There are many free press release sites and when searching for a free site you will want to employ the same methods used to find a good article directory. Although you will also need to Google for a few reviews of the site and see what other people have said. Simply because press release sites send your content out to other sites for posting. And a if your content is sent out to spammy sites, then your lovingly written post could find itself sitting on a spam riddled blog or article directory.

Another quick check to see how active a release site is and what kind of search engine visibility and exposure you can expect, is to see  the coverage of the press release site. Jump onto Google and search for “site:url-of-press-release-site.com” I would personally go for a site that has the most exposure and search engine penetration.

For some really detailed ways to spot good press release sites, check this out: http://www.30minutepr.com/5-ways-free-press-release-sites-can-cost-you/

Amazing Press Releases Cost Money

Sadly the best press release sites do cost money, sometimes A LOT of money. If you are lucky enough to have enough capital to pay for these services then you will certainly need to review each site. I would start with a nice long Google session. Pulling up reviews and exposure statistics for the site in question.

SEO Training – Finding Good Press Release Sites originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 15, 2012.

When building backlinks from web directories it is important to aim for high traffic, high pagerank, high quality sites. If you are going to take the time to inspect the site and risk your SEO by listing on it, then you want to get the most you can in return. To this end A LOT of people are creating web directories that have fake pagerank, which is very easy to do. I know, I have tried and tested and successfully faked pagerank.

I wont be teaching you how to fake pagerank, but suffice to say Google have not yet found an affective way to squish this problem. I will show you how to spot a potential fake.

Fluser Has Fake and Unnatural PR

I mentioned before that I knew for a FACT that Fluser was faking PR. Well I know this because I have been snooping around that particular network for a long time. Fluser started of like this site: http://www.ulinkdir.com/ a web directory with high pr. But if you examine the inner pages they are all PR0. Which means one of two things:

1. The web directory has been built on an old domain and has many high quality inbound links
2. The pagerank has been faked and the web directory was setup once Google failed to reject the new pagerank.

Lucky for us there is a pretty easy way to double check this. Visit http://www.cekpr.com/ and enter the URL in question, making sure to click “show link popularity”. This will return something like this:

check for fake pagerank

This shows us that the site has 0 backlinks and it is not very old, but yet it has a PR of 7. Unless this url used to be a huge site like Pinterest, that suddenly lost all of its inbound links, then there is no natural way that it should have PR 7.

How would this affect your listing? The answer lies in the backlink watch results for fluser. On the backlink report fluser is anchored as a pr8 web directory. It is now a pr6 web directory. Basically fake pr is unstable pr. Without natural inbound links Google will eventually penalize you. It is also worth remembering that a lot of the fake pr sites are maintaining their falsified stats via the network their are housed in. As the sites within the network lose their pagerank, the whole network is affected and gradually the whole network loses pagerank. To combat this the web master will occasionally repeat the whole process again. This means your web directory link runs the risk of being deleted after a few Google updates. NOT GOOD.

Incoming search terms:

• directory sites for seo with high pagerank

SEO Training – Spotting Fake Pagerank originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 15, 2012.

As with finding article directories, a good starting place is a quick Google session, hunting for web directory lists. I ran into this rather nice site: http://info.vilesilencer.com. They offer a few nice directory lists:

1. Trusted Directories: http://info.vilesilencer.com/trusted
2. General Directories: http://info.vilesilencer.com/top
3. Niche Directories: http://info.vilesilencer.com/niche

As with any list you find you have to expect the worse and do your own homework. It is very easy to set up a web directory, you can even get free a wordpress plugin. Hopefully, knowing that should help you to see that anyone could set one up. And because of this, any web directory could potentially be harmful to your SEO backlinking efforts. So how do you spot a bad web directory?

Sadly spotting a bad web directory is not quite as easy as spotting article directories. Web directories tend to only allow the user or bot to submit a short description. This tends to eliminate the ability to spot bad neighbours via their content. You could manually follow a few links and see who your linking neighbours are, taking care to spot any adult or casino sites. But who really has time to do that?

Spotting a Dodgy Web Directory

To show you how to spot a bad web directory via the server information I will be using http://fluser.com/ as an example. Before we jump, lets take a look at the site:

Terrible General Business Directory

On the face of it, this site looks ok. But as I said before spotting a shifty web directory is not easy. There is a nice check-list of tells that we can use.

Does the site?

1. Mirroring one directory database across the entire network. Exact category matches over multiple sites.
2. Employ auto approval of links without any level of quality control.
3. Link to other web directories via a series of site wide links.
4. Offer a network wide linking service. Essentially creating a links farm.
5. Is the site hosted on the same IP or IP C class as other web directories?
6. Have black hat SEO methods been utilized to promote the directory?
7. If part of a network, do the same categories appear throughout the network?

Reference: http://www.web-directories.ws/blog/guide-to-creating-a-really-bad-directory.html

Armed with that list we can now poke holes in the example site:

1. Mirroring one directory database across the entire network. Exact category matches over multiple sites.

This point might not apply to all web directories, it is mainly aimed at those that are part of a network. If you are sure the directory you are checking is network free, then you can skip this step. Otherwise it is an easy step. Just inspect the listing categories on the first directory, then follow one of the network links to a second directory. If the listing categories match then your site is employing this check point.

For the example site, I clicked one of the network links which brought me to this site:

U Link Directory

Compare this with the previous image and without a shadow of a doubt, they are using the same exact categories. They are even using the same design.

2. Employ auto approval of links without any level of quality control.

Honestly I really do not want to add any of my sites to this network of directories, so I wont be submitting a link to check. I suppose I could submit a random link but I don’t want to risk the SEO of another site. So for this point I am going to just assume that it does auto accept listings. Plus the admin is charging for submissions, so his main objective is to take your money.

3. Link to other web directories via a series of site wide links.

Fluser certainly employs a huge linking network. And it is a vast network. Just look at this site:http://www.dtopdir.tk/. The left hand column is an enormous list of directories in the network. Worse part is that what I have shown you so far it just a drop in the ocean of this particular newtork.

4. Offer a network wide linking service. Essentially creating a links farm.

Here we have a truly amazing bit of internet noobery. Not only does the web-master actively promote his link farms, he also lists the sites. Which is brilliantly funny. Google HATES link farms. If it finds them it crushes them. This web master is handing Google all the information it needs. And to make matters worse he is charging you to place your link on this network.

Link to link farm

Buy EDU Backinks in Our Network of Popular EDU Directories

Resources:

Image 1: http://www.dtopdir.tk/submit.php

Image 2: http://www.best4seo.com/buy-edu-backlinks.php

5. Is the site hosted on the same IP or IP C class as other web directories?

Unfortunately pulling up the IP address for a huge network like this can be fairly time consuming. Also it is fairly easy to buy a unique IP address. It usually cost less than hosting. With that in mind I normally dive into the server information in search of  multiple sites being hosted on the same set of name servers.

Identifying name servers and IP: For this we jump over to http://www.who.is/dns/  and enter our URL. This will produce a report like this:

Fluser.com DNS Lookup Nameserver Lookup Who.is

Who.is lists the IP as 50.116.97.220 and also shows us two sets of obviously different name servers. This web master is employ two sets of name server for page rank faking purposes. I will explain that in just a bit. But first let us dive into finding other sites in the network.

Sites in the network: Here we are going to grab one of the listed name servers from the first pair. Jump over to http://www.who.is/nameserver/ and enter the name server. For fluser, the output looked like this:

spotting networks

Hopefully you can see that the listed sites are all directories. If you are unsure you can always check a few in your browser. Please note the “next 20″ and “previous 20″ links. On this one name server there are over 80 listed directories. You will also see that in a bit to out do Google the web master has scattered these domains over a few registrars. If you wish to check the IP for a specific site, click the “DNS” link. The IP address will be listed as such:

Once you have clicked a few you quickly see why I try not to hunt via IP addresses.

Have black hat SEO methods been utilized to promote the directory?

Bad Backlinking

This can take the form spammy backlinks like:

• comment spam
• article directory spam
• cross network linking

Quickest way to check these points are to visit a backlink checker and examine the sites’ backlinks. For this I will visit a nice free backlink checker: http://www.backlinkwatch.com. This will create an output that lists inbound links:

Backlink Watch

You can check by visiting the pages listed on the left. When checking for spammy links remember to use the methods previously discussed.

Post Penguin Considerations

Since the Google Penguin update, there has been a lot of buzz around over optimized anchors in links. To be honest is has never been a good idea to plaster all your inbound links with the same anchor. If you check out the above screen shot, you will see that all the inbound links are utilizing the exact same anchor. This is a prime example of poor backlinking. Anchor diversity is a must.

SEO Training – Finding Good Web Directories originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 15, 2012.

As previously discusssed, you should only backlink from high quality sites. Sites that are well moderated and employ very strict anti-spam and anti-plagiarism rules.

A quick Google session: “article directories” should produce a few results that provide a list of article diretories. Like this:

source:http://www.vretoolbar.com/articles/directories.php

Most of these article directories employ stringent posting rules and will not allow plagiarised content. This usually results in high quality, unique posts and the hosting sites are considered trustworthy in the eyes of Google.

Sadly there is no easy way to find great article directories. You usually need to spend a little time Googling and then manually inspecting the list you accumulate. There a few key points you will want to consider in your searches:

Spotting a Bad Article Directory

This is an important thing to learn, hence I am giving it its’ own sub heading. The problem with spotting a bad article directory is that they can so easily look like a valuable resource. To prove this point I set up a worthless article directory, just look at this:

That site has a nice valid pagerank of 5, the alexa rank is not bad and in a few weeks it will about 150,000, Google has 2500+ pages indexed and finally the front page seems ok. So what really lets you now this is total rubbish for your post and link.

First off lets look at a random post: http://www.mo-mo.biz/2012/07/paying-tuition-for-tutors/

If you need a tutor to help you get through a specific subject in school, or to help your child having a certain subject there are plenty of options on the market. From private those who will come to your home for you to online tutors, or even ones that work via your school or mastering institution. You might ponder though if you should shell out tuition, and if so how much. What is it worth, is there a general price that you need to pay? Are all teaching services the same?

The above quote is an excerpt from the chosen post. I know my use of grammar is pretty bad but this snippet is terrible. It clearly shows that the creator (aka. the post bot) is creating the posts from spun content. Which means that the posted content is not being proof read by the bot operator and I certainly don’t have time to proof read 1000′s of submitted posts. In fact the article directory in question is set to auto approve all posts. And this is not uncommon.

Auto accept article directory sites such as this are set up to pull in quick traffic and cash in on that traffic. They are not set up to offer a vessel for your high quality link building contextual links. Run away if you see any directory that remotely looks like this:

bad Article Directory

SEO Training – Finding Good Article Directories originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 15, 2012.

Pagerank is described as, the metric value given to a site to indicate its importance and a credited by way of measuring the inbound links and their respective pageranks. A page with many linking pages with high page ranks, will be granted a high page rank. A very nice way to show this is with this very familar image:

pagerank

Misconceptions About Pagerank

Unfortunately many people seem to be backlink building under the pretence of; high pagerank will result in high Google ranking. This simply is not true. Yes pagerank does play a roll in a sites ranking but not so directly. Google ranking is heavily geared towards identifying the most relevant site for the search term used. Which basically means Google is pushing you to create backlinks from niche related: posts, pages and articles. If the page linking to your site: is within the same market niche, has a high page rank and the connecting link is dofollow, then your site will benefit from an increase in link juice that is also affirming your niche relevance. In short you have just acquired the perfect backlink.

Dofollow, Pagerank and Google Ranking Summary

SEO Training – What is Google Pagerank originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 15, 2012.

Good for you, you noticed I have not even talked about dofollow links. There is very good reason for this.

A lot of people know a little bit about backlinking and it certainly true that a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. These people tend to concentrate very heavily on only acquiring dofollow links and totally forget that nofollow links are needed to. If you over optimize your linking portfolio, then Google treats this in much the same way as over optimized content or backlinks. It flags it as unnatural and penalizes you in one way or another. For backlinks this takes the form of de-indexed links. Resulting in your once 10,000 strong backlinking collection, being whittled down to nothing. And so your Google ranking drops heavily, closely followed by traffic. Ergo, I have not mentioned dofollow tags until now in the hope of saving you from yourself.

Time to learn all about dofollow links, nofollow links, pagerank and what Google likes in terms of your backlinking profile.

What Are Dofollow Links?

The short answer is.

Dofollow links do not exisit.

I know that sounds pretty silly, especially considering all the buzz about dofollow links and dofollow backlinks, but its true. There is no such things a dofollow tag. What people call dofollow links are actually normal links that do not possess the nofollow rel tag

So what does this odd sounding link look like? Well lets look at an example:

Source code

<a href="http://google.com" title="google search engine">Google</a>

Notice that this link does not contain anything that remotely looks like “dofollow”. Now lets compare the same link to its’ nofollow counterpart:

Source code

<a href="http://google.com" title="google search engine" rel="nofollow">Google</a>

This link contains rel=”nofollow” and this lets the search engine bots thats this link is nofollow. But the besides the obvious lack of some additional characters, what are the real application differences between these two links?

What Do Dofollow Links Actually Do?

To answer this question we really to first take a look at what nofollow links do and dont do. Wikipedia describes a nofollow link as; a link that instructs some search engines to not accredit any ranking influence to the links’ target. Which basically means, nofollow links are intended as a means of linking two pages or sites without any link juice being passed down the link. This system of controlling the flow of link juice was created as a method of moderating search engine results and preventing Google and other search engines returning unrelated results for search terms.

Ok, so know we know a little about nofollow links, but one thing might have stood out in the above explanation; nofollow links only apply to some search engines. And before we move onto explaining dofollow links we should really examine this statement. Below is a tabbed break down of how the top search engines treat nofollow links:

Great, now we know what nofollow links do and why they are important. So if we strip out the nofollow rel tag and turn our nofollow link into a dofollow link, what changes occur?

For a lot of people the above mention of pageranking has just set off various bells and whistles. The connection between dofollow links and pagerank is indisputable. And this connection and its resultant effects are the driving force behind an enormous industry. But what is all the hype about and why should I care?

SEO Training – What Are Dofollow Links originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 15, 2012.

We have looked over the backlinking types and examined a few basic pros can cons. But now we really need to build up a deeper understanding of how each backlink can potentially benefit your site and even harm your site. So lets start with the the most abused backlink technique.

Pro and Cons of Article Directories

Pro and Cons of Web Directories

Pro and Cons of Press Release Sites

Pro and Cons of Blog Commenting

Pro and Cons of Guest Blogging

Pro and Cons of Blogroll Linking

Pro and Cons of Forum Post Linking

Pro and Cons of Forum Signature Linking

Pro and Cons of Forum Profile Links

Summary of Backlinking Pros and Cons

SEO Training – Pros and Cons of Backlinks originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 15, 2012.

As you are reading this, you are probably aware of the important role backlinks play in any SEO strategy. You are also aware that finding high quality backlinks is not an easy task. Internet marketers literally spend millions of dollars a year in the pursuit of niche related backlinks from high quality sites. However I doubt most of us have a wallet fat enough to enable the buying of backlinks from sites like msn.com and yahoo. We have to hunt them down the hard way. To that end, here is a very detailed guide about finding and building backlinks. Before we get into the nitty gritty, lets first identify what we are looking for.

Types of Backlinks

Backlinks are not just backlinks, there are a variety of link types:

Backlinks From Blogs

Blog links is actual a fairly wide term. It can be broken down further into: blog commenting, blogrolls and guest blogging.

Blog commenting is simple enough style of linking. If you were to comment on this post and leave a backlink of some description, that would be considered as a blog comment backlink. Although the benefits of such a link are constantly in dispute among internet marketers. One side believes that blog comment backlinking is dead and your site does not really gain any link juice. The other side, argues that although the effects might be negligible, you do benefit a little from each blog backlink and it all adds up. You can chose which side you support, but you should consider that blog commenting does build relationships between webmaster and commenter.  Which could in turn lead to you contributing to that blog by way of a guest post.

Guest posts involve your unique and well written content being published on a fellow webmasters niche related blog. You are usually allowed to include one or two links to your own site. This kind of backlink is great because you can benefit from a high quality contextual link and the natural traffic of the blog you post on.

Blogroll linking involves a link to your site being added to the blogroll or links section on a site. This type of link seems to be losing its potency since the latest Google update (Penguin), which penalized people for over optimizing their site links. And most blogroll anchors usually employ a very short keyword of phrase.

Contextual Backlinks

Contextual linking can be used on any website that allows you to create a post and include a link. Some popular forms of contextual linking utilize:

Article directory linking has quite literally exploded in the last few years. Like guest blogging, you create a unique and high quality piece, which you then post on an article directory. This type of linking bares all the benefits of guest blogging. However, its rapid expansion is also a slight hurdle. With posting to some articles directories being so easy, with very little article moderation, a lot of people have misused it. A huge portion of free article directories are quickly filling up with spam. Google reacts to this by de-indexing the site. So you have to carefully pick the sites you post to, but dont worry we will cover this in detail later.

Web directories operate in very much the same way as article directories. The only real difference being, you submit a general and brief description of your site with an accompanying link. Though it should be noted, directories have also been abused like article directories. Google also de-indexes spammed web directories.

Press release sites often get confused with article directories because both handle your article and they do tend to look a little similar. However, good press release sites are heavily moderated and only accept very high quality and unique content. Articles submitted to a press release site should also be written as a news piece, not as a normal blog post. This is because your content will be sent to various news aggregators that spread your content even further to: journalists and media websites. If your content is picked up by one of these people, then it could find its way onto huge sites like msn.com and nytimes.com. As you would expect, this service does cost a pretty penny.

Forum Backlinks

You are probably a member of a forum of some description and probably post there once every few days or weeks. This is brilliant. You are just a few steps away from creating a large number of backlinks in just a few clicks. But I will explain how a little later. First lets look at the different link types and their benefits.

Forum post backlinks probably seem like the most obvious link available on a forum. You create a post and reference your website as a source. Hey presto, you have a contextual link. This is an amazing type of backlink because the forum will getting crawled by bots on a regular basis. So your post will be crawled within a few minutes or hours of its creation. Thus placing your content very rapidly on Google.

Forum signature backlinks are pretty much common place in most forums. You have probably seen various links under members’ posts. Well this is another good link source and can usually be setup in a matter of minutes. Again I will cover this a little later.

Forum profile backlinks are links that can be placed in your forum profile. This is usually a very quick process, although some forums may require you to have a number of posts prior to allowing this linking type. The only real down fall is that a number of forums do not have any prerequisites for adding a profile link and this results in profile spamming. But dont worry too much, we will cover forum back linking in more detail later.

SEO Training – Types of Backlinks originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 15, 2012.

• Higher optimization of content.
• Amazing backlinks, both quantity and quality.
• Huge social presence, backed by an engaged audience.
• Team of staff monitoring servers
• Global media coverage.
• An enormous wallet.

Dont let that list scare you and fill your head with self doubt and feelings of inadequacy. Remember, great things start from small beginnings (Im sure thats a quote from some film) and I imagine you have already made a great start. You have probably researched numerous SEO techniques (hopefull all White Hat SEO) and implemented them on your site. Resulting in a fairly nice flow of traffic and ok SERPs, but now you are stuck.

You seem to be floating up and down Google rankings. And your daily traffic is pretty consistent. You have tried guest blogging and building your backlinks. Maybe you even turned your attention to the questionable SEO practices on fiverr. However,  all this did not work.

Dont worry there is another SEO practice that gets ignored and it really shouldnt.

Holistic SEO is Smart SEO

Most SEO tips, point you towards optimizing your on site content and linking. And rightfully so. Having a solid base to work from is the most important thing in SEO. However, once a solid on site SEO strategy has been established, most people continue to concentrate solely on re-optimizing. Once you reach a point of SEO stability it is time to venture out and discover new off site techniques and look for new methods of traffic generation.

Look at Digg.com. The site generates huge amounts of traffic. Traffic that is already primed to be separated into niches because Digg categorises its content. So if you could somehow generate a Digg that became very popular and started to show up on the front page, then that one link could generate an amazing amount of relevant traffic. You just need to figure out how to do that.

Guess what? You already know!

First you create an amazing post, something that will shock people, make them smile or teach them something amazing. Then you Digg your post and promote that Digg. Share your Digg on Facebook, tweet about it, create backlinks to your Digg. Promote that Digg in the same way you would promote content on your site. Yes you are promoting another site, but just think of what that sites traffic can do for you.

Case Study – Boost Site Traffic

As an example of a good SEO push technique, lets look at my SEO infographics:

black hat monster of seo

white hat monsters of seo

These infographics were both created as means of testing the traffic generating nature of infographics. I knew that creating them and posting them on this blog would never be enough to gauge their true traffic building potential. I really needed to share these colourful depictions of SEO techniques and for that I posted them on the following sites:

1. Pinterest: I chose to share my infographics on Pinterest because it is one of the easiest ways to spread visual content. If three people repin my post and each of those people have 1000 followers, then my infographic has just reached 3000 people.
2. Imgur: This site has amazing traffic and the users are very engaged. Although the site does seem to be heavily driven my funny and silly images. Not many infographics. This was really just a tester.
3. Visual.ly: There are many sites designed for sharing infographics, but visual.ly is one of the only free ones. Plus the site has good traffic and the infographics generally hit the front page for a few hours. And then float on the front page of their relevant category for a day or two. Basically, great free exposure.
4. Digg: Massive social bookmarking site. Bookmarks with lots of votes tend to float on the front page and category front pages. If you can get featured, then you could be rewarded with a huge traffic boost.
5. Facebook: Image sharing on Facebook has the potential to become viral. Although for this content and the current status of my Facebook, I dont expect much traffic.

Case Study – Sharing Results

Honestly I am shocked. I am only a few days in and I see this:

monsters of seo

And even more shocking is where the infographics are showing up:

http://www.seop.com/blog/infographic-the-white-hat-monsters-of-seo.html

http://friendfeed.com/seop

http://www.marketingtechblog.com/white-hat-monsters-of-seo/

http://sgimpact.com/pages/5088278-infographic-white-hat-monsters-seo-seop-com

http://topsy.com/imgur.com/J2hAe

Plus, they are littered all over Pinterest.

Case Study – Traffic Results

My content shooting across the web is pretty cool, but what does it really mean for my traffic.

Well over the last few days my traffic has shot up:

analytics traffic

The traffic increase is nice, but when you analysis traffic you should never forget the bounce rate. After all, what good are hits if 100% of the users are bouncing.

Luckily the traffic being referred from Digg only has a 28.5% bounce rate.

Overall Conclusion for Boosting Site Traffic

It certainly pays to promote your offsite content. Especially when the hosting site employs some form of content popularity. Just remember, people like to share something different, funny, amazing, informative or creative. They do not share anything and everything.

Good luck boosting your traffic.

SEO Tips – Huge Traffic Boost originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 5, 2012.

Black Hat SEO Techniques

Of course I could not show one side without shedding a light on the other. So I put together another infographic. This one draws attention to the fundamental black hat SEO techniques, in an attempt to dissuade SEO newcomers from employing them.

Black Hat SEO can produce rapid results and shoot your site to the top of Google, but your fall will be equally as quick and dramatic. Leaving you scratching your head, trying to come up with White Hat SEO ways to regain your traffic. Start the right way. White Hat all the way.

black hat monsters of seo

SEO Infographic – Black Hat Monsters of SEO originally appeared on Smuggecko on July 4, 2012.