seo tips

Competition Analysis Basics for SEO

2011-12-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

you can't solidify your targets until you understand what you're up against. All the keyword research in the world won't help you rank for the keyword phrase “windows” in 6 months with a brand new site. So understanding how to analyze your competitors and get a feel for who you can compete with in a reasonable period of time is paramount to creating a solid strategy. I'll also be flashing back a bit on keyword strategy. In the last article we closed with a list of potential keyword phrases, the idea that we needed to divide our phrases into major phrases and longtail phrases and also a new domain (just to keep things realistic). So where do we go from there? Generally I start at the top. From the highest searched phrases to the lowest – I do a quick analysis of the major phrases to determine the long term goals and the short term. I also like to look for what I call “holes”. These are phrases that have competition levels lower than one would expect when looking at the search volume. So let's use the example I was using in the last article and imagine a US-based downhill mountain bike company. And let's begin with the major targets. The phrases we'll examine for the purposes of this article are the top 10 phrases as ordered by search volume. They are: mountain bike mountain bikes specialized mountain bike trek mountain bike mountain bike frame full suspension mountain bike cannondale mountain bike giant mountain bike mountain bike parts mountain bike reviews So what are we looking for? It's obviously not feasible to do incredibly thorough competition analysis at this stage. I've listed 10 phrases here but in reality there are hundreds to consider and so we need a quick(ish) way to determine the competition levels of phrases. First, let's install a couple tools to help you make some quick decisions. You'll need to install the Firefox browser and the SEO Quake add on. Now when you run a search you'll be able to quickly pull the competitor stats. I like to look at the PageRank, links to the ranking page and sitelinks. Remember now – this is the basic competitor analysis here. Here are the stats for the top 10 ranking sites across the 10 top phrases (I'll leave out the URLs so there's no promotion): Phrase: mountain bike

Site 1 – PR6, 70,268 page links, 71,177 domain links
Site 2 – PR6, 262,609 page links, 290,281 domain links
Site 3 – PR5, 0 page links, 604 domain links
Site 4 – PR6, 101,136 page links, 206,397 domain links
Site 5 – PR5, 741 page links, 118,791,902 domain links Phrase: mountain bikes
Site 1 – PR5, 33,097 page links, 40,747 domain links
Site 2 – PR6, 42,010 page links, 91,385 domain links
Site 3 – PR6, 262,609 page links, 290,281 domain links
Site 4 – PR6, 101,136 page links, 206,397 domain links
Site 5 – PR5, 25,059 page links, 38,132 domain links Phrase: specialized mountain bikes
Site 1 – PR6, 101,136 page links, 206,397 domain links
Site 2 – PR1, 1 page links, 206,397 domain links
Site 3 – PR4, 2,001 page links, 2,095 domain links
Site 4 – PR5, 734 page links, 738 domain links
Site 5 – PR2, 4 page links, 230 domain links Phrase: trek mountain bikes
Site 1 – PR6, 65,464 page links, 178,712 domain links
Site 2 – PR4, 108 page links, 178,712 domain links
Site 3 – PR4, 127 page links, 523 domain links
Site 4 – PR4, 2,001 page links, 2,095 domain links
Site 5 – PR0, 0 page links, 3,854,233 domain links Phrase: mountain bike frame
Site 1 – PR4, 6,348 page links, 44,535 domain links
Site 2 – PR2, 6 page links, 4,303 domain links
Site 3 – PR4, 196 page links, 523 domain links
Site 4 – PR0, 28 page links, 35 domain links
Site 5 – PR1, 0 page links, 294,361,703 domain links Phrase: full suspension mountain bike
Site 1 – PR4, 58 page links, 178,712 domain links
Site 2 – PR4, 20 page links, 1,729 domain links
Site 3 – PR3, 7 page links, 9,959,894 domain links
Site 4 – PR5, 240 page links, 290,281 domain links
Site 5 – PR3, 0 page links, 294,362,703 domain links Phrase: cannondale mountain bikes
Site 1 – PR6, 62,614 page links, 91,301 domain links
Site 2 – PR6, 410 page links, 91,301 domain links
Site 3 – PR4, 0 page links, 2,056 domain links
S ite 4 – PR3, 3 page links, 80,580 domain links
Site 5 – PR2, 3 page links, 9,959,894 domain links Phrase: giant mountain bikes
Site 1 – PR3, 7 page links, 136,232 domain links
Site 2 – PR4, 2,001 page links, 2,095 domain links
Site 3 – PR0, 6 page links, 6 domain links
Site 4 – PR4, 2,262 page links, 2,392 domain links
Site 5 – PR2, 1 page links, 60,131 domain links Phrase: mountain bike parts
Site 1 – PR4, 610 page links, 2,366 domain links
Site 2 – PR4, 851 page links, 4,303 domain links
S ite 3 – PR4, 6,348 page links, 44,535 domain links
Site 4 – PR5, 4,612 page links, 20,931 domain links
Site 5 – PR6, 4,612 page links, 20,931 domain links Phrase: mountain bike reviews
Site 1 – PR6, 262,609 page links, 290,281 domain links
Site 2 – PR5, 240 page links, 290,281 domain links
Site 3 – PR6, 560 page links, 361,873 domain links
Site 4 – PR5, 0 page links, 604 domain links
Site 5 – PR4, 22 page links, 90,123 domain links Now, I'd definitely look further down my keyword list than this but for the purposes of this article let's assume this is all we have. If that's the case – what do you suppose would be the primary choice(s)? Were it to me I'd go with: mountain bike frame – we have a range of PageRank, a range of links and a range of sites. Basically – we're not up against a wall of high competition and the search volume is solid. full suspension mountain bike – a full range of sites. Higher competition than “mountain bike frame” but we're looking at a phrase that would sell a whole bike which needs to be considered and a slightly higher competition is thus acceptable. So of these two phrases what would I do? Well – if this was all we had to work with I'd select “full suspension mountain bike” as the main phrase and follow that up with “mountain bike frame” as a major secondary phrase and thus a prime target for proactive internal page link building and optimization. So now let's look at whether there are any good longtail phrases. In this industry we'll be looking for specific parts. Since going through all the different types of parts would be a nightmare in an article I'll focus on a couple parts I just ordered recently and that was a new handlebar and and a new rim. To keep things simple I'm going to focus on just a couple brands in the research BUT in reality we'd take the extra time and look into all the part types and all the brands that we'd be able to sell on our site. So for handlebars, here's the long and short of the numbers and competition: Brands researched – origin and easton “easton handlebars” with 1,000 estimated searches/mth with low competition outside of the manufacturer is a great start. Further, when we look up the manufacturer we further see that the ea70 and ea90 Easton models are both sought after as well. When we build our site we obviously want to build a structure and heirarchy that are conducive to longtail rankings overall but what we're looking for here are ideas as to where to put our energies when it comes to content creation and link building. Handlebars looks good by search volume. The average sale per item would be around $25. And now to rims: Brands researched – mavic and sun “mavic rims” and “sun rims” both come in at 1,900 estimated searches but the comeptition for “sun rims” is significantly lower with lower link counts and lower PageRank sites ranking. The average sale here is also going be in the $40 to $45 range. Based on this my first efforts for the whole site wold be “full suspension mountain bike” for the homeapge, mountain bike frame” as a major internal page and I'd focus my first efforts on “rims” (“sun rim” specifically). Now – we'd of course look further than this but what we can see is the direction that we'd go if all we had to go on was the above data. As noted – were we launching this site we'd look into every brand and every part type and research further than the top 10 phrases but that would have made for a book, not and article and let's be honest – it would have been a very boring book unless you were planning on launching a mountain bike site. So now you've done enough competition analysis (remember – it's basic research we're talking about) to figure out what direction to head in. In my next article I'm going to cover more advanced competition analysis. We'll go in knowing what we want to accomplish in the way of keywords and be working to map out how to take the top spots. Until then – get your campaigns sorted out for potential keywords and keep reading … this is where it gets really interesting.
PSD to Drupal
PSD to Magento

Google+ and the Potential Impact on SEO

2011-12-24T13:37:00.000-08:00

Although you can only join by invitation at this point, you've no doubt heard of Google+, Google's latest attempt to join (or, in time perhaps, completely overtake?) Facebook and Twitter as a must have social networking tool. In the months before Google+ was launched, Google also began implementing the "+1" button as a usable option for users to signify that they enjoy a particular site or page in an attempt to gather as much raw data as possible about the popularity and social value of sites and content before Google+ was rolled out for the masses. Preceding the Google+ and +1 button was the introduction of real time search, which was able to incorporate search results from Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Google, it would appear, is realizing the immense value of social media and the impact of social media on web search. Search will continue to have a social element infused into it as the addition of the +1 button will change search results, as will live feeds from Google+ pages, much like Facebook "likes" and Twitter "tweets" are currently affecting search results by influencing user decisions due to their value as endorsements of certain sites and content. Google definitely wants websites to implement the +1 button in their pages so that they can track and measure changes in click through rates. The +1 button will also be included on all SERPs as well as all Google+ feeds. What this means is business owners and marketers must ensure that a positive customer experience is, perhaps more than ever before, their primary focus in the hope that as many users as possible will +1 their site, and in doing so, endorse their business (and by association, reputation). While it is plain to see that the introduction of the +1 button was merely a precursor/trial balloon for Google+, the potential impact of the +1 button on search could be the bridge between all of the social oriented sites and tools and ways of doing things on the web and the subsequent influence on search results. Recently, Rand Fishkin, head of SEO Moz, decided to test some theories on the subject of social sites influencing search results. He shared a number of un-indexed URLs via Twitter both before and after Google had unceremoniously aborted the real time search results feature. Fishkin repeated the process, only this time he used Google+. He then requested that his followers on Twitter and Google+ to share the post, with the only caveat being that they were not to share it outside of the originating site. What this yielded in terms of hard data was that even though Google has dropped the real time search, re-tweeting and tweets are still assisting page indexation. As for Google+, Fishkin's test page ended up ranking #1 on Google within a few hours. This illustrates the fact that Google+ can also help pages get indexed, if not quite as quickly as Twitter. But perhaps the most interesting concept presented by Google+, and one that could potentially have a significant impact on SEO, is the "Google Circles" feature. The "Circles" feature is interesting because it grants users the ability to share whatever they choose with specific groups, or Circles, of people. As Google+ users build their Circles, they will subsequently be able to see the sites that users in their circles have +1'd in Google's SERPs. This has enormous potential - users will be far more likely to make a choice or purchase based on the recommendation of people they have invited to their Circles - people who they know and whose opinions they trust. Most users are going to be far more likely to trust the recommendation of someone they know rather than the recommendation or review from a stranger. Over time, Circles will become much more defined as more available user data is integrated into them - using that data to effectively market could be potentially powerful SEO strategy. Basically, Google has taken the ideas behind some of their social media competitors more influential and successful features in an attempt to make search more about real people. Google+ and the +1 button are enabling users to influence online activity, and, as such, they will have an effect on search results. Many experts are already proclaiming Google+ to have no impact on SEO whatsoever, citing Google Wave and past attempts by Google to get in on the social side of the net as indicators that this new attempt will also fail. While it is far too early to make any kind of definitive statement as to the long term usefulness or impact of Google+ and the +1 button on SEO, citing past failures as the basis for an argument as to why Google+ is going to fail as well is short sighted at best. The fact of the matter is, social factors are already intertwined with search, and this is likely only going to become more prevalent as these sites are expanded and the way we interact on the internet continues to evolve also, not less so. Whether or not Google+ ends up revolutionizing or merely co-existing with established SEO methodology remains to be seen, but the enormous potential of these features and their long term impact is fairly clear - site ranking methods are changing thanks to the +1 button and this will likely end up creating an altogether new method of SEO in the future.
PSD to Drupal
PSD to Magento

Understanding The Canonical Tag

2011-12-24T13:28:00.000-08:00

Since the Panda updates from Google earlier this year, duplicate content has become an issue that no website owner can afford to overlook. While the update was designed specifically to target low value sites, content farms and scraped content, its paramount imperative was to reduce the amount of duplicate content that resulted in mass amounts of spam-ridden search results. As a direct result of the updates to the Google search algorithm, many thousands of both legitimate and nefarious sites were penalized with a significant drop in rankings and traffic.

Duplicate content can include the textual content of a website, scraped content from other sites, or similar content on multiple domains. Duplicate content issues also arise from dynamically generated product pages that display duplicate content throughout different sorting features. Google sees these pages as duplicate content.
Of the tactics available the 301 redirect and the more recent canonical tag, are the primary weapons in a web developers arsenal to help combat the problems associated with duplicate content. Unfortunately many aspiring webmasters do not always have a clear understanding of what they are, or how, or when each method should be employed.

What is a 301 Redirect?

In most cases a 301 redirect is used when you move your domain to a new webhost. The redirect tells search engines that your site has moved but still allows you to preserve your rankings. The other common usage of the 301 is to specify the preferred url of your domain.Typically you can go to either http://www.exampledomain.com or http://exampledomain.com< they are the same url but the search engine treats them as different urls. The 301 redirect allows you to specify the “proper” domain and retain the strength of the sites ranking so that it is not split between the two. 301s is that they were only designed to work at the domain level and did not address the duplicate content issues that were arising from have multiple dynamically driven pages. 301s also require that you have access to the web server hosting your site in order to implement them and an understanding of the syntax used to describe the parameters. Introducing the Canonical Tag

Prior to the introduction of the canonical tag, duplicate content was simply ignored and people used link building practices to game the SERPs in order to determine which would be the first to be listed. However, this had the negative systemic effect of inundating the SERPs with webspam which made it increasingly difficult to get quality, relevant results when performing web searches. As a result, Google introduced the canonical tag in early 2009 as a way to resolve some of the major duplicate content issues faced by the search engines.

The canonical tag was designed as a page level element in which you edit the “head” of the HTML document and edit the parameters. The canonical tag is a very simple one line code string that is treated in very much the same way as a permanent 301 redirect. It ensures that the PageRank, backlinks and link juice flow to the “proper url” and is not split between domains. It is fully supported by Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

Another scenario is which you may want to use a canonical tag is when you have web pages that produce “ugly” urls (http://www.example.com/product.php?item=bluewidgets&trackingid=1234&sessionid=5678), due to advance sorting features, tracking options and other dynamically driven user-defined options. You can specify that the clean url, or the “proper,” or “canonical” version of the url, is at “location B.” Search engines will then index the url that you have specified and regard it as the correct url.

*This example tells the search engine that the “correct” version of the Blue Widgets page is located at the www version and not the non-www version of the page.

The main difference between a 301 redirect and the canonical tag is that the later only works within a single domain or subdomain; that is you cannot go from domain A to domain B. This has the added benefit of alleviating problems associated with 301 hijacks and similar attacks.

Introduction of The Cross-Domain Canonical Tag

In December of 2009, Google announced a (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html)cross-domain rel="canonical" link element that was also going to work across domains; thereby allowing webmasters of multiple sites with similar content to define specific content as fundamentally sourced from a different domain.

A simple scenario in which the cross-domain tag would be used is If you have three related domains, on three separate urls and all featured the same article (or product descriptions, etc). You can use the cross-browser tag to specify the page that is the authority (or preferred page). As a result, the specified page will collect all associated benefits of Page Rank and Link Juice and will not penalize you for duplicate content.

In essence the new tag performs the exact same function as the 301 redirect but allowed for a much more user-friendly method of implementation.

During the release and subsequent promotion of the canonical tag, Matt Cutts stated that “anywhere from 10%-36% of webhosts might be duplicated content.” According to Cutts, there are several effective strategies to combat the problem of duplicate content including:

Using 301 redirects
Setting your preference in Google to the www or non www version in Google’s Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters/ )
Ensuring that your CMS only generates the correct urls
Submiting a sitemap to Google. They will try to only use those urls in the sitemap in an effort to pick the “best url”
301s Versus rel=canonical?
Some people have concerns are over how much link juice will they lose if they use a 301 instead of a canonical redirect. There is very little difference in the relative amount of page rank that gets passed between the two methods.

Matt Cutts from Google addressed the problem by stating:

”You do lose some (page rank) but the amount is pretty insignificant. This is used to try and stop people from using 301s exclusively for everything within their own site instead of hyperlinks.
Watch the full video where Matt discusses the issue:

The canonical tag is most appropriate used when you cannot get to the server’s headers to implement the 301 directly as a web technician is typically required to implement the 301 for you.

The Hack
In the video above Matt addresses the question of relative strength loss between using a 301 Redirect and a rel=canonical tag. In a recent blog post (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2072455/Hacked-Canonical-Tags-Coming-Soon-To-A-Website-Near-You), Beanstalk SEO's CEO, Dave Davies discusses a possible exploit of this “relative strength loss.”

Matt Cutts sent out a Tweet on May 13th stating, “A recent spam trend is hacking websites to insert rel=canonical pointing to hacker's site. If you suspect hacking, check for it.”

The conclusion is that there is a viable exploit of the rel=canonical tag and that by inserting the tag into a page can be a very effective strategy; on par with 301ing the page itself but even “better” in that it likely won't be detected by the site owner.

Davies continues by posing the following statement: “The next question we need to ask ourselves is, “Is this an issue now or just a warning?” implying that Google is certainly aware of the hack and will be analyizing ways to detect and penalize those that are planning to attempt this hack.

Article Take Aways:

The Panda updates have made the issue of duplicate content a priority for site owners to address.
Always use 301s whenever possible. They are more widely supported by search engines and can follow a 301 redirect. This also means that any new search engine that comes on to the market will have to support them as well.
301s only work at the domain level (ie. Pointing domainexapmle.com to www.domainexample.com)
301s also require that you have access to the web server hosting your site in order to implement them
The rel=canonical tag is a more user-friendly method to accomplish the same task as a 301.
The cross-domain Canonical tag works almost identical to a 301 direct.
The canonical tag is a user-friendly version designed to work within the site’s HTML head section.

PSD to Drupal

PSD to Magento

Facebook Beith Not The Devil

2011-12-24T13:22:00.000-08:00

Social media is not going away, and nor should it. For all the nay-sayers out there who deem Facebook as the work of the Devil, just remember social media has always existed. Since the beginning of time, in fact. It was called word of mouth. The baker told the butcher about his latest new blend of grains, the butcher told the housemaid, the housemaid told the tailor, the tailor told the constable and gradually everyone knew about the fabulous new compilation the baker was using in his breads. Now, with the evolution of technology social media has become more than just status updates and shared links to videos of cats snuggling with dogs. The business world has finally begun to see the benefit of this techno-word-of-mouth phenomenon that has 500 million (active) users tweeting their every thought. Social media is a marketing tool. On one side of the fence it is a means for the baker to put the word out about his new grain blend. On the other side, it is the opportunity for the butcher, housemaid, tailor and constable to learn of the baker’s activities and pass along the information. Therefore it makes good business sense for companies to use Yelp, Twitter, Facebook et all as their voice to the consumer. Not long ago there was an article released by the American Pediatric Society warning parents about “Facebook Depression”. Parents were directed to watch their Facebook-friendly children for signs of depression stemming from either too much exposure to social media, or negative interactions taking place there. Undoubtedly there were a lot of parents observing their teen’s behavior a little more closely after that article hit the cables. Alongside the warning was the explained “Fear of Missing Out” or FOMO. Apparently adolescents are glued to their laptops and smartphones 24/7 waiting for the tiniest signal from a social media outlet, just so they don’t miss out on Justin Beiber tickets. What parents seem to be missing the point on is FOMO is natural. What three year old has not had a temper tantrum at bedtime? The teen version of FOMO is just the same, only on steroids. Parents, it’s all part of growing up. Didn’t you ever go way too far on the side of punk and stick a safety pin through your nose? The difference now is technology, and the corporate world has noticed. The music industry has always paid close attention to the demographics of their followers, but now it is so much easier to obtain and use that information. Your teen is not only drooling at the mouth for tweets from peers, they are also watching for the latest news on celebrities, musicians, fashion icons, gaming news and probably dozens of other subjects parents would shudder to hear of. Young people with after-school jobs have the most disposable income of any demographic, and business executives know that. Your grumpy 15 year old may not be saddled with Facebook Depression, but there is a pretty good chance he or she is probably sulking over not having the latest Toms or missing out on the Halo release. That doesn’t mean every parent needs to confiscate the internet. Nope, in fact let it be. This is a learning experience. Adolescents are moody, demanding, boundary pushing kids still trying to figure out who they are. Let them continue on the journey, they will thank you for it later. Of course the caveat to all of this is good parenting. We still need to be aware of our children’s activities and who their friends are. The internet, not social media in particular, is acting as a vehicle for speeding up the learning process for kids today – in both good and bad ways. Accept their use of social media as a means of skill building, but it will take a sound parental influence with a good sense of boundaries to know how to spot dangerous behavior. Social media is not going away. It is here to stay because no other form of communication gets information out to the masses as quickly. And since we are all social beings with an insatiable need for information, social media is our drug. Embrace it. Use it to your advantage. Make Twitter work for you instead of the other way around. Feed your Google+ profile through to Twitter, re-tweet industry related blogs you follow, Bump your contacts to build up your network, Yelp about favorite restaurants. All this in an effort to get traffic with your name pinned to it, flowing. Use social media to be more involved with your teen’s activities. They can hide, but they can’t hide from the web. Their obsession with social media is your ticket to knowing what they are up to. In the end, you will love the fact that social media is not going away. PSD to Drupal
PSD to Magento

Advancing Strategy for Social Marketing

2011-04-29T05:05:00.000-07:00

When it comes to digital marketing I believe marketers need to be more strategists & research minded than idea evaluators and implementers."
After discussing social media this year with senior marketers from several large brands, the implementer reference in the above tweet by Shiv Singh really resonates with me.
More brands are taking (social) community management activities back in house while seeking outside expertise to continue guiding decisions around social strategies and applications.
When it comes to the day-to-day of social marketing, corporate competence is rising -- and the "yeah, I get that, but what's next?" mentality is placing a higher demand on strategy with expectations of research (or at least experience) to back it up.
As I've been preparing to speak about Facebook marketing with custom applications at next week's Online Marketing Summit, I've found a common thread in the key takeaways pertains more to strategy than turn-key tactics. The following is a preview of a couple key topics I'll discuss as part of that presentation.
Game Mechanics for Custom Facebook Applications
For those of you sick of hearing about it, I'll start by saying game mechanics are not a magic silver bullet -- and I took great delight in hearing Gowalla CEO Josh Williams proclaim "we don't need no stinkin' badges" at last month's Snowcial.
However, like Williams, those who have an established understanding of game mechanics are better positioned to get ahead. Why? Because it's a matter of better knowing how human behavior works.
If you're aware of certain ingredients that foster a higher propensity for sharing a social experience on Facebook, then you may realize higher fan growth and engagement as a result of implementation.
I touched on the Sanrio/Hello Kitty gifts application as an example of this when discussing social intelligence for Facebook marketing.
Another recent and impressive implementation of game mechanics (and overall digital strategy) is Vail Resort's EpixMix, which is also promoted on the Snow.com Facebook page.
Although the application doesn't reside on Facebook, the Connect functionality takes full advantage of Facebook sharing via passive, automated check-ins at six separate ski resorts, all enabled by an RFID chip embedded in your ski pass.
"Passive" means you don't need to pull out a mobile device for checking in. Updates to your Facebook feed are automatically posted based on your location with the pass, and one-time Facebook authorization.
A leading game mechanic in play for EpicMix is the use of more than 200 ski pins (digital "stinkin' badges") you can earn based on locations you ski at each resort, total feet of elevation skied and more. Although Vail Resort's CEO, Rob Katz, wasn't specific about adoption rate when asked last month, he was very clear about the fact that users signing on to share in Facebook exceeded expectations.
Game on.
Strategic Modeling for Social Strategies
While game mechanics address specific strategies from a human behavior perspective, the bigger and equally important picture pertains to how all elements of social marketing work together for the good of a business.
A valuable, but often overlooked practice is to adopt a model that facilitates a framework for strategy. There are a range of options with strategic models, but the one I follow is a layered ("Four Cs") approach:

Content: This is the foundational element, focusing not only on the type of content (video, infographic, written, etc.) but also how to apply supporting research to guide its development and/or justification.

Context: Think of this second layer as platforms enabling the display and distribution of your content. Facebook, for example, would be an element of context in this model.

Campaigns: This layer puts the context in action, addressing key variables around planning, implementation, supporting applications, visibility efforts, communication, and measurement.

Community: As the top layer, the strategic focus centers on loyalty achieved through specific campaigns, advocacy, or customer experiences. Community should be viewed as long-term, with the expectation of learning that can be applied to future iterations of strategy and research.

Practically speaking, we as marketers should be both implementers and "idea evaluators." But as strategists, we're called to a higher accountability -- one that distinguishes originality from repurposing, and activity from productivity.

LinkedIn: 5 Useful Tips to Leverage the Waking Giant

2011-04-29T05:02:00.000-07:00

I recently heard a CEO refer to LinkedIn as the sleeping giant of social networks. With last week's announcement of 100 million members, the SEC filing in January (in preparation of going public) and 2010 being LinkedIn's first profitable year since the company's eight-year existence -- I'd say the giant has awakened.
For those of us active on LinkedIn, it's obvious the company is moving aggressively. Even this week, you may have received an email invitation to spend your first $50 worth of advertising free of charge via LinkedIn Ads (formerly called DirectAds).
Still, there's a lot to be discovered about how to best utilize this social network. Would you believe the most popular advice about using LinkedIn begins with making sure your account profile/setup is designated "100 percent complete," including the upload of a real picture of yourself?
Sure, that's valuable advice -- but a bit elementary, don't you think? Hopefully, you'll find some of the tips described herein even more useful.
Tip 1: Sharing is Caring

LinkedIn began releasing tools in early 2010 to enable new ways to share, but the end-of-year launch of the LinkedIn share button was a game changer -- essentially catching LinkedIn up to Facebook in its ease of bringing outside content in.
As marketers we want our content shared on LinkedIn just as we want it shared on Facebook. The newness of LinkedIn Share Buttons means we don't yet have hard usage stats. Regardless, the recommendation is to start implementing them around appropriately shareable (especially blog-related) content.
Tip 2: Do Your Detective Work
If we agree that knowledge is power, this should become a fundamental exercise in preparing for meetings, calls, insights and talking points. As best stated by Lindsey Pollak: "look up everyone." Even having small amounts of information about people can break the ice in conversations, giving you an edge in presentations or sales calls.
As a helpful reminder, I use the Rapportive plugin in my web browser, giving me fast access (via the right column of my Gmail account) to a person's LinkedIn, Facebook, recent Tweets and more.
Tip 3: Leverage Expert Content with Advertising
Last year, Guy Kawasaki not only pointed to the prospect of winning new business via LinkedIn by answering questions associated with your expertise -- but also recommended promoting unique (blog) content using LinkedIn's small text ads. As of late January 2011, these text ads enable targeting by job title, company and groups.
Whether you're part of a small emerging business or a Fortune 500, the value of establishing and maintaining thought leadership is priceless. If you have the right (expert) content, promoting it in conjunction with the new ad targeting features is a winning approach.
Note: LinkedIn states that "good ads" in their network will have a click-through rate (CTR) greater than 0.025 percent. Yes, it's low -- but arguably consistent with what many report on the lower-end CTR performance of their Facebook ad campaigns. LinkedIn offers some insight to best practices for advertising here.
Tip 4: Be Part of the New News
Beyond promoting your content with ads, the simple sharing of it may also extend the reach of your expertise, thanks to the new LinkedIn Today news delivery format.
This new feature aggregates and delivers shared headlines from your network and industry via tweets and LinkedIn sharing. It also enables topic search functions with categorical filtering through industries, companies, etc.
The connection/algorithm between LinkedIn share buttons and what appears in LinkedIn Today content isn't clear -- but given the nature of how content is shared in LinkedIn Groups, it's certainly high time you join and begin contributing to at least one.
Tip 5: Get Radical with Recruiting
It would be remiss to skip mentioning LinkedIn as a recruiting tool. From resume searching to identification of funding sources, finding people to fill your knowledge gaps is critical to business growth.
Although you may not see firsthand use of companies targeting their competitor's employees for hire, Marty Weintraub's step-by-step tutorial demonstrates how the guerilla nature of acquiring talent just got kicked up a notch.
With this "awakening," LinkedIn continues demonstrating it warrants our business attention. If you still find yourself in the process of making friends with this giant, I'd love to hear more about how you are getting along. For quickly ramping up your LinkedIn strategy, also consider tapping into some of the starter resources out there from folks like Lewis Howes.

pubished by seogenie

50+ Tools to Automate Your Link Building

2011-04-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

Are you a human link builder? If so, ask yourself this: "if a robot link builder existed, what would I still be able to do that it could not?"
Analyze a complex backlink profile and distinguish quality links from spammy ones? Check. Write a funny personal email that gets someone's attention in the right way? Check. Decide when a phone call might be the best outreach method? Check.
And what could the robot do faster and better than you?
Find every link to a site? Check. Automatically search through SERPs and connect each result to external data? Check. Automatically search for contact information on three different pages and score how closely it matched a person's name? Check. Automatically pre-populate data fields in a CRM? Check.
If you've ever heard the phrase "build on your strengths," the lesson for link building is this: that we need to automate as much of the routine, "robot work" as possible, and spend more time doing what we're best at: being sentient human link builders.
In this post, we'll look at tools that can help link builders shift their workload to computers as much as humanly possible.
Backlink Data
Let's start with the most basic automation. You need tools to research sites' backlink profiles. These tools crawl the web and build a database of raw data about backlinks.
Each tool provides, at minimum, the ability to lookup a list of all the pages linking to a URL or domain, and some include detailed information about each link's anchor text, type (text or image), follow status, authority for the linking page, and in some cases the ability to group, sort, search, and filter the results.

Majestic SEO: A well-regarded index of link data with information about anchor text, authority, Class C IPs, and relevance, not to mention good sorting and filtering. My only complaint is that their pricing and user-interface is a bit confusing.

Open Site Explorer: A very user-friendly tool with anchor text data, follow status, and authority. The only downside is the index may miss some links in the "deep web."

Yahoo Site Explorer: Known for being relative fast to find new links (other indexes are updated monthly), but very limited because it can only return 1,000 links per page or domain and offers no "extra" data such as follow status or filtering capabilities. But it's free! Yahoo also offers an API (Yahoo BOSS), which according to many, is more current than the Site Explorer website.

Google: Yes, their "link:" operator leaves much to be desired, but just because it's incomplete doesn't mean it's useless.

Blekko: This new search engine offers tons of free backlink data available from a very deep index.

Site-Level Backlink Analysis
Many tools offer backlink reports at the site or URL level, but are limited to only the data points they have available. So then what do you do if you want to filter a site's backlinks down to only followed inbound links, with toolbar PageRank of at least 5, and no more than 50 outbound links?
Enter site-level backlink analysis tools. These tools gather traditional backlink data with a traditional set of backlink data, often pulled from one or multiple backlink data providers.

Link Diagnosis: Powered by Yahoo BOSS, Link Diagnosis uses a Firefox extension to pull up to 1,000 links per page and lookup metrics such as the toolbar PageRank of each URL, whether the link actually was found on the page, follow status, anchor text of each link, and aggregate level reporting.

BacklinkWatch!: Also powered by Yahoo, BacklinkWatch! pulls the first 1,000 links for a page (the most Yahoo will give up), and appends the number of outbound links on the source page along with any flags they find (nofollow, image links, etc.).

AnalyzeBacklinks: Simple and free tool that analyzes backlinks to a page and appends anchor text, total number of links, outbound links, title of the linking page. One feature I like is that ability to flag links that mention a keyword you've selected.

SEOBook Link Harvester: Shows backlinks grouped by linking domain, groups them by top level domain (TLD), and provides summary metrics about the number of incoming links and percentage of deep links to the page.

SEOBook Back Link Analyzer: A free downloadable tool that pulls backlink data from Google, MSN, and Yahoo, crawls the linking pages, and builds a table of information about each link including follow status, number of outbound links, page title, and more.

SearchStatus Plugin for Firefox: A free Firefox extension from iAcquire that pulls the backlinks from Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

SEOLink Analysis: Supplements lists of links produced by Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer with information about each link's PageRank, anchor text, and follow status.

WhoLinksToMe: Produces various detailed backlink reports with views by link, anchor text, country, IP, and more. Many charts and graphs to aid in the analysis. Freemium.

Many enterprise SEO packages also offer data-rich site level backlink analysis, including BrightEdge, SecondStep, RankAbove's Drive, seoClarity, SEO Diver, SISTRIX Toolbox, and gShift Labs, and link building specific tools such as Advanced Link Manager, Linkdex and Cemper's LinkResearchTools offer powerful backlink analysis features.

SERP-Level Backlink Analysis
It seems like every link builder has a preferred set of data when it comes to competitive analysis. So don't expect any single tool to pull every conceivable piece of data and put them all into same columns you've always used.
You still may find yourself exporting data to Excel and merging with other data sources. But any time saved from manually copying and pasting data into spreadsheets (or hiring and managing people to do so) can be spent on more human, value-added activities.

SEOBook, SEOQuake, and SEOMoz, offer helpful browser extensions that overlay a variety of backlink data directly on search results, so you can assess the backlinks behind each listing in the SERP, right when you're looking at it.

Larger suites like Advanced Link Manager, LinkResearchTools, Adgooroo Link Insight, Wordtracker Link Builder, LinkDex, Raven, and SEOMoz, also offer detailed backlink data at the SERP level. SEOMoz announced an upgrade for their excellent Keyword Difficulty Tool to provide a more integrated SERP analysis.

Anyone without research tools for SERP analysis is at a competitive disadvantage.
Link Prospecting Tools
There are many ways to find link opportunities, and the tools listed below can only really scratch the surface when it comes to the universe of link opportunities that some creativity and insight can find.

Query generators are the original link automation tools. These tools take a keyword and automatically create dozens or hundreds of canned searches to find common link opportunity types (e.g. resource pages, guest posts, and directories). Here are a few of the most popular: SoloSEO, Ontolo's Link Query Generator, SEOBook's Link Suggest, BuzzStream's Link Building Query Generator (disclaimer: I co-founded BuzzStream), and Webconf's Backlink Builder. I would strongly caution anyone using a list of other people's queries to weed out queries that don't make sense for them -- don't just head down a link building path because a tool suggested you seek a link on every "inurl:links.html" page in your industry.

Link prospecting tools build upon the query generator idea, but automate the task of visiting each page in and compiling addition metrics (and in some cases, contact info). This can save link builders time by enabling them to prioritize prospects with the highest value. But you can't just take everything the tools give you. Plan to review each prospect to assess its appropriateness to your link building campaign. Here are a few of the most popular: Ontolo, Adgooroo's Link Insight, and Advanced Link Manager.

Cocitation or "hub finder" tools help you find sites that link to multiple competitors. Some look across all links to your competitors, and some analyze the top ranking sites for a given keyword. The best known offerings in this area are SEOBook's Hub Finder, Adgooroo's Link Insight, Raven's SiteFinder, LinkResearchTools, Linkdex, WordTracker Link Builder, SEODiver, and Shoemoney Tools.

Proprietary technique research tools use a combination of their own search queries and analysis rules to generate a list of screened, quality link prospect opportunities. Link Insight is known for integrating many of Eric Ward's (a.k.a., "Link Moses") research methods, though I wouldn't call it an Eric-SaaS just yet. Ontolo offers a number of proprietary searches, but also leaves a fair bit of detail and control in users' hands.

Checklist-driven link building tools give users bite-sized link building tasks, such as "Today you should request a link on DMOZ!" (except their suggestions tend to be more clever than that): LotusJump, Hubspot, DIYSEO, and SEOScheduler.

Next time, I'll cover tools that address contact research, link management (CRM), link outreach management, and link monitoring.
A note about some tools I won't cover: tools that scrape SERPs for sites and automatically extract email addresses and send blast mass emails, tools that automate directory submission, "article marketing," and blog commenting, services that automate blindly placing link-laden content on an unknown network of sites, or tools to automate reciprocal link exchanges. These tools exist and some people use them, but I have yet to find them to be beneficial.
The best strategy for using link building automation tools is to first develop a good process for tracking your link prospecting data and managing your outreach via a structured workflow. Once you have data and process in place, you can start automating some of your routine tasks.
The point of using great tools, whether it's an array of three 24" monitors on your desk, an Aeron chair, or fancy link building tools, is to eliminate energy wasted on low value activities, work in new ways, and free you up to focus on what you, the human link builder, is uniquely suited to do.

Social Design Strategy Working from the Outside In

2011-04-29T04:45:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago at the Facebook Developer Garage in Paris, design strategist Eric Fisher defined social design in the context of the three core components: identity, conversation, and community.
While most discussions on social design encompass the practice of creating optimized user experiences within applications and websites, Fisher's presentation (and ultimate strategic suggestion to marketers) centered upon the most foundational elements to Facebook's success.
As many of us desire to stay sharp on social media strategy, I'm hopeful the interpretive summary of his presentation that follows will provide a helpful reference (if not, reminder) of what we as marketers should keep top of mind when helping businesses meaningfully engage with their customers.

Facebook's Social Design Components Defined
First, we acknowledge that relationships and trust are foundational to any social network. The level of trust depends on the types of relationships we have, which can be categorized on the spectrum between strong ties (family and close friends) and weak ties (short-lived/formal relationships).
In this context, we can consider the following three components, beginning with the inner circle in the diagram below:

http://seogenie.blogspot.com

Identity: Facebook started by enabling us to define our identities within their network. Inherently, our identities are reinforced through strong ties, or relationships with those we most closely trust who are also in the network.

Conversation: We insert our identity into the community through conversation. By listening and responding (sharing), we personally benefit from self-expression -- yet also benefit others who learn or are inspired from our contribution to the conversation. Conversation is what Fisher refers to as "the glue between identity and community."

Community: As conversation continues, community is developed around various common values and participating identities. The strength of community grows from weak ties that give back via the conversation. The community response may reinforce or even influence our identity. And as the community influences us, even to the extent of our mere participation in the conversation, so may we influence our strong ties.

Fisher's Key Insight
While Facebook has been about growing community from the inside out (starting with identity) -- we as marketers realize our greatest opportunities by approaching it from the outside in, starting with community.
The widespread adoption of Facebook translates to an enormous volume of communities already established -- and fortunately, we have visibility into any number of them. Practically speaking, the exercise from here becomes one of social business intelligence, learning what we can about existing conversations and communities so we can properly define a conversation and add to the identities participating in them.
At a more granular level, we can get into the kind of strategic modeling that specifically addresses the content, context, and campaigns which inspire people to act and share.
Additional Notes on Social Design
As implied at the start, this post could be considered a very different angle on social design. Although the importance of "traditional" social design merits a separate post, the following are some quick insights and references I hope you will also find useful.
First, if we had to boil down the common goal of social design, it would be to maximize the accessibility, ease and usefulness of social interactions between people and content. Since most agree that social media is about conversations, it's easy to recognize there is great value to designing interfaces that best enable them.
Fortunately, we don't need to become user experience (UX) design experts to take advantage of what's been learned. The following are a few great references, many of which provide highly practical examples and tips:

Five months ago I wrote a post titled, "So you wanna be a user experience designer," in which I gathered all of the resources in my UX arsenal: publications and blogs, books, local events, organizations, mailing lists, webinars, workshops, conferences, and schooling. My intent was to give aspiring user experience designers, or even those on the hunt for additional inspiration, a launching pad for getting started.
The response has been pretty remarkable—the link continues to be sent around the Twitterverse and referenced in the blogosphere. I'm really pleased that so many people have found it to be a useful aid in their exploration of User Experience.
In the post I promised that it would be the beginning of a series, and I'm happy to report that Step 2 is finally here: Guiding Principles.
"Guiding principles" are the broad philosophy or fundamental beliefs that steer an organization, team or individual's decision making, irrespective of the project goals, constraints, or resources.
I have collected a set of guiding principles for user experience designers, to encourage behaviors that I believe are necessary to being a successful practitioner, as well as a set of guiding principles for experience design—which I think anyone who touches a product used by humans should strive to follow.
DISCLAIMER: These lists are meant to be both cogent and concise. While there are certainly other universal truths that I may not have noted, the principles below are the ones I consider to be most critical to designing user experiences and are often the most neglected.
I would love to hear your additions and edits in the comments.

5 Guiding Principles for Experience Designers

Understand the underlying problem before attempting to solve it
Don't hurt anyone
Make things simple and intuitive
Acknowledge that the user is not like you
Have empathy

20 Guiding Principles for Experience Design

Stay out of people's way
Present few choices
Limit distractions
Group related objects near each other
Create a visual hierarchy that matches the user's needs

Visual hierarchy

Provide strong information scent
Provide signposts and cues
Provide context
Avoid jargon
Make things efficient

before

Use appropriate defaults
Use constraints appropriately
Make actions reversible
Reduce latency
Provide feedback
Use emotion
Less is more
Be consistent
Make a good first impression
Be credible and trustworthy

The above principles are general and can be applied across many types of experiences. However some products require a more focused set of directives due to their specific audiences or brand goals. Below are examples of Guiding Principles that have been made public by some of the best known organizations. Use these as inspiration, but don't think that just following the same instructions will yield the same results.

Social Bookmarking List

2011-02-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

Sr.no.	Website	PageRank	Alexa Rank	Do-Follow	Popularity
1	slashdot.org	9	1,241	Yes	98.40%
2	digg.com	8	127	no	94.80%
3	reddit.com	8	192	Yes	94.80%
4	stumbleupon.com	8	158	N/A	94.80%
5	squidoo.com	8	204	N/A	94.70%
6	delicious.com	8	250	N/A	94.70%
7	technorati.com	8	859	Yes	93.90%
8	mixx.com	8	1,207	Yes	93.50%
9	folkd.com	8	2,434	Yes	92.00%
10	mister-wong.com	8	2,880	no	91.40%
11	diigo.com	7	1,417	no	88.20%
12	metafilter.com	7	2,169	Yes	87.30%
13	newsvine.com	7	2,444	N/A	86.90%
14	blinklist.com	7	3,261	no	85.90%
15	wikio.com	7	3,343	Yes	85.80%
16	current.com	7	3,842	Yes	85.20%
17	bibsonomy.org	7	4,637	no	84.20%
18	propeller.com	7	4,936	Yes	83.80%
19	connotea.org	7	5,532	Yes	83.10%
20	hotklix.com	6	1,995	N/A	82.50%
21	jumptags.com	6	2,465	no	81.90%
22	dzone.com	6	2,854	Yes	81.40%
23	clipmarks.com	6	3,652	Yes	80.40%
24	kirtsy.com	6	5,729	Yes	77.80%
25	buddymarks.com	6	5,842	Yes	77.70%
26	blurpalicious.com	4	4,020	Yes	77.00%
27	tipd.com	7	11,103	Yes	76.10%
28	sphinn.com	6	7,517	Yes	75.60%
29	spurl.net	6	7,623	N/A	75.50%
30	citeulike.org	7	11,648	N/A	75.40%
31	qaafe.com	5	14,813	Yes	74.30%
32	a1-webmarks.com	5	5,170	Yes	73.50%
33	designfloat.com	5	5,957	Yes	72.60%
34	lintasberita.com	4	2,195	Yes	72.30%
35	buzzflash.net	6	10,233	Yes	72.20%
36	fark.com	4	2,332	N/A	72.10%
37	faves.com	4	3,639	no	70.50%
38	corank.com	5	7,642	N/A	70.40%
39	startaid.com	6	11,685	N/A	70.40%
40	1888pressrelease.com	5	7,804	N/A	70.20%
41	spotback.com	5	7,968	Yes	70.00%
42	bizsugar.com	5	8,756	Yes	69.10%
43	dropjack.com	5	8,930	no	68.80%
44	designbump.com	5	9,529	N/A	68.10%
45	blogengage.com	5	10,029	Yes	67.50%
46	humsurfer.com	3	2,350	Yes	67.10%
47	moolets.com	5	61,159	Yes	67.00%
48	pusha.se	6	15,208	N/A	66.00%
49	indianpad.com	5	11,599	Yes	65.50%
50	searchles.com	5	11,730	N/A	65.30%
51	swik.net	5	11,722	N/A	65.30%
52	tagza.com	5	12,258	N/A	64.70%
53	kwzz.com	4	17,110	Yes	64.70%
54	kwoff.com	6	16,380	Yes	64.50%
55	gabbr.com	6	16,595	N/A	64.30%
56	linkarena.com	4	8,858	N/A	63.90%
57	shetoldme.com	5	12,936	N/A	63.80%
58	youmob.com	5	13,630	N/A	63.00%
59	tugatop.com	3	15,827	Yes	62.70%
60	yapod.com	4	19,627	Yes	62.40%
61	postonfire.com	4	10,580	Yes	61.80%
62	mylinkvault.com	3	7,806	Yes	60.20%
63	oyax.com	4	11,998	Yes	60.00%
64	simpy.com	6	20,431	no	60.00%
65	netvouz.com	6	28,008	no	59.10%
66	wagg.it	4	13,020	Yes	58.70%
67	zahits.com	3	20,831	Yes	58.50%
68	faqpal.com	5	17,316	Yes	58.40%
69	dealigg.com	3	9,562	N/A	58.00%
70	siyudis.com	3	24,085	Yes	58.00%
71	mysitevote.com	4	13,881	N/A	57.60%
72	rambhai.com	4	14,248	Yes	57.20%
73	givealink.org	4	14,569	N/A	56.80%
74	shoutwire.com	5	18,687	N/A	56.60%
75	social-bookmarking.net	3	10,982	N/A	56.30%
76	linkinn.com	4	15,032	N/A	56.20%
77	kannikar.com	2	20,192	Yes	55.60%
78	addictionaire.com	4	15,984	N/A	55.00%
79	fcc.com	5	20,444	Yes	55.00%
80	sitejot.com	5	20,796	N/A	54.90%
81	bukmark.net	3	12,067	Yes	54.90%
82	bookmark4you.com	3	12,231	N/A	54.70%
83	plime.com	5	22,854	Yes	54.70%
84	clipclip.org	5	23,820	no	54.60%
85	weblinkr.com	5	24,279	N/A	54.50%
86	kabuls.com	5	27,300	N/A	54.20%
87	wists.com	5	28,753	N/A	54.00%
88	fwisp.com	4	17,076	Yes	53.70%
89	jackpea.com	3	13,211	Yes	53.50%
90	bharatwaves.com	4	17,773	N/A	52.80%
91	linksnapr.com	0	29,301	Yes	52.60%
92	bmaccess.net	4	17,987	N/A	52.50%
93	b2blocal.net	4	18,203	Yes	52.20%
94	memfrag.com	4	18,420	Yes	52.00%
95	jeqq.com	4	18,646	N/A	51.70%
96	easymash.com	3	15,221	N/A	51.00%
97	bestofindya.com	2	11,739	Yes	50.30%
98	blogmarks.net	4	19,773	Yes	50.30%
99	uvouch.com	4	23,455	Yes	49.60%
100	blogbookmark.com	3	16,610	N/A	49.20%
101	solinkable.com	-	-	-	48.50%
102	socialogs.com	-	-	-	48.30%
103	hitmarks.com	-	-	-	48.00%
104	webmaster911.com	-	-	-	47.30%
105	googletop.net	-	-	-	47.00%
106	business-planet.net	-	-	-	46.70%
107	hillera.com	-	-	-	46.50%
108	qiinga.com	-	-	-	46.40%
109	slurke.com	-	-	-	46.20%
110	gaddiposh.com	-	-	-	45.90%
111	pinoymug.com	-	-	-	45.90%
112	pfbuzz.com	-	-	-	45.10%
113	totalpad.com	-	-	-	44.90%
114	yasnw.com	-	-	-	44.90%
115	newsmeback.com	-	-	-	44.80%
116	podshow411.net	-	-	-	44.70%
117	malaysiastory.com	-	-	-	44.60%
118	zabox.net	-	-	-	44.60%
119	listofadvertisers.com	-	-	-	44.50%
120	joseluispretto.com	-	-	-	44.40%
121	ez4u.net	-	-	-	44.40%
122	indiantags.com	-	-	-	44.30%
123	reizit.com	-	-	-	44.00%
124	dizzed.com	-	-	-	43.30%
125	bookmarkall.com	-	-	-	42.90%
126	ziki.com.au	-	-	-	42.30%
127	choowawa.com	-	-	-	40.00%
128	socialwebpad.com	-	-	-	39.90%
129	bookmarking-site.com	-	-	-	39.90%
130	yoorl.com	-	-	-	39.80%
131	bookmarkingweb.com	-	-	-	39.80%
132	buk-mark.com	-	-	-	39.80%
133	bookmarkedby.us	-	-	-	39.80%
134	sitesmash.com	-	-	-	39.70%
135	oomega.com	-	-	-	39.60%
136	bookmarkindo.com	-	-	-	39.30%
137	listbookmarks.com	-	-	-	39.20%
138	affiliated-business.com	-	-	-	39.00%
139	v0v.com	-	-	-	39.00%
140	memburu.info	-	-	-	39.00%
141	seedz.org	-	-	-	37.70%
142	kojaxx.com	-	-	-	37.20%
143	kapely.net	-	-	-	37.00%
144	diggdirect.com	-	-	-	36.40%
145	svejo.net	-	-	-	36.00%
146	koolontheweb.com	-	-	-	34.80%
147	tungaw.com	-	-	-	34.80%
148	newsmarked.info	-	-	-	34.70%
149	cloudytags.com	-	-	-	34.60%
150	clickuplink.com	-	-	-	34.60%
151	Social-Bookmarking-Sites-List.com		-	-	34.60%
152	bookmarkglobe.com	-	-	-	34.50%
153	ioch.org	-	-	-	34.30%
154	aaigg.com	-	-	-	34.00%
155	beamark.com	-	-	-	33.90%
156	dekut.com	-	-	-	32.90%
157	smallbusinessbrief.com	-	-	-	31.90%
158	buzzingtopics.com	-	-	-	31.70%
159	wirefan.com	-	-	-	31.10%
160	qazee.com	-	-	-	29.60%
161	bookmarkme.info	-	-	-	29.60%
162	sitesbookmarking.com	-	-	-	29.50%
163	izeby.com	-	-	-	29.50%
164	votetags.info	-	-	-	29.50%
165	urselections.com	-	-	-	29.50%
166	esocialbookmarks.com	-	-	-	29.40%
167	bookmarksite.net	-	-	-	29.30%
168	bookmarkall.info	-	-	-	29.30%
169	fashionablylatent.com	-	-	-	29.20%
170	myhq.com	-	-	-	29.20%
171	bookmarkmysite.net	-	-	-	29.20%
172	180blognetwork.com	-	-	-	29.20%
173	bookmarkingsite.net	-	-	-	29.20%
174	openfaves.com	-	-	-	29.20%
175	markered.info	-	-	-	29.20%
176	ja-ta.com	-	-	-	29.10%
177	urlscentral.com	-	-	-	29.10%
178	biz-diggers.com	-	-	-	29.10%
179	imcurtain.com	-	-	-	29.00%
180	way2bookmarks.com	-	-	-	29.00%
181	easybookmarking.net	-	-	-	29.00%
182	bookmark4seo.com	-	-	-	29.00%
183	socialn.net	-	-	-	28.90%
184	getboo.info	-	-	-	28.90%
185	pipinews.com	-	-	-	28.90%
186	bookmarksubmission.com	-	-	-	28.90%
187	digg3.com	-	-	-	26.30%
188	listyoururl.com	-	-	-	26.30%
189	thegreenroll.com	-	-	-	26.30%
190	yomash.com	-	-	-	26.30%
191	iconpoint.com	-	-	-	26.30%
192	therealpassport.com	-	-	-	26.20%
193	joontz.com	-	-	-	26.20%
194	chalo.net	-	-	-	26.20%
195	icio.de	-	-	-	26.20%
196	moooxy.com	-	-	-	26.20%
197	gyach.com	-	-	-	26.10%
198	qiel.com	-	-	-	26.10%
199	topinews.com	-	-	-	26.10%
200	savetheurl.com	-	-	-	26.10%
201	bookmarkeasy.com	-	-	-	26.10%
202	cubeglobe.com	-	-	-	26.10%
203	lawrkhawm.com	-	-	-	26.10%
204	bookmarkriver.info	-	-	-	26.10%
205	atheistnewsandviews.com	-	-	-	26.00%
206	shareabargain.co.uk	-	-	-	26.00%
207	yoogr.com	-	-	-	26.00%
208	altnewsonline.com	-	-	-	25.90%
209	bligg.be	-	-	-	25.90%
210	celebhungama.com	-	-	-	25.90%
211	linkets.com	-	-	-	25.90%
212	linksprocket.com	-	-	-	25.90%
213	markurls.com	-	-	-	25.90%
214	free-reviews.info	-	-	-	25.90%
215	japundit.com	-	-	-	25.90%
216	coolsearchinfo.com	-	-	-	25.80%
217	desigrade.com	-	-	-	25.80%
218	earnersclub.net	-	-	-	25.80%
219	linkvote.com	-	-	-	25.80%
220	ox-eye.com	-	-	-	25.80%
221	searchwhat.info	-	-	-	25.80%
222	articwoof.com	-	-	-	25.70%
223	sticktothis.com	-	-	-	25.70%
224	buzzup.com	-	-	-	25.60%
225	medical-articles.net	-	-	-	25.60%
226	ardour.tv	-	-	-	25.60%
227	m00.com	-	-	-	25.60%
228	bloob.net	-	-	-	25.60%
229	tedigo.net	-	-	-	25.60%
230	theobamanews.com	-	-	-	25.50%
231	linktab.co.uk	-	-	-	25.50%
232	worldoftags.com	-	-	-	25.50%
233	linkmarking.com	-	-	-	25.50%
234	tweet-this.com	-	-	-	25.50%
235	persianhaps.com	-	-	-	25.40%
236	subbmitt.com	-	-	-	25.40%
237	craftjuice.com	-	-	-	25.30%
238	iorkut.net	-	-	-	25.30%
239	ipopu.com	-	-	-	25.30%
240	thuhm.com	-	-	-	25.30%
241	socialdofollow.com	-	-	-	25.30%
242	taagz.com	-	-	-	25.30%
243	hypeurl.com	-	-	-	25.20%
244	etopbookmarks.com	-	-	-	25.20%
245	addblogurl.com	-	-	-	25.20%
246	ysome.com	-	-	-	25.20%
247	limca.info	-	-	-	25.10%
248	yehiapress.org	-	-	-	25.10%
249	blv-socialbookmarking.com	-	-	-	25.10%
250	indiamarks.com	-	-	-	25.00%
251	indianpick.com	-	-	-	25.00%
252	luxa.org	-	-	-	25.00%
253	ngopost.org	-	-	-	25.00%
254	surfurls.com	-	-	-	25.00%
255	wedigg.co.uk	-	-	-	25.00%
256	societyweb.info	-	-	-	24.90%
257	rssmedia.org	-	-	-	24.90%
258	onestopbookmarks.com	-	-	-	24.90%
259	crunchour.com	-	-	-	24.90%
260	indiareporting.com	-	-	-	24.80%
261	liiink.com	-	-	-	24.80%
262	1977.ws	-	-	-	24.80%
263	youblr.com	-	-	-	24.80%
264	jkbookmarks.com	-	-	-	24.80%
265	cadillactight.net	-	-	-	24.70%
266	socialwebdir.com	-	-	-	24.70%
267	weheartgossip.com	-	-	-	24.50%
268	buzzbookmarks.com	-	-	-	24.50%
269	rss2blog-review.com	-	-	-	24.50%
270	india24post.com	-	-	-	24.50%
271	bookmarks.com	-	-	-	24.40%
272	pligg.it	-	-	-	24.30%
273	hostingtags.com	-	-	-	24.30%
274	socialadda.com	-	-	-	24.30%
275	designmoo.com	-	-	-	24.10%
276	pr4links.com	-	-	-	24.10%
277	uan.me	-	-	-	24.10%
278	linkroll.com	-	-	-	24.10%
279	haohaoreport.com	-	-	-	24.00%
280	lifeinnews.com	-	-	-	24.00%
281	10url.com	-	-	-	24.00%
282	etamil.net	-	-	-	23.90%
283	ulavu.com	-	-	-	23.90%
284	yoosubmit.com	-	-	-	23.90%
285	webample.com	-	-	-	23.80%
286	2dug.com	-	-	-	23.80%
287	eviplist.com	-	-	-	23.70%
288	sociopost.com	-	-	-	23.70%
289	megite.com	-	-	-	23.60%
290	hotplugin.com	-	-	-	23.60%
291	social-bookmarkz.info	-	-	-	23.60%
292	socialbookmarking.co.in	-	-	-	23.50%
293	tagally.com	-	-	-	23.50%
294	selectified.com	-	-	-	23.50%
295	catchlive.com	-	-	-	23.40%
296	8tag.com	-	-	-	23.40%
297	newsgarbage.com	-	-	-	23.30%
298	multiplylinks.com	-	-	-	23.30%
299	malaysiastory.net	-	-	-	23.20%
300	tamilers.com	-	-	-	23.20%
301	rebelsden.net	-	-	-	23.20%
302	Social-Bookmarking-Sites-List.com		-	-	23.20%
303	popscreen.com	-	-	-	23.20%
304	feedest.com	-	-	-	23.10%
305	bookmarkslive.info	-	-	-	23.10%
306	digimoe.com	-	-	-	23.00%
307	linkatopia.com	-	-	-	23.00%
308	zeezag.com	-	-	-	23.00%
309	bharatboom.com	-	-	-	23.00%
310	linkerbook.com	-	-	-	23.00%
311	maple.nu	-	-	-	22.90%
312	web2list.com	-	-	-	22.90%
313	bookmarkyourpost.info	-	-	-	22.90%
314	thebookmarks.org	-	-	-	22.90%
315	mettablog.com	-	-	-	22.90%
316	2collab.com	-	-	-	22.90%
317	thesocialsubmit.info	-	-	-	22.90%
318	bookmarksync.com	-	-	-	22.80%
319	newspaanai.com	-	-	-	22.80%
320	socialsubjects.com	-	-	-	22.80%
321	dropyourlink.com	-	-	-	22.80%
322	techaker.com	-	-	-	22.70%
323	foxbizz.com	-	-	-	22.70%
324	indiasurfer.com	-	-	-	22.60%
325	oidobarra.com	-	-	-	22.50%
326	tagyourpost.com	-	-	-	22.50%
327	socialbookmarkdofollow.com	-	-	-	22.50%
328	a1socialbookmarking.com	-	-	-	22.50%
329	feedmarker.com	-	-	-	22.40%
330	allgooogle.com	-	-	-	22.40%
331	i89.us	-	-	-	22.30%
332	indimine.com	-	-	-	22.30%
333	bookmarkdevil.com	-	-	-	22.30%
334	phlix.tv	-	-	-	22.30%
335	w3m3.com	-	-	-	22.20%
336	momshare.net	-	-	-	22.10%
337	smokkr.com	-	-	-	22.10%
338	yoomark.com	-	-	-	22.10%
339	graphic-design-links.com	-	-	-	22.00%
340	zoomit.ca	-	-	-	21.90%
341	onliy.com	-	-	-	21.90%
342	listyourpost.com	-	-	-	21.80%
343	plugim.com	-	-	-	21.80%
344	wpthemez.com	-	-	-	21.80%
345	linkr.hu	-	-	-	21.80%
346	tagji.com	-	-	-	21.80%
347	iliketotallyloveit.com	-	-	-	21.70%
348	scoopit.co.nz	-	-	-	21.70%
349	smash-up.com	-	-	-	21.70%
350	th3scoop.com	-	-	-	21.70%
351	publish-articles.com	-	-	-	21.50%
352	dnhour.com	-	-	-	21.40%
353	nulify.com	-	-	-	21.40%
354	ptnoticias.com	-	-	-	21.40%
355	kloggi.com	-	-	-	21.30%
356	mytitbits.com	-	-	-	21.20%
357	squigglr.com	-	-	-	21.10%
358	scalespro.com	-	-	-	21.10%
359	indiasphere.net	-	-	-	21.00%
360	philbuzz.com	-	-	-	21.00%
361	koreantopnews.com	-	-	-	20.90%
362	byme.in	-	-	-	20.90%
363	bharatinfo.com	-	-	-	20.80%
364	seoswamy.com	-	-	-	20.80%
365	yuppmarks.com	-	-	-	20.60%
366	nuzcom.com	-	-	-	20.60%
367	stumble.info	-	-	-	20.50%
368	baang.ir	-	-	-	20.50%
369	humansthink.com	-	-	-	20.30%
370	findbetterlinks.com	-	-	-	20.20%
371	social.infoeduindia.com	-	-	-	20.10%
372	goodiggnews.com	-	-	-	20.10%
373	jewelry-scales-balances.com	-	-	-	20.10%
374	onlinesocialbookmarking.com	-	-	-	20.00%
375	xscoops.com	-	-	-	20.00%
376	latestbookmarks.com	-	-	-	20.00%
377	blogospherenews.com	-	-	-	19.90%
378	fhot.net	-	-	-	19.90%
379	socibook.com	-	-	-	19.80%
380	xulnews.com	-	-	-	19.80%
381	worldpharmanews.net	-	-	-	19.70%
382	gyanin.com	-	-	-	19.60%
383	amaze24.com	-	-	-	19.60%
384	iidigg.com	-	-	-	19.50%
385	jackool.com	-	-	-	19.40%
386	woorp.com	-	-	-	19.40%
387	lollu.net	-	-	-	19.30%
388	suffil.com	-	-	-	19.30%
389	paie.cn	-	-	-	19.20%
390	tweetr.in	-	-	-	19.20%
391	bytesocial.info	-	-	-	19.20%
392	linkne.ws	-	-	-	19.10%
393	linkne.ws	-	-	-	19.10%
394	kabulis.com	-	-	-	19.00%
395	digg-digg.com	-	-	-	19.00%
396	pharmacy-scales.net	-	-	-	19.00%
397	medicalogs.com	-	-	-	18.90%
398	whobuiltthatsite.com	-	-	-	18.80%
399	overflowlegal.com	-	-	-	18.80%
400	bookmarkdig.com	-	-	-	18.80%
401	sporticts.com	-	-	-	18.70%
402	techinreview.com	-	-	-	18.70%
403	dealshouter.com	-	-	-	18.60%
404	ellamey.com	-	-	-	18.40%
405	greensocialtech.com	-	-	-	18.40%
406	thehottestlinks.com	-	-	-	18.30%
407	webdesigndefinitions.com	-	-	-	18.20%
408	hit.in.th	-	-	-	18.00%
409	clickfor.net	-	-	-	17.90%
410	mobiseer.com	-	-	-	17.90%
411	whatnwhen.in	-	-	-	17.90%
412	wedelia.com	-	-	-	17.80%
413	tutable.com	-	-	-	17.80%
414	delicious123.com	-	-	-	17.70%
415	cenq.com	-	-	-	17.70%
416	netwebpad.com	-	-	-	17.70%
417	freehotlinksdirectory.com	-	-	-	17.70%
418	blogtwitt.com	-	-	-	17.60%
419	irtoplinks.com	-	-	-	17.60%
420	bookmarkdaily.com	-	-	-	17.50%
421	roadaholics.com	-	-	-	17.40%
422	gobigg.com	-	-	-	17.30%
423	jumbobookmarks.com	-	-	-	17.20%
424	onlinebookmarkingsite.com	-	-	-	17.20%
425	maglev08.com	-	-	-	17.10%
426	bookmarking4u.com	-	-	-	17.10%
427	bloggingcanadians.ca	-	-	-	17.00%
428	neotags.info	-	-	-	17.00%
429	blessedit.com	-	-	-	16.80%
430	hitdigg.com	-	-	-	16.80%
431	spartansportspage.com	-	-	-	16.80%
432	bookmarkingpixels.com	-	-	-	16.80%
433	raidx.co.uk	-	-	-	16.70%
434	detektei-hamburg.com	-	-	-	16.70%
435	bookmox.com	-	-	-	16.70%
436	bookmark-site.com	-	-	-	16.60%
437	producthater.com	-	-	-	16.60%
438	video-bookmark.com	-	-	-	16.50%
439	bookmarkplace.com	-	-	-	16.40%
440	japansoc.com	-	-	-	16.40%
441	indianscoop.net	-	-	-	16.40%
442	nippondit.com	-	-	-	16.30%
443	buzzytag.com	-	-	-	16.30%
444	postolia.com	-	-	-	16.30%
445	windowly.com	-	-	-	16.30%
446	posicionatuweb.es	-	-	-	16.20%
447	favname.com	-	-	-	16.20%
448	floatingdesigns.com	-	-	-	16.20%
449	ellepop.com	-	-	-	16.20%
450	indianbytes.com	-	-	-	16.00%
451	justsoft.org	-	-	-	16.00%
452	getboo.com	-	-	-	15.80%
453	Social-Bookmarking-Sites-List.com		-	-	15.80%
454	newdigg.com	-	-	-	15.80%
455	javaads.com	-	-	-	15.80%
456	dofollowbookmark.org	-	-	-	15.70%
457	inbookmark.com	-	-	-	15.60%
458	universalbookmarks.com	-	-	-	15.60%
459	blogcharts.net	-	-	-	15.50%
460	donedigg.com	-	-	-	15.30%
461	actualtopics.com	-	-	-	15.30%
462	oopza.com	-	-	-	15.20%
463	LinkingFriends.com	-	-	-	15.20%
464	brightsapphire.com	-	-	-	15.10%
465	site-patrol.com	-	-	-	15.00%
466	bookmarkshub.info	-	-	-	14.90%
467	24by7bookmarks.com	-	-	-	14.80%
468	bookmarkstime.com	-	-	-	14.80%
469	diggyourlink.info	-	-	-	14.70%
470	bookmarkslinks.com	-	-	-	14.70%
471	metrotagz.com	-	-	-	14.60%
472	etagz.info	-	-	-	14.60%
473	drigg-code.com	-	-	-	14.60%
474	bookmarkspiders.com	-	-	-	14.60%
475	bookmarkroll.com	-	-	-	14.60%
476	zoombookmarks.info	-	-	-	14.60%
477	jumptagz.com	-	-	-	14.50%
478	clixwlix.com	-	-	-	14.40%
479	bookmarkszone.com	-	-	-	14.40%
480	clickbuzz.info	-	-	-	14.30%
481	x-oe.com	-	-	-	14.30%
482	officebill.net	-	-	-	14.30%
483	m-topic.com	-	-	-	14.20%
484	doddle.co.za	-	-	-	13.80%
485	forexbookmarks.com	-	-	-	13.80%
486	sturvs.com	-	-	-	13.70%
487	dosocialbookmark.com	-	-	-	13.70%
488	bookmarkja.com	-	-	-	13.60%
489	bookmarkocean.com	-	-	-	13.50%
490	rujai.com	-	-	-	13.40%
491	fuzzfizz.com	-	-	-	13.30%
492	onlinearticlestore.com	-	-	-	13.20%
493	sowhats.net	-	-	-	13.20%
494	expressbookmarks.com	-	-	-	13.00%
495	socialwebcms.info	-	-	-	13.00%
496	dgdig.com	-	-	-	13.00%
497	bookmarksland.com	-	-	-	13.00%
498	britainsgotdiscounts.com	-	-	-	12.90%
499	design.fr	-	-	-	12.90%
500	afunpark.com	-	-	-	12.90%
501	simpletagz.info	-	-	-	12.90%
502	linksroll.info	-	-	-	12.90%
503	stick2this.info	-	-	-	12.90%
504	vtagit.info	-	-	-	12.90%
505	sponter.com	-	-	-	12.90%
506	bookmarkarticles.com	-	-	-	12.80%
507	claimbookmarks.com	-	-	-	12.80%
508	pliggcms.info	-	-	-	12.80%
509	bookmarkbay.com	-	-	-	12.80%
510	peaksocial.com	-	-	-	12.80%
511	entpoint.com	-	-	-	12.80%
512	royalbookmarks.info	-	-	-	12.70%
513	pacenext.com	-	-	-	12.70%
514	icositetrahedron.com	-	-	-	12.60%
515	bookmarksnetwork.com	-	-	-	12.60%
516	bizonsocial.com	-	-	-	12.60%
517	freewarebin.com	-	-	-	12.60%
518	veryhotlinks.com	-	-	-	12.50%
519	add2this.info	-	-	-	12.50%
520	clipbookmarks.com	-	-	-	12.50%
521	atozbookmarks.com	-	-	-	12.40%
522	activesubmit.com	-	-	-	12.40%
523	suggestbookmark.info	-	-	-	12.40%
524	qwiss.com	-	-	-	12.40%
525	supplierdir.com	-	-	-	12.40%
526	bookmarkingpalace.info	-	-	-	12.30%
527	bookmarkdiesel.com	-	-	-	12.20%
528	metrotags.info	-	-	-	12.20%
529	backlinkstate.com	-	-	-	12.20%
530	letslogin.com	-	-	-	12.10%
531	eaglebookmarks.com	-	-	-	12.10%
532	agilemarks.com	-	-	-	12.10%
533	againlinks.com	-	-	-	12.10%
534	cosmicmarks.com	-	-	-	12.10%
535	explorelinks.com	-	-	-	12.10%
536	5starbookmarks.info	-	-	-	12.10%
537	bittu.tk	-	-	-	12.10%
538	activitysocial.com	-	-	-	12.00%
539	futurebookmark.com	-	-	-	12.00%
540	publishednews.info	-	-	-	12.00%
541	1stopbookmarks.info	-	-	-	11.90%
542	pillar2post.info	-	-	-	11.90%
543	zzygg.com	-	-	-	11.80%
544	headusnext.com	-	-	-	11.80%
545	iwaylinks.com	-	-	-	11.80%
546	coolsharer.com	-	-	-	11.80%
547	kitonweb.com	-	-	-	11.80%
548	steepbookmarks.com	-	-	-	11.80%
549	smslucu.web.id	-	-	-	11.70%
550	bookmarkshut.info	-	-	-	11.70%
551	bookmarksarena.com	-	-	-	11.70%
552	backlinkus.info	-	-	-	11.70%
553	linksbatch.com	-	-	-	11.70%
554	clickclique.org	-	-	-	11.70%
555	starton.us	-	-	-	11.60%
556	bookmarkcity.com	-	-	-	11.60%
557	monstertags.info	-	-	-	11.60%
558	indexhood.com	-	-	-	11.60%
559	elanforum.com	-	-	-	11.50%
560	flixtheweb.com	-	-	-	11.50%
561	cloudytags.info	-	-	-	11.50%
562	gainbacklinks.com	-	-	-	11.50%
563	rollingtags.info	-	-	-	11.50%
564	followingtag.com	-	-	-	11.50%
565	foremostin.com	-	-	-	11.50%
566	vote.my	-	-	-	11.40%
567	clewmarks.com	-	-	-	11.40%
568	bookmarkingdirect.info	-	-	-	11.40%
569	bookmarkhow.com	-	-	-	11.40%
570	connectchain.com	-	-	-	11.40%
571	getaconnect.com	-	-	-	11.40%
572	b2blocal.info	-	-	-	11.30%
573	bookmarkalley.com	-	-	-	11.30%
574	quest4linkz.com	-	-	-	11.30%
575	searchenginemeta.com	-	-	-	11.30%
576	shareinformer.com	-	-	-	11.30%
577	tagz9.info	-	-	-	11.30%
578	tuneinbookmarks.com	-	-	-	11.30%
579	relatesocial.com	-	-	-	11.30%
580	socialmarker.info	-	-	-	11.30%
581	zebylinks.info	-	-	-	11.30%
582	backlinksocial.com	-	-	-	11.20%
583	gathernews.com	-	-	-	11.20%
584	linkuplink.com	-	-	-	11.20%
585	linkupsearch.com	-	-	-	11.20%
586	rankittop.com	-	-	-	11.20%
587	buzzednews.info	-	-	-	11.20%
588	masterlinking.com	-	-	-	11.20%
589	savefavorites.info	-	-	-	11.20%
590	webnetsocial.com	-	-	-	11.20%
591	buzzbookmarks.info	-	-	-	11.10%
592	bookmarkx.info	-	-	-	11.10%
593	bookmarkspedia.com	-	-	-	11.10%
594	networkinglace.com	-	-	-	11.10%
595	topeven.com	-	-	-	11.10%
596	socialwheel.info	-	-	-	11.10%
597	spicybookmark.com	-	-	-	11.00%
598	sustaind.org	-	-	-	11.00%
599	mattersocial.com	-	-	-	11.00%
600	releaseurls.com	-	-	-	11.00%
601	twistfusion.com	-	-	-	11.00%
602	chainonsocial.info	-	-	-	11.00%
603	submitstory.info	-	-	-	11.00%
604	Social-Bookmarking-Sites-List.com		-	-	11.00%
605	yemle.com	-	-	-	11.00%
606	knowlinks.com	-	-	-	10.90%
607	linkhourly.com	-	-	-	10.90%
608	meanstraffic.com	-	-	-	10.90%
609	pressmarking.com	-	-	-	10.90%
610	setbaclinks.com	-	-	-	10.90%
611	shadeurl.com	-	-	-	10.90%
612	socialmagnetize.com	-	-	-	10.90%
613	bookmarksdemon.info	-	-	-	10.90%
614	unitsocial.com	-	-	-	10.90%
615	webjoontz.com	-	-	-	10.90%
616	wikibookmarks.info	-	-	-	10.90%
617	bollyscoops.com	-	-	-	10.80%
618	spamdigg.co.cc	-	-	-	10.80%
619	bookmarkcarrier.com	-	-	-	10.80%
620	thetrafficseo.com	-	-	-	10.80%
621	traffic2social.com	-	-	-	10.80%
622	crisscrosslink.info	-	-	-	10.80%
623	networkformer.com	-	-	-	10.80%
624	seobookmarks.info	-	-	-	10.80%
625	topsocial.info	-	-	-	10.80%
626	urlbookmarker.com	-	-	-	10.80%
627	worthystuff.info	-	-	-	10.80%
628	webdesignvista.com	-	-	-	10.80%
629	globalizenetwork.com	-	-	-	10.70%
630	hostingtags.info	-	-	-	10.70%
631	labeltagz.com	-	-	-	10.70%
632	taggingkit.com	-	-	-	10.70%
633	connectlinks.info	-	-	-	10.70%
634	queuenext.com	-	-	-	10.70%
635	socialmaximizer.info	-	-	-	10.70%
636	webmedias.info	-	-	-	10.70%
637	topstumbles.com	-	-	-	10.60%
638	beststumbles.com	-	-	-	10.60%
639	meshingsocial.com	-	-	-	10.60%
640	myseobookmarks.com	-	-	-	10.60%
641	storebookmarksonline.com	-	-	-	10.60%
642	submitevent.com	-	-	-	10.60%
643	wesnare.com	-	-	-	10.60%
644	bringr.info	-	-	-	10.60%
645	dizzedlink.info	-	-	-	10.60%
646	hubmarks.info	-	-	-	10.60%
647	mentionlinks.com	-	-	-	10.60%
648	placebookmarks.com	-	-	-	10.60%
649	reservesocial.info	-	-	-	10.60%
650	mydrunkthoughts.com	-	-	-	10.60%
651	buzzupsites.info	-	-	-	10.50%
652	webbysurf.com	-	-	-	10.50%
653	steadymarks.info	-	-	-	10.50%
654	trackbookmark.com	-	-	-	10.50%
655	planeteblog.net	-	-	-	10.50%
656	bookmarkingglobal.info	-	-	-	10.40%
657	saveupfavorites.com	-	-	-	10.40%
658	socializepostings.com	-	-	-	10.40%
659	socialmediaarticle.com	-	-	-	10.40%
660	maximizesocial.info	-	-	-	10.40%
661	shmiggy.com	-	-	-	10.40%
662	sociallauncher.com	-	-	-	10.40%
663	widgetlike.com	-	-	-	10.40%
664	leansocial.com	-	-	-	10.30%
665	seopostings.com	-	-	-	10.30%
666	socialbukmark.com	-	-	-	10.30%
667	linksmaximizer.info	-	-	-	10.30%
668	socialbooster.info	-	-	-	10.30%
669	citijournalist.com	-	-	-	10.20%
670	fulloftags.info	-	-	-	10.20%
671	dashboardwheel.com	-	-	-	10.20%
672	bookmarkzine.com	-	-	-	10.20%
673	juiceuplinks.info	-	-	-	10.20%
674	safebookmarks.info	-	-	-	10.20%
675	connect2social.com	-	-	-	10.10%
676	websocialbookmarking.com	-	-	-	10.10%
677	mediaoptimize.info	-	-	-	10.10%
678	chillbookmarks.com	-	-	-	10.00%
679	flashahead.info	-	-	-	10.00%
680	linksocializer.info	-	-	-	10.00%
681	linkswheel.info	-	-	-	10.00%
682	askeet.com	-	-	-	9.90%
683	bgbox.info	-	-	-	9.90%
684	babblestorm.co.uk	-	-	-	9.80%
685	myfavlinks.com	-	-	-	9.70%
686	metaengine.info	-	-	-	9.70%
687	shinymarker.com	-	-	-	9.60%
688	chimulus.com	-	-	-	9.60%
689	s4seo.info	-	-	-	9.50%
690	squidstop.com	-	-	-	9.40%
691	indiarooster.com	-	-	-	9.00%
692	yobookmarks.com	-	-	-	9.00%
693	atheistspot.com	-	-	-	8.80%
694	westernnewyorkhealthsystemofchoice.com	-	-	-	8.80%
695	modocreativo.com	-	-	-	8.70%
696	storebuycheap.com	-	-	-	8.60%
697	relacia.com	-	-	-	8.50%
698	newskicks.com	-	-	-	8.10%
699	mypinkcheese.com	-	-	-	7.90%
700	techdoggy.com	-	-	-	7.50%
701	indexmylinks.com	-	-	-	7.40%
702	jumbotagz.info	-	-	-	5.70%
703	actionnooz.com	-	-	-	5.50%
704	addthisto.com	-	-	-	5.50%
705	blogadeal.com	-	-	-	5.50%
706	dealdigs.com	-	-	-	5.50%
707	dewfun.com	-	-	-	5.50%
708	edensavr.org	-	-	-	5.50%
709	efixx.com	-	-	-	5.50%
710	freebiesup.com	-	-	-	5.50%
711	gruks.com	-	-	-	5.50%
712	hackysackdirectory.com	-	-	-	5.50%
713	haterating.com	-	-	-	5.50%
714	hecangetit.com	-	-	-	5.50%
715	keplaza.com	-	-	-	5.50%
716	kikono.org	-	-	-	5.50%
717	linxserver.com	-	-	-	5.50%
718	miniatory.com	-	-	-	5.50%
719	napoligg.com	-	-	-	5.50%
720	online-bookmarks.com	-	-	-	5.50%
721	panodigg.com	-	-	-	5.50%
722	pillfish.net	-	-	-	5.50%
723	rankalo.net	-	-	-	5.50%
724	shastranet.com	-	-	-	5.50%
725	sokmotortoppen.net	-	-	-	5.50%
726	spotonce.com	-	-	-	5.50%
727	tabmarks.com	-	-	-	5.50%
728	takemetop.com	-	-	-	5.50%
729	teenwag.com	-	-	-	5.50%
730	thefaithcafe.com	-	-	-	5.50%
731	twinprime.net	-	-	-	5.50%
732	vindianz.com	-	-	-	5.50%
733	adobelearn.com	-	-	-	5.50%
734	marathikatta.com	-	-	-	5.50%
735	pressitfor.me	-	-	-	5.50%
736	joomlavote.com	-	-	-	5.50%
737	americasearching.com	-	-	-	5.50%
738	medicine.net.au	-	-	-	5.50%
739	dotworldgroup.com	-	-	-	5.50%
740	jaxflnews.com	-	-	-	5.50%
741	share-news.net	-	-	-	5.50%
742	casthit.com	-	-	-	5.50%
743	clustercenter.org	-	-	-	5.50%
744	mostfashionable.com	-	-	-	5.50%
745	biowizard.com	-	-	-	5.50%
746	pickafig.com	-	-	-	5.50%
747	superuse.org	-	-	-	5.50%
748	techfloat.com	-	-	-	5.50%
749	fox-locks.com	-	-	-	5.50%
750	coldjung.com	-	-	-	5.50%
751	diggma.com	-	-	-	5.50%
752	ur-faves.com	-	-	-	5.50%
753	internetmarketingsubmit.com	-	-	-	5.50%
754	codexfind.com	-	-	-	5.50%
755	Social-Bookmarking-Sites-List.com		-	-	5.50%
756	boing.co.za	-	-	-	5.50%
757	fxbookmarks.com	-	-	-	5.50%
758	diggdugg.co.cc	-	-	-	5.50%
759	sharingit.co.uk	-	-	-	5.50%
760	tierboard.de	-	-	-	5.50%
761	pinthe.info	-	-	-	5.50%
762	psoop.com	-	-	-	5.50%
763	sdas.com	-	-	-	5.50%
764	strictly.ca	-	-	-	5.50%
765	blogsvine.com	-	-	-	5.50%
766	nextpush.info	-	-	-	5.50%
767	knowsite.org	-	-	-	5.50%
768	deeplinked.net	-	-	-	5.50%
769	livesocialbookmark.com	-	-	-	5.50%
770	inspiredn.com	-	-	-	5.50%
771	wallsocial.com	-	-	-	5.50%
772	jundigg.com	-	-	-	5.50%
773	zdravei.net	-	-	-	5.50%
774	mema-mn.org	-	-	-	5.50%
775	ipostx.com	-	-	-	5.50%
776	bookmarksbay.com	-	-	-	5.50%
777	bestpricesstock.com	-	-	-	5.50%
778	cheapstockprice.com	-	-	-	5.50%
779	onlinebuybest.info	-	-	-	5.50%
780	xxx-adult-bookmarks.com	-	-	-	5.50%
781	howtoxyz.com	-	-	-	5.50%
782	welovedigg.com	-	-	-	5.50%
783	pricespecs.com	-	-	-	5.50%
784	dosth.com	-	-	-	5.50%
785	mototagz.com	-	-	-	5.50%
786	mixxxxx.com	-	-	-	5.50%
787	mixxxxx.us	-	-	-	5.50%
788	ukmediaroom.com	-	-	-	5.50%
789	chrrr.com	-	-	-	5.50%
790	rocketjin.com	-	-	-	5.50%
791	imle.in	-	-	-	5.50%
792	folllow.com	-	-	-	5.50%
793	sitemarks.in	-	-	-	5.50%
794	p8t.net	-	-	-	5.50%
795	ultimatelinking.info	-	-	-	5.50%
796	powerlinkings.info	-	-	-	5.50%
797	asiansportsbuzz.com	-	-	-	5.40%
798	ausculture.com	-	-	-	5.40%
799	blurp.co.za	-	-	-	5.40%
800	bolsayfinanzas.com	-	-	-	5.40%
801	bookzzle.com	-	-	-	5.40%
802	bullmarkit.com	-	-	-	5.40%
803	cachondeamela.com	-	-	-	5.40%
804	chatintamil.org	-	-	-	5.40%
805	chokeit.com	-	-	-	5.40%
806	diggislam.com	-	-	-	5.40%
807	diggtags.com	-	-	-	5.40%
808	folkdiggs.com	-	-	-	5.40%
809	folkmarks.com	-	-	-	5.40%
810	forexindexy.com	-	-	-	5.40%
811	goldenbookmarks.com	-	-	-	5.40%
812	good-tutorials.xpx.pl	-	-	-	5.40%
813	homebusinessvoices.com	-	-	-	5.40%
814	hotbuzz.in	-	-	-	5.40%
815	idiomato.com	-	-	-	5.40%
816	ilovethislife.net	-	-	-	5.40%
817	krazd.com	-	-	-	5.40%
818	kulapo.com	-	-	-	5.40%
819	mycartel.co.uk	-	-	-	5.40%
820	newsqb.com	-	-	-	5.40%
821	panamanewsblog.com	-	-	-	5.40%
822	plibb.com	-	-	-	5.40%
823	pressjunket.com	-	-	-	5.40%
824	quepasalatinos.com	-	-	-	5.40%
825	scuttleplus.com	-	-	-	5.40%
826	seotagg.com	-	-	-	5.40%
827	shakk.us	-	-	-	5.40%
828	socialbookmarkingwebsite.com	-	-	-	5.40%
829	socialbookmarksite.com	-	-	-	5.40%
830	socialbookmarkwebsite.com	-	-	-	5.40%
831	squigledoo.com	-	-	-	5.40%
832	subbitt.com	-	-	-	5.40%
833	tabletpccounter.com	-	-	-	5.40%
834	taggar.be	-	-	-	5.40%
835	tf-sbs.com	-	-	-	5.40%
836	votedlinks.com	-	-	-	5.40%
837	votedmostpopular.com	-	-	-	5.40%
838	votocilina.com	-	-	-	5.40%
839	webpics.info	-	-	-	5.40%
840	websapiens.net	-	-	-	5.40%
841	x-digg.com	-	-	-	5.40%
842	yeahmaybenot.com	-	-	-	5.40%
843	supertechnews.com	-	-	-	5.40%
844	minioffer.com	-	-	-	5.40%
845	wic-news.com	-	-	-	5.40%
846	ukbiznews.com	-	-	-	5.40%
847	leetornoob.com	-	-	-	5.40%
848	seoclon.com	-	-	-	5.40%
849	yentit.com	-	-	-	5.40%
850	billionface.com	-	-	-	5.40%
851	communityradar.com	-	-	-	5.40%
852	melesat.com	-	-	-	5.40%
853	2y1.net	-	-	-	5.40%
854	manualsocialbookmarks.com	-	-	-	5.40%
855	www-link.de	-	-	-	5.40%
856	indiatodayonline.com	-	-	-	5.40%
857	favlibrary.com	-	-	-	5.40%
858	returnweb.com	-	-	-	5.40%
859	dofollowdodigg.com	-	-	-	5.40%
860	seovoter.com	-	-	-	5.40%
861	pliggzap.com	-	-	-	5.40%
862	desipundit.com	-	-	-	5.40%
863	xratedbookmarks.com	-	-	-	5.40%
864	digg4magic.co.cc	-	-	-	5.40%
865	tierboard.com	-	-	-	5.40%
866	xbookmarking.com	-	-	-	5.40%
867	just4magic.co.cc	-	-	-	5.40%
868	binarylaw.com	-	-	-	5.40%
869	ifancyit.com	-	-	-	5.40%
870	share2rate.com	-	-	-	5.40%
871	8020leadership.com	-	-	-	5.40%
872	geordies.net	-	-	-	5.40%
873	linktagger.net	-	-	-	5.40%
874	siamhothit.com	-	-	-	5.40%
875	maxone.tk	-	-	-	5.40%
876	tagqu.com	-	-	-	5.40%
877	mobilitybeat.com	-	-	-	5.40%
878	buybestprices.info	-	-	-	5.40%
879	mixxxxx.net	-	-	-	5.40%
880	mixxxxx.org	-	-	-	5.40%
881	mixxxxx.biz	-	-	-	5.40%
882	mixxxxx.info	-	-	-	5.40%
883	soforce.com	-	-	-	5.40%
884	tagzeu.com	-	-	-	5.40%
885	huntka.com	-	-	-	5.40%
886	finnol.com	-	-	-	5.40%
887	ttpnow.com	-	-	-	5.40%
888	thehrwiki.com	-	-	-	5.40%
889	pigdogjournal.com	-	-	-	5.40%
890	bingamerica.com	-	-	-	5.40%
891	cinebelval.de	-	-	-	5.40%
892	eushia.de	-	-	-	5.40%
893	whotome.com	-	-	-	5.40%
894	bookmarkingbay.com	-	-	-	5.40%
895	dside-world.com	-	-	-	5.40%
896	bighitwords.com	-	-	-	5.40%
897	curiotech.com	-	-	-	5.40%
898	w-spirit.com	-	-	-	5.40%
899	ad-bookmark.co.cc	-	-	-	5.30%
900	astorii.com	-	-	-	5.30%
901	coinopia.com	-	-	-	5.30%
902	druganddrop.com	-	-	-	5.30%
903	dugstories.com	-	-	-	5.30%
904	headhitsdesk.com	-	-	-	5.30%
905	hitchki.com	-	-	-	5.30%
906	Social-Bookmarking-Sites-List.com		-	-	5.30%
907	iteenfun.com	-	-	-	5.30%
908	likeabullet.com	-	-	-	5.30%
909	lolditto.com	-	-	-	5.30%
910	markalizer.com	-	-	-	5.30%
911	negaraku.net	-	-	-	5.30%
912	politicsnews.ca	-	-	-	5.30%
913	rankufc.com	-	-	-	5.30%
914	restnews.com	-	-	-	5.30%
915	tagitect.com	-	-	-	5.30%
916	tagmaker.org	-	-	-	5.30%
917	tagzio.com	-	-	-	5.30%
918	teacherbookmarks.com	-	-	-	5.30%
919	telenoticias.info	-	-	-	5.30%
920	twittl.com	-	-	-	5.30%
921	trbr.net	-	-	-	5.30%
922	bignewsaboutsports.com	-	-	-	5.30%
923	hostingbookmarks.com	-	-	-	5.30%
924	commact.org	-	-	-	5.30%
925	drjohan.com	-	-	-	5.30%
926	uninga.net	-	-	-	5.30%
927	t-e-r-r-a-r-i-s-t-i-k.de	-	-	-	5.30%
928	b-o-o-k-m-a-r-k.de	-	-	-	5.30%
929	gadgetsgrid.com	-	-	-	5.30%
930	upnik.com	-	-	-	5.30%
931	bookmancer.com	-	-	-	5.30%
932	bookmarkmage.com	-	-	-	5.30%
933	upmemo.com	-	-	-	5.30%
934	bookmarkero.com	-	-	-	5.30%
935	bookmarkpay.com	-	-	-	5.30%
936	bookmarkbud.com	-	-	-	5.30%
937	pliggbud.com	-	-	-	5.30%
938	bookmarkworks.com	-	-	-	5.30%
939	pliggfeed.com	-	-	-	5.30%
940	bookmarkmix.com	-	-	-	5.30%
941	websitetweet.com	-	-	-	5.30%
942	bookmarkium.com	-	-	-	5.30%
943	bookmarkius.com	-	-	-	5.30%
944	bookmarkize.com	-	-	-	5.30%
945	flipsidemagazine.com	-	-	-	5.30%
946	kinkilink.com	-	-	-	5.30%
947	gamelapse.com	-	-	-	5.30%
948	guidenew.com	-	-	-	5.30%
949	lovebuysell.com	-	-	-	5.30%
950	social-news.tk	-	-	-	5.30%
951	sportsjumble.com	-	-	-	5.30%
952	diggtiger.com	-	-	-	5.30%
953	social-bookmarks-site.com	-	-	-	5.30%
954	directoryvote.com	-	-	-	5.30%
955	pligg-sites.tk	-	-	-	5.30%
956	newslinks.tk	-	-	-	5.30%
957	oninternet.tk	-	-	-	5.30%
958	getindude.com	-	-	-	5.30%
959	globalizeseo.com	-	-	-	5.30%
960	findmyporn.com	-	-	-	5.20%
961	freenormous.com	-	-	-	5.20%
962	it-ideas.com	-	-	-	5.20%
963	nakedbits.com	-	-	-	5.20%
964	reepit.com	-	-	-	5.20%
965	shoprz.net	-	-	-	5.20%
966	womcat.org	-	-	-	5.20%
967	garagesongs.com	-	-	-	5.20%
968	letterstothepresident.us	-	-	-	5.20%
969	ameririch.com	-	-	-	5.20%
970	portland-business-directory.com	-	-	-	5.20%
971	net101.us	-	-	-	5.20%
972	diggodugg.co.cc	-	-	-	5.20%
973	sitemage.com	-	-	-	5.20%
974	sitemancer.com	-	-	-	5.20%
975	upmage.com	-	-	-	5.20%
976	markmemo.com	-	-	-	5.20%
977	pliggline.com	-	-	-	5.20%
978	bookmarkline.com	-	-	-	5.20%
979	pligglink.com	-	-	-	5.20%
980	siteizer.com	-	-	-	5.20%
981	votecable.com	-	-	-	5.20%
982	votegraph.com	-	-	-	5.20%
983	votemage.com	-	-	-	5.20%
984	pliggate.com	-	-	-	5.20%
985	pliggify.com	-	-	-	5.20%
986	pliggizer.com	-	-	-	5.20%
987	bookmarknote.com	-	-	-	5.20%
988	pliggero.com	-	-	-	5.20%
989	pligginero.com	-	-	-	5.20%
990	pliggfan.com	-	-	-	5.20%
991	pliggpal.com	-	-	-	5.20%
992	pliggmark.com	-	-	-	5.20%
993	bookmarkwire.com	-	-	-	5.20%
994	webvard.com	-	-	-	5.20%
995	top-travel-articles.info	-	-	-	5.20%
996	bookmarkhub.co.cc	-	-	-	5.20%
997	teliko.mobi	-	-	-	5.20%
998	laflink.com	-	-	-	5.10%
999	savedsignal.com	-	-	-	5.10%
1000	socialope.com	-	-	-	5.10%
1001	siteoso.com	-	-	-	5.10%
1002	votememo.com	-	-	-	5.10%
1003	socialbookmarkinghub.net	-	-	-	5.10%
1004	linksadd.info	-	-	-	5.10%
1005	tamilish.com	-	-	-	5.00%
1006	yeawo.com	-	-	-	5.00%
1007	facemaniac.com	-	-	-	5.00%
1008	newscola.com	-	-	-	4.90%
1009	yosoc.org	-	-	-	4.90%
1010	cameracheapest.com	-	-	-	4.90%
1011	gabmark.org	-	-	-	4.80%
1012	moxinvest.com	-	-	-	4.80%
1013	hdtvcheapest.com	-	-	-	4.80%
1014	binary-sewer.com	-	-	-	4.70%
1015	fantasysportsexperts.com	-	-	-	4.50%
1016	savebookmarks.info	-	-	-	4.50%
1017	seek4news.com	-	-	-	4.40%
1018	letsbuysomemusic.co.uk	-	-	-	4.30%
1019	twine.com	-	-	-	4.00%
1020	wobblog.com	-	-	-	3.60%
1021	wirepost.com	-	-	-	3.20%
1022	healthranker.com	-	-	-	3.10%
1023	wrrx.com	-	-	-	2.90%
1024	buddymarks.info	-	-	-	2.70%
1025	bookmarkeasy.info	-	-	-	2.70%
1026	voteyourstory.com	-	-	-	2.70%
1027	phpkicks.info	-	-	-	2.70%
1028	rollingtagz.info	-	-	-	2.70%
1029	startbookmark.com	-	-	-	2.70%
1030	muzikaweb.com	-	-	-	1.00%
1031	book-marky.de	-	-	-	1.00%
1032	photosup.com	-	-	-	0.50%

List Of Keyword Tools-Spice up your Keyword Research

2011-01-27T12:09:00.000-08:00

1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool

This is one of the most popular and also free keyword tool available online right now, many webmasters do feel its enough just to make use of this tool alone for their keyword research process. Many do feel its the most authentic keyword tool available as the datas directly come from one of the most popular search engine that is Google itself.

2. Alexa

Although alexa is not a typical keyword research tool, but it does provide more less accurate details about the site and what keywords drive majority of the traffic for a particular site, this data can be quite useful when you want to analyze your competition and where it is getting its valuable hits from, thus making this tool invaluable for research purposes.

3. Compete

Compete is again a tool more similar to alexa, but its been said that compete gives more accurate details about a site over alexa. But just know that no tools can give really accurate data about a site, but most tools strive to achieve the near accuracy area and compete really stands out of the crowd by providing valuable data about a site which includes the terms which a particular site ranks on top which makes a site popular. You still get very limited information about the keywords on free version, if you want to expand your list then you need to pay for the pro version.

4. Keywordspy

Keyword spy is more like compete but this tool gives more in depth details in to your competitors, also gives you details about your PPC competitors, one of the best keyword tools out there, if you haven’t tried it before I highly recommend checking this tool out.

5. Spyfu

Spyfu gives you very good idea about your keywords you want to focus on, information about who are ranking well for your keywords already, stats for domains which are using PPC for your keywords. But one limitation with this tool is that it gives you only information from the data collected from US and UK, if you are focusing on market outside of UK and US this tool might not be very useful for you.

6. Wordtracker

Perhaps the second popular keyword tool out there after Google, unlike Google the datas of this keyword tool is collected from search engines like dogpile cannot be said that it gives very accurate datas about search volume but its been said it gives more or less accurate results for keywords. Again it comes in both paid and free version. You can opt for a paid version if you want additional functionality and more indepth keyword research.

White hat versus black hat

2011-01-27T12:04:00.000-08:00

SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO.White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites will eventually be banned once the search engines discover what they are doing.

A SEO tactic, technique or method is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to game the algorithm. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility, although the two are not identical.

White Hat SEO is merely effective marketing, making efforts to deliver quality content to an audience that has requested the quality content. Traditional marketing means have allowed this through transparency and exposure. A search engine's algorithm takes this into account, such as Google's PageRank.

Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.

Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. One infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list

How to use Twitter For Business

2011-01-19T06:21:00.000-08:00

Twitter is a wonderful business tool, not least because it's free; all it will cost is your time (and if that's in short supply, you can hire a social media marketer to manage it for you).

Used well, Twitter can provide good exposure for your business; but you can also damage your brand with social media marketing if you're not careful, so it's worth learning the biggest dos and don'ts before you start using Twitter.

Tip 1: Be yourself and be human

The beauty of Twitter is that it's a huge global community of human beings (mostly; there are spammer accounts but they're easy to spot, block and report). So do show your human side, especially when using your business account. Talk about things that matter to you: funny things your children say, recent achievements, your favourite band or TV show, and so on. Join in with conversations that interest you - be friendly, show emotion, and use smilies if you want to.

On the other hand, don't be too human. Don't share anything you wouldn't share at a real-world business networking event; keep intimate health problems and controversial or potentially offensive opinions to yourself.

Tip 2: Watch how you write

Some people write well, others don't - that's true in all areas of life, not just on Twitter. You don't need to be a bestselling novelist to use Twitter, but it helps if you have basic literacy skills (and if you use Twitter at the website instead of through a client, your Tweets will be spellchecked as you type anyway - which helps).

However good (or bad) your writing skills are, with Twitter's 140-character limit you'll need to be creative with your Tweets. Your Tweets need to be concise yet informative, and often you'll be trying to squeeze in a URL too (URL shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com are lifesavers).

One definite don't is using text speak. Text speak is fine if you're 13, but as a professional adult promoting your business you're just going to look silly, and won't communicate your messages efficiently - unless you're targeting 13 year olds.

Tip 3: Share and share alike

If you have some good news - related to your business or your personal life - share it; everybody loves a good news story.

Do share links - to your website, your blog, your local news service, or anything else that interests your followers - this is a great way to get conversations going. But do remember to explain what the link's about, or your followers will feel less inclined to click it. And don't Tweet the same link over and over; people will quickly become bored and may stop following you.

Do retweet your friends' links, too; they'll be grateful, and so will your followers if the link is interesting and relevant. But here's a very big 'do' - DO make sure you click the link and read the content before sharing it with your followers, or you could end up sharing a page that's irrelevant or offensive, or which contradicts your usual position on the subject.

Tip 4: Be part of the community

Don't treat Twitter as your personal billboard. It's not: it's a community, millions of members strong, and the community as a whole is not very tolerant of users who constantly advertise. Try to stick to the 80-20 rule when you use Twitter for business: no more than 20% of your Tweets should advertise or self-promote, and at least 80% should be non-promotional. If you can get the ratio down to 90-10 or 95-5, even better.

Listen to what people are saying, and join in. Twitter is a network of conversations, so it's good practice to listen and respond to parts of those conversations that interest you; don't just stand in the middle of the room with a megaphone, shouting "I'm fabulous! I'm selling widgets at 20% off this week!" Again - if you wouldn't do it at a business networking event, don't do it on Twitter.

Do re tweet your friends' requests for help (for example, charity appeals and sponsorship requests), and do introduce friends that are new to Twitter and could do with some followers. And again - do re tweet useful, interesting links from people you follow, but always check links before sending.

Tip 5: Mind your language

Don't use offensive language when representing your business on Twitter; even mild swearwords can put sensitive souls off following you (and besides - cursing in public is hardly professional).

Use Twitter to answer customer questions and solve their problems, by all means; many organizations use Twitter as a customer services tool very effectively. But never, ever use an impolite or impatient tone with a customer. On Twitter, everything you say is out there for everyone to see, so leave your followers with the best possible impression of your brand at all times... the Internet has a very long memory!

Finally - consider this a bonus tip, since it's not really connected to any of the previous ones - try to enjoy yourself when you use Twitter. Try to embrace all that's good about Twitter - the new friendships and business contacts you'll make, the fun hashtags and trending topics, the strong community spirit - and before long you'll be singing (or is that Tweeting?) Twitter's praises to anyone who'll listen.

The Distribution of PageRank Regarding Search Engine Optimisation

2011-01-10T10:01:00.001-08:00

Up to this point, it has been described how the number of pages and the number of inbound and outbound links, respectively, influence PageRank. Here, it will mainly be discussed in how far PageRank can be affected for the purpose of search engine optimisation by a website's internal linking structure.

In most cases, websites are hierachically structured to a certain extend, as it is illustrated in our example of a web site consisting of the pages A, B and C. Normally, the root page is withal optimised for the most important search phrase. In our example, the optimised page A has an external inbound link from page X which has no other outbound links and a PageRank of 10. The pages B and C each receive a link from page A and link back to it. If we set the damping factor d to 0.5 the equations for the single pages' PageRank values are given by

PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 (10 + PR(B) + PR (C))
PR(B) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2)
PR(C) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2)

Solving the equations gives us the follwing PageRank values:

PR(A) = 8
PR(B) = 2.5
PR(C) = 2.5

It is generally not advisable to solely work on the root page of a site for the purpose of search engine optimisation. Indeed, it is, in most cases, more reasonable to optimise each page of a site for different search phrases.

We now assume that the root page of our example website provides satisfactory results for its search phrase, but the other pages of the site do not, and therefore we modify the linking structure of the website. We add links from page B to page C and vice versa to our formerly hierarchically structured example site. Again, page A has an external inbound link from page X which has no other outbound links and a PageRank of 10. At a damping factor d of 0.5, the equations for the single pages' PageRank values are given by

PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 (10 + PR(B) / 2 + PR(C) / 2)
PR(B) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2 + PR(C) / 2)
PR(C) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2 + PR(B) / 2)

Solving the equations gives us the follwing PageRank values:

PR(A) = 7
PR(B) = 3
PR(C) = 3

The result of adding internal links is an increase of the PageRank values of pages B and C, so that they likely will rise in search engine result pages for their targeted keywords. On the other hand, of course, page A will likely rank lower because of its diminished PageRank.

Generally spoken, PageRank will distribute for the purpose of search engine optimisation more equally among the pages of a site, the more the hierarchically lower pages are interlinked.

Well Directed PageRank Distribution by Concentration of Outbound Links

It has already been demonstrated that external outbound links tend to have negative effects on the PageRank of a website's web pages. Here, it shall be illustrated how this effect can be reduced for the purpose of search engine optimisation by the systematic arrangement of external outbound links.

We take a look at another hierarchically structured example site consisting of the pages A, B, C and D. Page A has links to the pages B, C and D. Besides a link back to page A, each of the pages B, C and D has one external outbound link. None of those external pages which receive links from the pages B, C and D link back to our example site. If we assume a damping factor d of 0.5, the equations for the calculation of the single pages' PageRank values are given by

PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(B) / 2 + PR(C) / 2 + PR(D) / 2)
PR(B) = PR(C) = PR(D) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 3)

Solving the equations gives us the follwing PageRank values:

PR(A) = 1
PR(B) = 2/3
PR(C) = 2/3
PR(D) = 2/3

Now, we modify our example site in a way that page D has all three external outbound links while pages B and C have no more external outbound links. Besides this, the general conditions of our example stay the same as above. None of the external pages which receive a link from pages D link back to our example site. If we, again, assume a damping factor d of 0.5, the equations for the calculations of the single pages' PageRank values are given by

PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(B) + PR(C) + PR(D) / 4)
PR(B) = PR(C) = PR(D) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 3)

Solving these equations gives us the follwing PageRank values:

PR(A) = 17/13
PR(B) = 28/39
PR(C) = 28/39
PR(D) = 28/39

As a result of our modifications, we see that the PageRank values for each single page of our site have increased. Regarding search engine optimisation, it is therefore advisable to concentrate external outbound links on as few pages as possible, as long as it does not lessen a site's usabilty.

Link Exchanges for the purpose of Search Engine Optimisation

For the purpose of search engine optimisation, many webmasters exchange links with others to increase link popularity. As it has already been shown, adding links within closed systems of web pages has no effects on the accumulated PageRank of those pages. So, it is questionable if link exchanges have positive consequences in terms of PageRank at all.

To show the effects of link exchanges, we take a look at an an example of two hierarchically structured websites consisting of pages A, B and C and D, E and F, respectively. Within the first site, page A links to pages B and C and those link back to page A. The second site is structured accordingly, so that the PageRank values for its pages do not have to be computed explicitly. At a damping factor d of 0.5, the equations for the single pages' PageRank values are given by

PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(B) + PR(C))
PR(B) = PR(C) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2)

Solving the equations gives us the follwing PageRank values for the first site

PR(A) = 4/3
PR(B) = 5/6
PR(C) = 5/6

and accordingly for the second site

PR(D) = 4/3
PR(E) = 5/6
PR(F) = 5/6

Now, two pages of our example sites start a link exchange. Page A links to page D and vice versa. If we leave the general conditions of our example the same as above and, again, set the damping factor d to 0.5, the equations for the calculations of the single pages' PageRank values are given by

PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(B) + PR(C) + PR(D) / 3)
PR(B) = PR(C) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 3)
PR(D) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(E) + PR(F) + PR(A) / 3)
PR(E) = PR(F) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(D) / 3)

Solving these equations gives us the follwing PageRank values:

PR(A) = 3/2
PR(B) = 3/4
PR(C) = 3/4
PR(D) = 3/2
PR(E) = 3/4
PR(F) = 3/4

We see that the link exchange makes pages A and D benefit in terms of PageRank while all other pages lose PageRank. Regarding search engine optimisation, this means that the exactly opposite effect compared to interlinking hierachically lower pages internally takes place. A link exchange is thus advisable, if one page (e.g. the root page of a site) shall be optimised for one important key phrase.

A basic premise for the positive effects of a link exchange is that both involved pages propagate a similar amount of PageRank to each other. If one of the involved pages has a significantly higher PageRank or fewer outbound links, it is likely that all of its site's pages lose PageRank. Here, an important influencing factor is the size of a site. The more pages a web site has, the more PageRank from an inbound link is distributed to other pages of the site, regardless of the number of outbound links on the page that is involved in the link exchange. This way, the page involved in a link exchange itself benefits lesser from the link exchange and cannot propagate as much PageRank to the other page involved in the link exchange. All the influencing factors should be weighted up against each other bevor one trades links.

Finally, it shall be noted that it is possible that all pages of a site benefit from a link exchange in terms of PageRank, whereby also the other site taking part in the link exchange does not lose PageRank. This may occur, when the page involved in the link exchange already has a certain number of external outbound links which don't link back to that site. In this case, less PageRank is lost by the already existing outbound links.

The Effect of the Number of Pages

2011-01-10T10:00:00.003-08:00

Since the accumulated PageRank of all pages of the web equals the total number of web pages, it follows directly that an additional web page increases the added up PageRank for all pages of the web by one. But far more interesting than the effect on the added up PageRank of the web is the impact of additional pages on the PageRank of actual websites.

To illustrate the effects of addional web pages, we take a look at a hierachically structured web site consisting of three pages A, B and C, which are joined by an additional page D on the hierarchically lower level of the site. The site has no outbound links. A link from page X which has no other outbound links and a PageRank of 10 points to page A. At a damping factor d of 0.75, the equations for the single pages' PageRank values before adding page D are given by

PR(A) = 0.25 + 0.75 (10 + PR(B) + PR(C))
PR(B) = PR(C) = 0.25 + 0.75 (PR(A) / 2)

Solving the equations gives us the follwing PageRank values:

PR(A) = 260/14
PR(B) = 101/14
PR(C) = 101/14

After adding page D, the equations for the pages' PageRank values are given by

PR(A) = 0.25 + 0.75 (10 + PR(B) + PR(C) + PR(D))
PR(B) = PR(C) = PR(D) = 0.25 + 0.75 (PR(A) / 3)

Solving these equations gives us the follwing PageRank values:

PR(A) = 266/14
PR(B) = 70/14
PR(C) = 70/14
PR(D) = 70/14

As to be expected since our example site has no outbound links, after adding page D, the accumulated PageRank of all pages increases by one from 33 to 34. Further, the PageRank of page A rises marginally. In contrast, the PageRank of pages B and C depletes substantially.

The Reduction of PageRank by Additional Pages

By adding pages to a hierarchically structured websites, the consequences for the already existing pages are nonuniform. The consequences for websites with a different structure shall be shown by another example.

We take a look at a website constisting of three pages A, B and C which are linked to each other in circle. The pages are then joined by page D which fits into the circular linking structure. The regarded site has no outbound links. Again, a link from page X which has no other outbound links and a PageRank of 10 points to page A. At a damping factor d of 0.75, the equations for the single pages' PageRank values before adding page D are given by

PR(A) = 0.25 + 0.75 (10 + PR(C))
PR(B) = 0.25 + 0.75 × PR(A)
PR(C) = 0.25 + 0.75 × PR(B)

Solving the equations gives us the follwing PageRank values:

PR(A) = 517/37 = 13.97
PR(B) = 397/37 = 10.73
PR(C) = 307/37 = 8.30

After adding page D, the equations for the pages' PageRank values are given by

PR(A) = 0.25 + 0.75 (10 + PR(D))
PR(B) = 0.25 + 0.75 × PR(A)
PR(C) = 0.25 + 0.75 × PR(B)
PR(D) = 0.25 + 0.75 × PR(C)

Solving these equations gives us the follwing PageRank values:

PR(A) = 419/35 = 11.97
PR(B) = 323/35 = 9.23
PR(C) = 251/35 = 7.17
PR(D) = 197/35 = 5.63

Again, after adding page D, the accumulated PageRank of all pages increases by one from 33 to 34. But now, any of the pages which already existed before page D was added lose PageRank. The more uniform PageRank is distributed by the links within a site, the more likely will this effect occur.

Since adding pages to a site often reduces PageRank for already existing pages, it becomes obvious that the PageRank algorithm tends to privilege smaller web sites. Indeed, bigger web sites can counterbalance this effect by being more attractive for other webmasters to link to them, simply because they have more content.

None the less, it is also possible to increase the PageRank of existing pages by additional pages. Therefore, it has to be considered that as few PageRank as possible is distributed to these additional pages.

The Effect of Outbound Links on PageRank

2011-01-10T10:00:00.001-08:00

Since PageRank is based on the linking structure of the whole web, it is inescapable that if the inbound links of a page influence its PageRank, its outbound links do also have some impact. To illustrate the effects of outbound links, we take a look at a simple example.

We regard a web consisting of to websites, each having two web pages. One site consists of pages A and B, the other constists of pages C and D. Initially, both pages of each site solely link to each other. It is obvious that each page then has a PageRank of one. Now we add a link which points from page A to page C. At a damping factor of 0.75, we therefore get the following equations for the single pages' PageRank values:

PR(A) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(B)
PR(B) = 0.25 + 0.375 PR(A)
PR(C) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(D) + 0.375 PR(A)
PR(D) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(C)

Solving the equations gives us the following PageRank values for the first site:

PR(A) = 14/23
PR(B) = 11/23

We therefore get an accumulated PageRank of 25/23 for the first site. The PageRank values of the second site are given by

PR(C) = 35/23
PR(D) = 32/23

So, the accumulated PageRank of the second site is 67/23. The total PageRank for both sites is 92/23 = 4. Hence, adding a link has no effect on the total PageRank of the web. Additionally, the PageRank benefit for one site equals the PageRank loss of the other.

The Actual Effect of Outbound Links

As it has already been shown, the PageRank benefit for a closed system of web pages by an additional inbound link is given by

(d / (1-d)) × (PR(X) / C(X)),

where X is the linking page, PR(X) is its PageRank and C(X) is the number of its outbound links. Hence, this value also represents the PageRank loss of a formerly closed system of web pages, when a page X within this system of pages now points by a link to an external page.

The validity of the above formula requires that the page which receives the link from the formerly closed system of pages does not link back to that system, since it otherwise gains back some of the lost PageRank. Of course, this effect may also occur when not the page that receives the link from the formerly closed system of pages links back directly, but another page which has an inbound link from that page. Indeed, this effect may be disregarded because of the damping factor, if there are enough other web pages in-between the link-recursion. The validity of the formula also requires that the linking site has no other external outbound links. If it has other external outbound links, the loss of PageRank of the regarded site diminishes and the pages already receiving a link from that page lose PageRank accordingly.

Even if the actual PageRank values for the pages of an existing web site were known, it would not be possible to calculate to which extend an added outbound link diminishes the PageRank loss of the site, since the above presented formula regards the status after adding the link.

Intuitive Justification of the Effect of Outbound Links

The intuitive justification for the loss of PageRank by an additional external outbound link according to the Random Surfer Modell is that by adding an external outbound link to one page the surfer will less likely follow an internal link on that page. So, the probability for the surfer reaching other pages within a site diminishes. If those other pages of the site have links back to the page to which the external outbound link has been added, also this page's PageRank will deplete.

We can conclude that external outbound links diminish the totalized PageRank of a site and probably also the PageRank of each single page of a site. But, since links between web sites are the fundament of PageRank and indespensable for its functioning, there is the possibility that outbound links have positive effects within other parts of Google's ranking criteria. Lastly, relevant outbound links do constitute the quality of a web page and a webmaster who points to other pages integrates their content in some way into his own site.

Dangling Links

An important aspect of outbound links is the lack of them on web pages. When a web page has no outbound links, its PageRank cannot be distributed to other pages. Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin characterise links to those pages as dangling links.

The effect of dangling links shall be illustrated by a small example website. We take a look at a site consisting of three pages A, B and C. In our example, the pages A and B link to each other. Additionally, page A links to page C. Page C itself has no outbound links to other pages. At a damping factor of 0.75, we get the following equations for the single pages' PageRank values:

PR(A) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(B)
PR(B) = 0.25 + 0.375 PR(A)
PR(C) = 0.25 + 0.375 PR(A)

Solving the equations gives us the following PageRank values:

PR(A) = 14/23
PR(B) = 11/23
PR(C) = 11/23

So, the accumulated PageRank of all three pages is 36/23 which is just over half the value that we could have expected if page A had links to one of the other pages. According to Page and Brin, the number of dangling links in Google's index is fairly high. A reason therefore is that many linked pages are not indexed by Google, for example because indexing is disallowed by a robots.txt file. Additionally, Google meanwhile indexes several file types and not HTML only. PDF or Word files do not really have outbound links and, hence, dangling links could have major impacts on PageRank.

In order to prevent PageRank from the negative effects of dangling links, pages wihout outbound links have to be removed from the database until the PageRank values are computed. According to Page and Brin, the number of outbound links on pages with dangling links is thereby normalised. As shown in our illustration, removing one page can cause new dangling links and, hence, removing pages has to be an iterative process. After the PageRank calculation is finished, PageRank can be assigned to the formerly removed pages based on the PageRank algorithm. Therefore, as many iterations are needed as for removing the pages. Regarding our illustration, page C could be processed before page B. At that point, page B has no PageRank yet and, so, page C will not receive any either. Then, page B receives PageRank from page A and during the second iteration, also page C gets its PageRank.

Regarding our example website for dangling links, removing page C from the database results in page A and B each having a PageRank of 1. After the calculations, page C is assigned a PageRank of 0.25 + 0.375 PR(A) = 0.625. So, the accumulated PageRank does not equal the number of pages, but at least all pages which have outbound links are not harmed from the danging links problem.

By removing dangling links from the database, they do not have any negative effects on the PageRank of the rest of the web. Since PDF files are dangling links, links to PDF files do not diminish the PageRank of the linking page or site. So, PDF files can be a good means of search engine optimisation for Google.

The Effect of Inbound Links on PageRank

2011-01-10T09:59:00.002-08:00

It has already been shown that each additional inbound link for a web page always increases that page's PageRank. Taking a look at the PageRank algorithm, which is given by

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

one may assume that an additional inbound link from page X increases the PageRank of page A by

d × PR(X) / C(X)

where PR(X) is the PageRank of page X and C(X) is the total number of its outbound links. But page A usually links to other pages itself. Thus, these pages get a PageRank benefit also. If these pages link back to page A, page A will have an even higher PageRank benefit from its additional inbound link.

The single effects of additional inbound links shall be illustrated by an example.

We regard a website consisting of four pages A, B, C and D which are linked to each other in circle. Without external inbound links to one of these pages, each of them obviously has a PageRank of 1. We now add a page X to our example, for which we presume a constant Pagerank PR(X) of 10. Further, page X links to page A by its only outbound link. Setting the damping factor d to 0.5, we get the following equations for the PageRank values of the single pages of our site:

PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(X) + PR(D)) = 5.5 + 0.5 PR(D)
PR(B) = 0.5 + 0.5 PR(A)
PR(C) = 0.5 + 0.5 PR(B)
PR(D) = 0.5 + 0.5 PR(C)

Since the total number of outbound links for each page is one, the outbound links do not need to be considered in the equations. Solving them gives us the following PageRank values:

PR(A) = 19/3 = 6.33
PR(B) = 11/3 = 3.67
PR(C) = 7/3 = 2.33
PR(D) = 5/3 = 1.67

We see that the initial effect of the additional inbound link of page A, which was given by

d × PR(X) / C(X) = 0,5 × 10 / 1 = 5

is passed on by the links on our site.

The Influence of the Damping Factor

The degree of PageRank propagation from one page to another by a link is primarily determined by the damping factor d. If we set d to 0.75 we get the following equations for our above example:

PR(A) = 0.25 + 0.75 (PR(X) + PR(D)) = 7.75 + 0.75 PR(D)
PR(B) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(A)
PR(C) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(B)
PR(D) = 0.25 + 0.75 PR(C)

Solving these equations gives us the following PageRank values:

PR(A) = 419/35 = 11.97
PR(B) = 323/35 = 9.23
PR(C) = 251/35 = 7.17
PR(D) = 197/35 = 5.63

First of all, we see that there is a significantly higher initial effect of additional inbound link for page A which is given by

d × PR(X) / C(X) = 0.75 × 10 / 1 = 7.5

This initial effect is then propagated even stronger by the links on our site. In this way, the PageRank of page A is almost twice as high at a damping factor of 0.75 than it is at a damping factor of 0.5. At a damping factor of 0.5 the PageRank of page A is almost four times superior to the PageRank of page D, while at a damping factor of 0.75 it is only a little more than twice as high. So, the higher the damping factor, the larger is the effect of an additional inbound link for the PageRank of the page that receives the link and the more evenly distributes PageRank over the other pages of a site.

The Actual Effect of Additional Inbound Links

At a damping factor of 0.5, the accumulated PageRank of all pages of our site is given by

PR(A) + PR(B) + PR(C) + PR(D) = 14

Hence, by a page with a PageRank of 10 linking to one page of our example site by its only outbound link, the accumulated PageRank of all pages of the site is increased by 10. (Before adding the link, each page has had a PageRank of 1.) At a damping factor of 0.75 the accumulated PageRank of all pages of the site is given by

PR(A) + PR(B) + PR(C) + PR(D) = 34

This time the accumulated PageRank increases by 30. The accumulated PageRank of all pages of a site always increases by

(d / (1-d)) × (PR(X) / C(X))

where X is a page additionally linking to one page of the site, PR(X) is its PageRank and C(X) its number of outbound links. The formula presented above is only valid, if the additional link points to a page within a closed system of pages, as, for instance, a website without outbound links to other sites. As far as the website has links pointing to external pages, the surplus for the site itself diminishes accordingly, because a part of the additional PageRank is propagated to external pages.

The justification of the above formula is given by Raph Levien and it is based on the Random Surfer Model. The walk length of the random surfer is an exponential distribution with a mean of (d/(1-d)). When the random surfer follows a link to a closed system of web pages, he visits on average (d/(1-d)) pages within that closed system. So, this much more PageRank of the linking page - weighted by the number of its outbound links - is distributed to the closed system.

For the actual PageRank calculations at Google, Lawrence Page und Sergey Brin claim to usually set the damping factor d to 0.85. Thereby, the boost for a closed system of web pages by an additional link from page X is given by

(0.85 / 0.15) × (PR(X) / C(X)) = 5.67 × (PR(X) / C(X))

So, inbound links have a far larger effect than one may assume.

The PageRank-1 Rule

Users of the Google Toolbar often notice that pages with a certain Toolbar PageRank have an inbound link from a page with a Toolbar PageRank which is higher by one. Some take this observation to doubt the validity of the PageRank algorithm presented here for the actual ranking methods of the Google search engine. It shall be shown, however, that the PageRank-1 rule complies with the PageRank algorithm.

Basically, the PageRank-1 rule proves the fundamental principle of PageRank. Web pages are important themselves if other important web pages link to them. It is not necessary for a page to have many inbound links to rank well. A single link from a high ranking page is sufficient.

To show the actual consistance of the PageRank-1 rule with the PageRank algorithm several factors have to be taken into consideration. First of all, the toolbar PageRank is a logarithmically scaled version of real PageRank values. If the PageRank value of one page is one higher than the PageRank value of another page in terms of Toolbar PageRank, than its real PageRank can at least be higher by an amount which equals the logarithmical basis for the scalation of Toolbar PageRank. If the logarithmical basis for the scalation is 6 and the toolbar PageRank of a linking Page is 5, then the real PageRank of the page which receives the link can be at least 6 times smaller to make that page still get a toolbar PageRank of 4.

However, the number of outbound links on the linking page thwarts the effect of the logarithmical basis, because the PageRank propagation from one page to another is devided by the number of outbound links on the linking page. But it has already been shown that the PageRank benefit by a link is higher than PageRank algorithm's term d(PR(Ti)/C(Ti)) pretends. The reason is that the PageRank benefit for one page is further distributed to other pages within the site. If those pages link back as it usualy happens, the PageRank benefit for the page which initially received the link is accordingly higher. If we assume that at a high damping factor the logarithmical basis for PageRank scalation is 6 and a page receives a PageRank benefit which is twice as high as the PageRank of the linking page devided by the number of its outbound links, the linking page could have at least 12 outbound links so that the Toolbar PageRank of the page receiving the link is still at most one lower than the toolbar PageRank of the linking page.

A number of 12 outbound links admittedly seems relatively small. But normally, if a page has an external inbound link, this is not the only one for that page. Most likely other pages link to that page and propagate PageRank to it. And if there are examples where a page receives a single link from another page and the PageRanks of both pages comply the PageRank-1 rule although the linking page has many outbound links, this is first of all an indication for the linking page's toolbar PageRank being at the upper end of its scale. The linking page could be a "high" 5 and the page receiving the link could be a "low" 4. In this way, the linking page could have up to 72 outbound links. This number rises accordingly if we assume a higher logarithmical basis for the scalation of Toolbar PageRank.

The Implementation of PageRank in the Google Search Engine

2011-01-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

Regarding the implementation of PageRank, first of all, it is important how PageRank is integrated into the general ranking of web pages by the Google search engine. The proceedings have been described by Lawrencec Page and Sergey Brin in several publications. Initially, the ranking of web pages by the Google search engine was determined by three factors:

	Page specific factors
	Anchor text of inbound links
	PageRank

Page specific factors are, besides the body text, for instance the content of the title tag or the URL of the document. It is more than likely that since the publications of Page and Brin more factors have joined the ranking methods of the Google search engine. But this shall not be of interest here.

In order to provide search results, Google computes an IR score out of page specific factors and the anchor text of inbound links of a page, which is weighted by position and accentuation of the search term within the document. This way the relevance of a document for a query is determined. The IR-score is then combined with PageRank as an indicator for the general importance of the page. To combine the IR score with PageRank the two values are multiplicated. It is obvious that they cannot be added, since otherwise pages with a very high PageRank would rank high in search results even if the page is not related to the search query.

Especially for queries consisting of two or more search terms, there is a far bigger influence of the content related ranking criteria, whereas the impact of PageRank is mainly visible for unspecific single word queries. If webmasters target search phrases of two or more words it is possible for them to achieve better rankings than pages with high PageRank by means of classical search engine optimisation.

If pages are optimised for highly competitive search terms, it is essential for good rankings to have a high PageRank, even if a page is well optimised in terms of classical search engine optimisation. The reason therefore is that the increase of IR score deminishes the more often the keyword occurs within the document or the anchor texts of inbound links to avoid spam by extensive keyword repetition. Thereby, the potentialities of classical search engine optimisation are limited and PageRank becomes the decisive factor in highly competitive areas.

The PageRank Display of the Google Toolbar

PageRank became widely known by the PageRank display of the Google Toolbar. The Google Toolbar is a browser plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer which can be downloaded from the Google web site. The Google Toolbar provides some features for searching Google more comfortably.

The Google Toolbar displays PageRank on a scale from 0 to 10. First of all, the PageRank of an actually visited page can be estimated by the width of the green bar within the display. If the user holds his mouse over the display, the Toolbar also shows the PageRank value. Caution: The PageRank display is one of the advanced features of the Google Toolbar. And if those advanced features are enabled, Google collects usage data. Additionally, the Toolbar is self-updating and the user is not informed about updates. So, Google has access to the user's hard drive.

If we take into account that PageRank can theoretically have a maximum value of up to dN+(1-d), where N is the total number of web pages and d is usually set to 0.85, PageRank has to be scaled for the display on the Google Toolbar. It is generally assumed that the scalation is not linearly but logarithmically. At a damping factor of 0.85 and, therefore, a minimum PageRank of 0.15 and at an assumed logaritmical basis of 6 we get a scalation as follows:

Toolbar-PR	Tatsächlicher PR
0/10	0.15	-	0.9
1/10	0.9	-	5.4
2/10	5.4	-	32.4
3/10	32.4	-	194.4
4/10	194.4	-	1,166.4
5/10	1,166.4	-	6,998.4
6/10	6,998.4	-	41,990.4
7/10	41,990.4	-	251,942.4
8/10	251,942.4	-	1,511,654.4
9/10	1,511,654.4	-	9,069,926.4
10/10	9,069,926.4	-	0.85 × N + 0.15

It is uncertain if in fact a logarithmical scalation in a strictly mathematical sense takes place. There is likely a manual scalation which follows a logarithmical scheme, so that Google has control over the number of pages within the single Toolbar PageRank ranges. The logarithmical basis for this scheme should be between 6 and 7, which can for instance be rudimentary deduced from the number of inbound links of pages with a high Toolbar PageRank from pages with a Toolbar PageRank higher than 4, which are shown by Googe using the link command.

The Toolbar's PageRank Files

Even webmasters who do not want to use the Google Toolbar or the Internet Explorer permanently for security and privacy concerns have the possibility to check the PageRank values of their pages. Google submits PageRank values in simple text files to the Toolbar. In former times, this happened via XML. The switch to text files occured in August 2002.

The PageRank files can be requested directly from the domain www.google.com. Basically, the URLs for those files look like follows (without line breaks):

http://www.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&
ch=0123456789&features=Rank&q=info:http://www.domain.com/

There is only one line of text in the PageRank files. The last cipher in this line is PageRank.

The parameters incorporated in the above shown URL are inevitable for the display of the PageRank files in a browser. The value "navclient-auto" for the parameter "client" identifies the Toolbar. Via the parameter "q" the URL is submitted. The value "Rank" for the parameter "features" determines that the PageRank files are requested. If it is omitted, Google's servers still transmit XML files. The parameter "ch" transfers a checksum for the URL to Google, whereby this checksum can only change when the Toolbar version is updated by Google.

Thus, it is necessary to install the Toolbar at least once to find out about the checksum of one's URLs. To track the communication between the Toolbar and Google, often the use of packet sniffers, local proxies an similar tools is suggested. But this is not necessarily needed, since the PageRank files are cached by the Internet Explorer. So, the checksums can simply been found out by having a look at the folder Temporary Internet Files. Knowing the checksums of your URLs, you can view the PageRank files in your browser and you do not have to accept Google's 36 years lasting cookies.

Since the PageRank files are kept in the browser cache and, thus, are clearly visible, and as long as requests are not automated, watching the PageRank files in a browser should not be a violation of Google's Terms of Service. However, you should be cautious. The Toolbar submits its own User-Agent to Google. It is:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; GoogleToolbar 1.1.60-deleon; OS SE 4.10)

1.1.60-deleon is a Toolbar version which may of course change. OS is the operating system that you have installed. So, Google is able to identify requests by browsers, if they do not go out via a proxy and if the User-Agent is not modified accordingly.

Taking a look at IE's cache, one will normally notice that the PageRank files are not requested from the domain www.google.com but from IP addresses like 216.239.33.102. Additionally, the PageRank files' URLs often contain a parameter "failedip" that is set to values like "216.239.35.102;1111" (Its function is not absolutely clear). The IP addresses are each related to one of Google's seven data centers and the reason for the Toolbar querying IP-addresses is most likely to control the PageRank display in a better way, especially in times of the "Google Dance".

The PageRank Display at the Google Directory

Webmasters who do not want to check the PageRank files that are used by the toolbar have another possibility to receive information about the PageRank of their sites by means of the Google Directory (directory.google.com).

The Google Directory is a dump of the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org), which shows the PageRank for listed documents similarly to the Google Toolbar display scaled and by means of a green bar. In contrast to the Toolbar, the scale is from 1 to 7. The exact value is not displayed, but it can be determined by the divided bar respectively the width of the single graphics in the source code of the page if one is not sure by looking at the bar.

By comparing the Toolbar PageRank of a document with its Directory PageRank, a more exact estimation of a pages PageRank can be deduced, if the page is listed with the ODP. This connection was mentioned first by Chris Raimondi (www.searchnerd.com/pagerank).

Especially for pages with a Toolbar PageRank of 5 or 6, one can appraise if the page is on the upper or the lower end of its Toolbar scale. It shall be noted that for the comparison the Toolbar PageRank of 0 was not taken into account. It can easily be verified that this is appropriate by looking at pages with a Toolbar PageRank of 3. However, it has to be considered that for a verification pages of the Google Directory respectively the ODP with a Toolbar PageRank of 4 or lower have to be chosen, since otherwise no pages linked from there with a Toolbar PageRank of 3 will be found.

What is PageRank Algorithm???

2011-01-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

The original PageRank algorithm was described by Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin in several publications. It is given by

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

where

	PR(A) is the PageRank of page A,
	PR(Ti) is the PageRank of pages Ti which link to page A,
	C(Ti) is the number of outbound links on page Ti and
	d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1.

So, first of all, we see that PageRank does not rank web sites as a whole, but is determined for each page individually. Further, the PageRank of page A is recursively defined by the PageRanks of those pages which link to page A.

The PageRank of pages Ti which link to page A does not influence the PageRank of page A uniformly. Within the PageRank algorithm, the PageRank of a page T is always weighted by the number of outbound links C(T) on page T. This means that the more outbound links a page T has, the less will page A benefit from a link to it on page T.

The weighted PageRank of pages Ti is then added up. The outcome of this is that an additional inbound link for page A will always increase page A's PageRank.

Finally, the sum of the weighted PageRanks of all pages Ti is multiplied with a damping factor d which can be set between 0 and 1. Thereby, the extend of PageRank benefit for a page by another page linking to it is reduced.

The Random Surfer Model

In their publications, Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin give a very simple intuitive justification for the PageRank algorithm. They consider PageRank as a model of user behaviour, where a surfer clicks on links at random with no regard towards content.

The random surfer visits a web page with a certain probability which derives from the page's PageRank. The probability that the random surfer clicks on one link is solely given by the number of links on that page. This is why one page's PageRank is not completely passed on to a page it links to, but is devided by the number of links on the page.

So, the probability for the random surfer reaching one page is the sum of probabilities for the random surfer following links to this page. Now, this probability is reduced by the damping factor d. The justification within the Random Surfer Model, therefore, is that the surfer does not click on an infinite number of links, but gets bored sometimes and jumps to another page at random.

The probability for the random surfer not stopping to click on links is given by the damping factor d, which is, depending on the degree of probability therefore, set between 0 and 1. The higher d is, the more likely will the random surfer keep clicking links. Since the surfer jumps to another page at random after he stopped clicking links, the probability therefore is implemented as a constant (1-d) into the algorithm. Regardless of inbound links, the probability for the random surfer jumping to a page is always (1-d), so a page has always a minimum PageRank.

A Different Notation of the PageRank Algorithm

Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin have published two different versions of their PageRank algorithm in different papers. In the second version of the algorithm, the PageRank of page A is given as

PR(A) = (1-d) / N + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

where N is the total number of all pages on the web. The second version of the algorithm, indeed, does not differ fundamentally from the first one. Regarding the Random Surfer Model, the second version's PageRank of a page is the actual probability for a surfer reaching that page after clicking on many links. The PageRanks then form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all pages' PageRanks will be one.

Contrary, in the first version of the algorithm the probability for the random surfer reaching a page is weighted by the total number of web pages. So, in this version PageRank is an expected value for the random surfer visiting a page, when he restarts this procedure as often as the web has pages. If the web had 100 pages and a page had a PageRank value of 2, the random surfer would reach that page in an average twice if he restarts 100 times.

As mentioned above, the two versions of the algorithm do not differ fundamentally from each other. A PageRank which has been calculated by using the second version of the algorithm has to be multiplied by the total number of web pages to get the according PageRank that would have been caculated by using the first version. Even Page and Brin mixed up the two algorithm versions in their most popular paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine", where they claim the first version of the algorithm to form a probability distribution over web pages with the sum of all pages' PageRanks being one.

In the following, we will use the first version of the algorithm. The reason is that PageRank calculations by means of this algorithm are easier to compute, because we can disregard the total number of web pages.

The Characteristics of PageRank

The characteristics of PageRank shall be illustrated by a small example.

We regard a small web consisting of three pages A, B and C, whereby page A links to the pages B and C, page B links to page C and page C links to page A. According to Page and Brin, the damping factor d is usually set to 0.85, but to keep the calculation simple we set it to 0.5. The exact value of the damping factor d admittedly has effects on PageRank, but it does not influence the fundamental principles of PageRank. So, we get the following equations for the PageRank calculation:

PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 PR(C)

PR(B) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2)

PR(C) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2 + PR(B))

These equations can easily be solved. We get the following PageRank values for the single pages:

PR(A) = 14/13 = 1.07692308

PR(B) = 10/13 = 0.76923077

PR(C) = 15/13 = 1.15384615

It is obvious that the sum of all pages' PageRanks is 3 and thus equals the total number of web pages. As shown above this is not a specific result for our simple example.

For our simple three-page example it is easy to solve the according equation system to determine PageRank values. In practice, the web consists of billions of documents and it is not possible to find a solution by inspection.

The Iterative Computation of PageRank

Because of the size of the actual web, the Google search engine uses an approximative, iterative computation of PageRank values. This means that each page is assigned an initial starting value and the PageRanks of all pages are then calculated in several computation circles based on the equations determined by the PageRank algorithm. The iterative calculation shall again be illustrated by our three-page example, whereby each page is assigned a starting PageRank value of 1.

Iteration	PR(A)	PR(B)	PR(C)
0	1	1	1
1	1	0.75	1.125
2	1.0625	0.765625	1.1484375
3	1.07421875	0.76855469	1.15283203
4	1.07641602	0.76910400	1.15365601
5	1.07682800	0.76920700	1.15381050
6	1.07690525	0.76922631	1.15383947
7	1.07691973	0.76922993	1.15384490
8	1.07692245	0.76923061	1.15384592
9	1.07692296	0.76923074	1.15384611
10	1.07692305	0.76923076	1.15384615
11	1.07692307	0.76923077	1.15384615
12	1.07692308	0.76923077	1.15384615

We see that we get a good approximation of the real PageRank values after only a few iterations. According to publications of Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin, about 100 iterations are necessary to get a good approximation of the PageRank values of the whole web.

Also, by means of the iterative calculation, the sum of all pages' PageRanks still converges to the total number of web pages. So the average PageRank of a web page is 1. The minimum PageRank of a page is given by (1-d). Therefore, there is a maximum PageRank for a page which is given by dN+(1-d), where N is total number of web pages. This maximum can theoretically occur, if all web pages solely link to one page, and this page also solely links to itself.

Great Firefox Plugins for SEO

2011-01-07T10:43:00.001-08:00

I’m a fan of Firefox mainly for the additional functionality you get from using plugins. In fact, it’s always frustrating when I am on someone else’s computer, and I don’t have access to my own set of “tools” that I use on a daily basis. Simply put, if you aren’t using Firefox, you’re missing out on a more effective way to work.

Below is a list of some of my favorite SEO plugins. I have also included a short list of web developer plugins that have some crossover into SEO. I know there are other tools out there, so if you have some additional plugins you like to use, please add them in the comments!

Plugins Specifically for SEO

SEO for Firefox

This one is a standard tool for most of the SEOs that I personally know. This plugin gives you a ton of additional information when you do a search on Google. You can see a site’s PageRank, age, Yahoo links and other data that can help you when analyzing your competitors.

It also gives you access to a handy little tool called SEO XRay. This sub-tool will show you the meta information, H tag use and internal and external links on a page. There are so many ways to use SEO for Firefox, it’s no wonder that it’s a standard tool! Aaron Wall (SEOBook) did a great job with this one!

Get it here: SEO for Firefox

Rank Checker

This is another great tool from Aaron Wall. If all you want to do is a quick ranking update, Rank Checker is the way to go. This tool is usually quick, and you can export your findings to a CSV document if you want to compare them with previous rankings.

As with any rank checking tool, it is not always 100% accurate. However, it is still a great free way to keep up on all of your keywords.

Get it here: Rank Checker

SearchStatus

Do you ever get tired of the Google Toolbar? If you’re like me, the only reason you really use the Google Toolbar is to find out the PageRank of the page. Well, with SearchStatus, you can get PageRank, Alexa Rank, Moz Rank and Compete Rank in your status bar. There are many other things that this tool does, but that’s what I mainly use it for.

Get it here: SearchStatus

SEO Link Analysis

I consider this plugin to be one of the essentials in my toolbox. This tool works when you go to the Yahoo Site Explorer or into your Google Webmaster account looking for back links. Rather than just seeing what sites are linking back, you can see the anchor text and the PageRank of the page linking back. You can also find out if the link is still there or has a no follow attribute.

This tool is great for spying on your competition. Go to the Yahoo Site Explorer and you will very quickly find out what keywords your competition is targeting. This makes it great for site analysis and competitive analysis.

Get it here: SEO Link Analysis

Helpful Web Development Plugins

If you’re going to do SEO, you need to know some of the basics of web development as well. Because of this, I thought it might be helpful to list a few plugins that you can use mainly for web development, but also have a crossover into SEO

Firebug

I have loved this plugin ever since I first found it. As an SEO, I find that I am constantly helping to fix web development problems as part of the job. This tool will let you go through a site and find the different elements so you can see where the problems are in the HTML or CSS of the page. You can also make changes to a live site to see what would happen if you tweaked certain things.

Get it here: Firebug

HTML Validator

By having your HTML valid, your site is more likely to look the same in the different browsers. This tool will show you where the problems are in your code that could be causing inconsistencies from browser to browser. It also gives you suggestions on how to fix them.

Get it here: HTML Validator

Web Developer

This tool has similar functionality to some of the other tools above and is very handy. I use it frequently to turn off JavaScript so I can see how a site is handling its main navigation. Most web developers that I know of use this plugin.

Get it here: Web Developer

Chrome Extensions for Blogging & SEO

2011-01-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

Chrome Extensions for Blogging & SEO ,I’ve converted, but my first experience with Google Chrome occurred about a year ago and it was not a positive one. It was disappointing and frustrating. However, after fighting with Firefox, which crashed many times daily and demanded updates that slowed browsing and constantly interrupted me, I gave Chrome a second chance.

My biggest concern was the lack of extensions (“plugins” for Firefox users), but after about an hour on the Google Chrome Extensions site, that was no longer a problem. So, I’ve compiled a list of the best Chrome Extensions for SEO and a few other can’t-live-without extensions (in no particular order).

1. Chrome SEO

Includes page, backlink, traffic and rank stats, and more.

seo tips

Competition Analysis Basics for SEO

Google+ and the Potential Impact on SEO

Understanding The Canonical Tag

Facebook Beith Not The Devil

Advancing Strategy for Social Marketing

LinkedIn: 5 Useful Tips to Leverage the Waking Giant

50+ Tools to Automate Your Link Building

Social Design Strategy Working from the Outside In

5 Guiding Principles for Experience Designers

20 Guiding Principles for Experience Design

Social Bookmarking List

List Of Keyword Tools-Spice up your Keyword Research

White hat versus black hat

How to use Twitter For Business

The Distribution of PageRank Regarding Search Engine Optimisation

The Effect of the Number of Pages

The Effect of Outbound Links on PageRank

The Effect of Inbound Links on PageRank

The Implementation of PageRank in the Google Search Engine

What is PageRank Algorithm???

Great Firefox Plugins for SEO

Plugins Specifically for SEO

Helpful Web Development Plugins

Chrome Extensions for Blogging & SEO

1. Chrome SEO

2. SEO Site Tools

3. Google Similar Pages beta (by Google)

4. Domain Details

5. PageRank

6. SeoQuake

7. Speed Tracer (by Google)

8. Ultimate Chrome Flag

9. SEO Playground

10. Whois+

11. Firebug Lite

12. Pendule

13. IMG Inspector

14. Image Preview

15. IE Tab

16. MeasureIt!

17. Web Developer Mini

18. ProxyThisPage

19. Switch HTTP Proxy

20. Session Buddy

21. Session Manager

22. ShowIP

23. AutoPagerize for Chrome

24. Evernote Web Clipper

25. My Shortcuts

26. Resolution Test

27. FlashBlock

28. Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)

29. WOT (Web of Trust)

30. AutoPager Chrome

31. html2pdf

32. Auto Copy

33. Chrome Gestures

34. Clickable Links

35. Tab Switch Plus

36. Xmarks Bookmarks Sync

37. Translation Bar

38. Autocomplete = on

39. RoboForm Online

40. LastPass

41. RightLink

42. goo.gl URL Shortener

43. StayFocusd

44. New Tabs Always Last

45. Search Box

46. Feedly

47. Search the Current Site

48. SendTo Extension

49. RemindMe

50. Tabs to the Front!

51. Aviary Screen Capture

52. Picnik Extension for Chrome

53. Pixlr Grabber

54. Webpage Screenshot

55. Zemanta