immediately upon signing up, you’ll encourage them to complete the sale and become a member of your newsletter simultaneously.

Let’s take a look at your current newsletter signup form. It’s probably sitting in a sidebar and looks a little something like this:

Walmart.com Newsletter Signup

Or this:

Target.com Newsletter Signup

I’d wager that the Walmart.com signup has a higher conversion rate than the Target.com signup, due to the inclusion of a prominent headline and emphasis on savings. It’s also interesting that Target.com chooses not to display their privacy policy anywhere close to the signup box, or perhaps its interesting that Walmart.com does. Also note the submit button text, “Sign Up” and “Go”. I think Walmart.com has again outdone Target.com,  as “Sign Up” is much more descriptive and clear than “Go”, not to mention people most commonly associate “Go” with the color green, not red, but red is part of their branding — I get it. All that being said, I really think both of these retail giants could do better.

First we need to look at placement. Where is your signup box placed? Is it in a sidebar? The two examples above are not, they’re below the fold at the bottom of the page. Since different pages call for different elements and locations, it’s not always viable to have your newsletter signup prominently placed on every page… in its current form. When I say “current form” I mean, right now your newsletter signup is just that, a newsletter signup. It has no real other function for the subscriber, which brings us to the next step, “function”. If we really want to increase our signups we need to integrate our newsletter into our site as a useful tool with a variety of functions. Here are some specific ideas:

• When a product is out of stock, have a newsletter signup that says “alert me when this product is back in stock”.
• Allow a subscriber to receive an alert when a certain product is on sale.
• Allow a customer to be sent a ‘reminder’ at preset or user definable intervals. This is particularly useful for websites with long sales processes where decision making may take weeks or months.

A non-specific, sitewide idea may be to offer a 5% coupon for signing up. (Extra tip: On your submit button, use terminology such as: “Send my Coupon Now!”… not “Go”).

These ideas are great because they allow us to place the signup box at the product level and create a useful incentive for signing up. Industry specific signup incentives are the best kind and I’m sure with your business you can think of other sales functions that may warrant their own signup incentive.

In closing, the real takeaway that I intended for this post was to encourage you to enhance your signup form’s usefulness to the customer and in turn, give them a great incentive to signup for your site. Most often the incentives will (if they’re well thought out), help faciliate the sales process and thus you’ll be making more sales as a result.

One of my favorite ways to find links is to use Google itself. By doing this, you’re guaranteeing that the pages you’re getting links from are already indexed and most likely will be reindexed in the future. So, this defeats the whole “Why aren’t my backlinks getting found” issue right from the start. Arguably, it also helps with relevancy, as with any queries that include a keyword, Google is basically saying: “Here’s a list of sites to get a link from that are relevant to this keyword”.  So let’s get down to it:

Note: To use these just copy/paste and search them in Google.

Part 1 – The Basics – General Keyword Related Links

For finding a general variety of sites (directories, link pages, reciprocal, etc) you can use these queries: (replace keyword with yours)

• keyword “add site”
• keyword “add url”
• keyword “submit url”
• keyword “submit site”
• keyword “suggest url”
• keyword “suggest site”
• keyword directory
• “list of keyword sites”
• “recommended keyword links”
• “recommended keyword sites”
• “resources keyword”

Part 2 – Getting Creative – Finding CMS Backlinks

Some of my favorite methods are a bit more creative and could be seen by some as being (slightly) blackhat.

These searches take advantage of widely used content management systems (CMS’s) with features that allow you to drop a link, be it by profile or comment.

• keyword “powered by wordpress”
• keyword “powered by disqus”
• keyword “powered by vbulletin”
• inurl:register keyword “powered by drupal”

Basically, to find these the process is like this:

1. After you add a link somewhere, figure out if the site is using a common CMS or script.
2. Once you know the script or CMS, craft a query using the available search operators to find other sites like it.

For example: If we successfully put a link on a site that was using Terry’s CMS, and the comment page had the url: terryscms.com/comment.php and at the bottom of every page you saw “powered by terry’s cms”, you’d use this query:

inurl:comment.php keyword “powered by terrys cms” (the keyword part is optional, as always).

Part 3 – Taking It To The Next Level – Finding Links to Buy

There are some really great links out there that can be bought via a donation. Use a search like this:

• inurl:.org “sponsors” keyword (keyword is very optional here, not recommended in most cases)
• keyword “advertise”

Do you have any other tips for using Google to find backlinks? If so, comment and share!!

Probably the most misunderstood and misrepresented of all SEO tasks is that of link building. Throughout my years in the world of SEO, I’ve noticed a core set of habits that the really effective link builders share. It should be noted that I don’t consider an effective link builder one that gets a ton of links.. but rather one that gets results, consistently and measurably.

1.They emulate a natural link profile.

Ask yourself, “What kind of links would a legitimately awesome site like mine naturally acquire?” I’ll bet the answer isn’t hundreds of profile links or spammed blog comments. More likely the links would share these attributes:

• Be placed with varied anchor text
• Be located on a diverse range of IPs
• A wide diversity of site types (web 2.0, articles, etc)

The best link builders are aware of this and act accordingly.

2. They focus on quality rather than quantity.

It may come as a shock to some of you, but I can say with certainty that a handful of highly trusted, high authority backlinks will outperform 2 handfuls of spammed, low quality backlinks. Those in the know begin with building trust and authority early on.

3. They place emphasis on branding and general visibility rather than SEO.

Afterall, the real purpose of internet marketing is to increase sales and/or visibility, right? An interview will do much more for this (and SEO) than a blog comment on some tucked away personal blog.

4. They are organized.

In order to be really effective, you’ll need to keep track of your data for analysis. Is this email converting higher than the last one? Are these types of sites more receptive to linking to my site? Spreadsheets are essential here and many samples can be found online for your use. Also a good way to gauge progress and provide a client with proof of time spent.

5. They offer value when asking for value.

This one should be common sense for the most part. Write a good, useful article before you attempt syndication, offer to make a “donation” for their time required to update the website to encourage them to add your link. Be considerate of others and give them an incentive to help you out.

6. They are persistent.

Link building takes time. Not all of your emails will be responded to the first time, not all viral content will reach the right channels. Rising up the ranks in search engines takes time too. You can’t expect to spend 10 hours on the day after you launched the site building links and pop up at number 1 (or even if you do, you can’t count on staying there). Slow, calculated campaigns will lead the pack.

7. They work smarter, not harder.

Highly effective link builders are able to provide great results without spending a tremendous amount of time. Through optimizing your content and building your site to be a link magnet, focusing on the right kind of links (those that are good link targets), and in general doing the things above, you’ll do more with less.

Too often we’re stuck with general advice and one size fits all ideas and methods when looking to increase our search positioning. Wouldn’t it be great to simultaneously be more effective and spend less time? Welcome to the world of niche specific marketing and search engine optimization.

What is niche specific marketing? In a basic sense, niche specific marketing is about utilizing the specific channels available to a particular niche that aren’t available to others. There are often certain types of links or sites that will be more likely to link to your site, for example, it’s much easier to get a link from a guitar hobby website to your guitar strings website than it would be to get a link from a medical website to your guitar strings website (unless you had some clever linkbait about medical conditions developed when playing the guitar for instance, but that’s another article).

Why should I engage in niche specific marketing?

• Spend less time – Links and coverage are easier to come by.
• Make more money – Traffic sent from related sites has a higher conversion rate, in general.

For the first example let’s pretend that we have a web design company. Our website isn’t ranking as well as we’d like for our various keywords and we’d like to get some incoming links with minimal effort. Here are some ideas for niche specific SEO:

• Put a link to your site from all of the sites you design.
• Submit your work to design aggregators and directories of standards compliant sites.
• Get listed in directories of web designers.
• Give testimonials to creators of products you use in your day to day business in exchange for a link back.
• Submit sites created with third party scripts or software to them as example sites.
• Release a theme and include a backlink requirement.

While some of these can be done with other niches, most of them are only available to web design sites – such as getting links from the sites you design, directories of web designers, testimonials, etc.

For the next example let’s say we have a website that sells blue widgets. Here are some ideas:

• Contact blue widget hobbyists and request a link.
• Get listed in blue widget site directories.
• Look for the “experts” in blue widgets, maybe teachers that teach you how to play the blue widget? Get them to link to you as a resource for their students.
• Become a member of the blue widget sellers association and get a link from their site in the company directory.
• Start a blog about blue widgets, do interviews with blue widget experts and cover industry news.

The trick here is to think creatively about your niche and figure out your potential link targets – that is, the sites that are most likely to link to you. I’ve yet to see a niche that didn’t have certain opportunities for links that weren’t available to non-related sites. So the next time you’re scratching your head and looking for new ways to get links, think about niche specific SEO – but be careful, it just might be easier than you thought

A lesser explored side of the SEO world is manifesting and making itself increasingly visible with each new feature or search whitepaper released over the past year or so. Still, the area of user data and its impact on SEO remains a grey area for most of those active in the SEO community. With the ability to change the game as we know it, I think it’s about time we paid some much needed attention to usage data and its SEO potential.

With the proliferation of social media it seems we can’t go a few days without hearing some rumors of future “real time search” or social integration into Google. It’s quite evident at this point that Google is quite interested in social media, be it Twitter, Facebook, Digg, or some other “hot” web app (See this for example: Google in Talks to Acquire Twitter). More recently, the “caffeine” update that Google pushed out seems to favor fresh content and place increased emphasis on onpage content (a necessary shift to provide fresher content), not to mention the connotations of the word ‘caffeine’.

If you take a step back and look at the SEO status quo, so to speak, where link building is often the make or break component of a successful search engine optimization campaign, the idea of user data isn’t a new one. The very idea of ranking sites based on inbound link popularity is social in its essence, right? Google figured out that more often than not, a site with substantial incoming links was a higher quality site than one with less inbound links. It didn’t take long for the SEOs of the world to figure out how to manipulate their incoming link profile and achieve top ranks for irrelevant terms, thus negating Googles plan to offer the most relevant results to their users. While Google has remained on top, both traffic wise and relevancy wise (in my opinion), a great deal of effort is being allocated to increase relevancy and offset manipulative SEO practices (examples being TrustRank, SearchWiki and SideWiki). Even Microsoft has stepped up to the plate with the relatively unknown BrowseRank.

So, the question here is not “is it going to happen?”, but “how will it effect my SEO efforts?”. To answer this, let’s take a look at a recent article from SEOmoz.

In the fantastic Search Engine Ranking Factors 2009, SEOmoz asked a panel of experts a variety of questions about usage data and its impact on SEO. The topics of the questions are a good source of the information that could be used to impact rankings and the current opinions of a wide range of SEO experts: (in order of most likely to least likely to have an effect)

• Historical Click-Through Rate from Search Results to the Exact Page/URL
• Historical Click-Through Rate from Search Results to Pages on this Domain
• Search Queries for the Domain Name or Associated Brand
• Use of Query Refinement Post-Click on a Search Result
• Average “Time on Page” Duration
• Data from Google’s SearchWiki Voting, Ratings, Comments
• References/Links to the Domain in Gmail Emails

I think we can expand this to include social usage as well, tweets, facebook shares and social bookmarks. If real time search were to become a reality I’d think these metrics would play a substantial part in the ranking algorithm. So, given the abilities of the search engines to collect usage data, how can we plan accordingly and optimize our sites?

Here are some (primarily whitehat) ideas:

• One way to perform well would be to increase the quality of your sites and the “stickiness factor”.
• Make sure your content is engaging and encourages a visitor to spend a good amount of time on the site.
• Focus on conversion optimization – facilitate a high pageview interaction to lower your bounce rate and the possibility of a click back to the results page.
• Optimize your page titles to entice clickthroughs.

Some more creative (I’d like to think these are greyhat at worst) ideas:

• Use Mechanical Turk and buy actions – Hire 500 people to click your search result for your keyword and give a positive review on SideWiki/SearchWiki, also have them stay longer on the page, view multiple pages, tweet, share on facebook, etc.
• Link to the Google redirect for your keyword: Such as this link (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=6&ved=0CB0QFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.terrygodier.com%2F&rct=j&q=terry+godier&ei=7kDbSsOXEY-MMrvP7ecH&usg=AFQjCNE8HztYigLMjuFY0HEfrS6xsnCFdQ), which is the Google redirect for the keyword ‘Terry Godier’. However, this url string will likely become (if it isn’t already) dynamic and based on session data, so exploiting this may/may not be of any benefit.
• Implement interactive features on page, such as neat mouse effects that people will play with (this brings to mind the gimicky javascript example that traps the mouse in the page thereby not allowing the user to exit).

In closing, it’s important to note that we still don’t have a definitive timeframe for when usage data will become a decisive factor in the search ranking process. Some of us, myself included, hope the idea just dies, as it seems the benefits are far outweighed by the consequences (misuse: negatively interacting with competitors sites, promoting Google’s idea of quality content – that is: content with low bounce rates, informational bias and substantial branding, etc). But, being prepared and knowledgeable is as essential to SEO as it is to business in general, so I hope to see more conversation about this topic amongst the SEO crowd before we’re substantially behind the curve… and besides, do we really need another rehashed “Top 10 Ways to Get Links” article?

One of the most essential skills to have if you own or consult on ecommerce sites would be the ability to optimize conversions. If you’ve already got traffic, it’s the easiest way to drastically increase sales, almost immediately.

Wikipedia defines conversion optimization as: the science and art of creating an experience for a website visitor with the goal of converting the visitor into a customer.

To illustrate this example in real life terms, let’s say we have a website that does 100 visitors a day from a certain keyword through Google. Right now, for every 100 visitors the site receives 1 sale. That’s a 1% conversion rate. By focusing on conversion optimization we may be able to increase that amount to 3 sales per 100 visitors, or a 3% conversion rate. That’s 3 x as many sales without any increase in traffic.

So now you have the basics of what conversion optimization is. Let’s see an example and focus on the main tip of this post, “having a clear call to action”. Here are some questions I ask myself:

• What is the purpose of this page?
• Is it clear what action needs to be completed to proceed?
• How easy is it to find my goal?
• Does the user have all the information required to make the decision to proceed?

First we need to identify the purpose and desired action for each page. Start at the homepage. What would you like the visitor to do? Click on a product category? Click on a product from a list of best sellers? Once you know what the desired goal is, you can begin the optimization process. It’s likely that the purpose of the homepage is to be used as an introduction to the products and services that your company offers. It’s also likely that once there, a visitor has to navigate further into the site to complete a transaction. In order for them to do so, they have to be able to identify and locate the desired action. Here’s an example:

Which would you click on?

I’m going to bet that most of you saw the big blue button before the smaller text, right? So, if this button was placed on a product page as the “add to cart” button, I’d bet the button on the left would increase the amount of products added to the cart, especially if the right example (the text) was buried with a lot of other text on the page – product descriptions, pricing, sku, reviews, and so on. Now as long as I had a clear description of what happens when you ‘click me’ and a use for doing so (adding a product to the cart, etc) I could expect that users would be able to complete the action more easily, thus more users WOULD complete the action.

The moral of the story here is to, in a nutshell: identify your sales process and how the user is intended to navigate through the site. Start at your landing pages and identify how the steps after correlate to how your pages are setup visually. Make sure it’s easy to determine the purpose and action required on each page, and that the action is easily found. Do this and you’ll be on your way to having a high converting website that does more (sales) with less (traffic).

This post is intended to be used a resource for anyone who comes to me asking “What should I do to learn SEO?”

Why should I learn SEO? – I’d suggest any business owner, even those currently without websites, should learn what exactly search engine optimization (SEO) is to be able to discern exactly how, if at all, they can benefit from such efforts. In the same way that most budding entrepreneurs are introduced to direct mail, flyers and business card advertising, SEO should be similarly visible. For something that has the potential to greatly decrease customer acquisition costs over a relatively short period of time, we sure don’t hear SEO talked about much in the standard mainstream business channels.

How do most people go about learning SEO?- According to this post on SEOmoz: How Did You Learn SEO?: (note: users were allowed to choose more than 1 method)

• 54% learned through trial and error, testing, experimentation
• 49% learned through reading/participating in SEO forums
• 46.7% learned through reading/participating in SEO blogs
• 22.6% bought an seo ebook or guide
• 18.6% received training through a job
• 13.5% learned through a consultant or a firm
• 9.6% attended a search conference or seminar

I was a bit surprised to see that relatively few people learned SEO through “formal” means, such as coaching or consulting. However, that being said, I really do advocate the regular reading of SEO blogs and forums, a list of my favorites are below:

SEO Blogs:

• SEOmoz – Must read: Search Ranking Factors v3.0
• SEOBook – Must read: SEO Glossary
• StuntDubl – Must read: Balancing the Link Equation

More Notable SEO Blogs (for more advanced reading)

• Digerati Marketing
• BluehatSEO
• SEO by the Sea
• Science for SEO

SEO (and internet marketing) Forums:

• SEOChat
• High Rankings
• BlackHatWorld
• Warrior Forum

Also, a big, big, big resource for me and one I’d highly recommend is: The List of Google Patents by SEO by the Sea

After you get a good amount of reading/interacting under your belt, it’s time to take the plunge. I can’t really say much about this, everyone has their own methods for learning, but essentially you’ll want to set up a site and start optimizing and recording/analyzing your results. WordPress is an easy way to get going and I’d recommend installing Google Analytics.

Hopefully this will get you started in the right direction. Feel free to comment with any other resources you’ve found to be helpful and I”ll add them to the list!

In my day to day dealings with clients and friends who think they understand SEO (the key word here is think) I often find myself frustrated. Let me just get this off of my chest:

SEO ISN’T EASY, GET RICH QUICK OR A STANDALONE INITIATIVE.

Ah. That feels better. Now, allow me to explain:

“SEO isn’t easy” – Yes, that’s right. You’re not going to be able to execute some top secret, hulk smash, overnight top 3 method. Effective SEO is something that requires equal parts knowledge, persistence and luck. The key word here (us SEO guys like keywords) is effective. I’m not saying you can’t artificially inflate your rankings temporarily by spamming tens of thousands of profiles, forum signatures or blog comments in a few day’s time… Effective SEO, to me anyway, can be defined as efforts that cultivate stable results, those that aren’t temporary or at risk of sudden failure.

“SEO isn’t get-rich-quick” – Being marketers by trade, we’re probably to blame for this (I’m looking at you, you, and you). The truth of the matter is that even the best SEO guys out there can’t guarantee rankings, income or that their 10 minute top 3 technique will work today, tomorrow, or next year.  We can however guarantee that being armed with knowledge (lots of it), being extremely persistent and by offering value in every possible way, you’ll do well in the long run. Which brings me to my next point:

“SEO isn’t a standalone initiative” – The most effective SEO guys I’ve seen (I’m a big proponent of this as well) don’t consider what they do to be SEO. Instead, to them, it’s marketing 101. Take for instance the example of increasing trust and authority. After launching a website and beginning the promotion, let’s pretend that Google didn’t exist. What would you do?

I’d do something like this:

• Reach out to the high traffic, authority resources in my niche. They’ve got the visitors and the cred – a good place for my marketing message and a link.
• Get listed in the relevant directories that people actually use. (DMOZ, LII, BOTW, Y!, etc)
• Approach the press – interviews, product reviews, launch coverage, etc.

Not only will these examples greatly benefit your website in terms of SEO, but they’ll also likely lend revenue and credibility. Also, it just so happens that the majority of ideas like these are going to help increase your trust and authority. We all know (or should know) by now that for a site, having substantial trust and authority tend to increase ranking stability, magnify backlink efforts and allow them to inject new posts or products into the top positions in search engines.

Also, for the same point, I’d like to mention that SEO isn’t the be-all-end-all of internet marketing. It’s slow, tedious and often unpredictable. Cashflow is crucial to a startup and SEO has a great ability to burn through cash faster than this lady can fold a t-shirt (god bless her), especially if you’re not managing your own campaign.

In closing, I don’t mean to discount the viability of SEO. I’ve greatly benefited from well executed SEO (as have my clients, friends, colleagues, and so on) and strongly believe most of the businesses out there can too. I just think that expectations need to be managed, myths need to be addressed and accountability & ROI should be the real metrics for evaluating progress and effectiveness.