Link Blog

Google Guidelines on Links

2007-06-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

[Editor's Note: While some may think this article a bit long for a blog post, we feel the information is important enough to warrant wider dissemination.] By Jake Lowrey Many in the SEO forums are all atwitter about Google's new and improved Webmaster Guidelines, especially those relating to links. What the guidelines say - and don't say - about links is typical Google-ese. Some of it is just plain common sense, but most seems carefully designed to look good on the surface, while only adding to the confusion. Let's take a look at the general webmaster guidelines for an illustration. The first tip under the heading "When your site is ready:" reads, "Have other relevant sites link to yours." Fairly straight forward, logical advice. However, how is Google defining the term "relevant?" Do they mean if you have a site selling sneakers, would only other sites selling sneakers be considered relevant? How about sites selling socks? Surely they would be relevant to your sneaker site, as would sites peddling shoelaces or shoe cleaner. But how about a travel site? Could that be relevant to your shoe site? Perhaps it would if the site featured walking tours, but is Google's algorithm designed to pick up the connection? Or would that link be discounted? No one outside of Mountain View (and only very few inside) knows for sure. Do you take the risk, or pass up a very good link? Fortunately, Google provides the answer to that one and probably doesn't even know it. The first item under their heading "Quality guidelines - basic principles" says "Make pages for users, not for search engines." So, if a link from a travel site makes sense for the user, then it is relevant. However, Google may not think so, and devalue the link. G-Dawg seems to want it both ways. Good/Bad Paid Links The search engine's stance on paid links is another hot topic for SEO, especially since Matt Cutts from his blog mobilized the Google Minions (those Google apologists who treat the search engine as a god) in reporting any and all paid links. Cutts' comments have since been incorporated into Google's section entitled Why should I report paid links to Google? It is here that Goolge lays down the law on "good" paid links and "bad" paid links.

... some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying links in order to improve a site’s ranking is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

Note: This is the only reference this writer could find where Google says outright that paid links violate its webmaster guidelines. A good paid link is "done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results." These links should include a "a rel='nofollow' attribute to the href tag" or redirect to "an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file." In other words, out of sight is out of mind. Google assures us that it is working hard "to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such [as] link exchanges and purchased links." The search engine also wants everyone to rat out any site "that is buying or selling links." Here is how Cutts suggested the Minions should fill out the spam report form:

As far as the details, it can be pretty short. Something like "Example.com is selling links; here’s a page on example.com that demonstrates that" or "www.shadyseo.com is buying links. You can see the paid links on www.example.com/path/page.html" is all you need to mention. That will be enough for Google to start testing out some new techniques we've got - thanks!

There are two major lessons to be learned here.

Play nice. You don't want to make anyone mad who will run and tattle to the teacher (Google), making stuff up just to get you into trouble.
The old ways are dead. If you are buying or selling links, it's time to change your business model. Look for alternatives to straight text links that have nothing to do with the content of the page.

The Internet is fluid; constantly changing. If you don't adapt, you will find youself on the shelf next to the META tag tweakers.

Jake Lowrey has communications experience as a news reporter, editor and public relations professional. Current assignments include writing for Team Link Network. He also blogs regularly at his personal site RavelBabel.com. You can reach him at jake@ravelbabel.com.

The Importance of Anchor Text

2007-05-21T13:28:00.000-07:00

We all know the importance of anchor text when it comes to placement in the search engines, especially Google. Our latest article explains why this is so, and includes some information from one of Google's recent patent applications. Excerpt:

One of the things Google looks at is the changes in anchor text over time. These changes, the application says, may indicate not only an update in the document, but also "a change in focus."

To illustrate this, Google says if it notices a significant change of a document's content with the anchor text in the document's backlinks, they may infer that the domain expired and been purchased by someone else.

Don't miss this informative article.

Google Linking Strategies Examined

2007-05-16T11:24:00.000-07:00

Recently, we commissioned a link article based on one of Google's patents applications and are quite pleased with the results and have placed it in the Articles folder of the regular site. Here are a few excerpts:

The first factor mentioned is the date of appearance or disappearance of links pointing to a document. [Note: See paragraph 0023 of the application for a complete definition of the term "document."] Using its own criteria, Google will determine the date when the link was found or when it disappeared then evaluate the time frame looking for a trend. Webmasters should also track this trend and be aware if it shows a steady increase or decrease in the number of links pointing to a document.

- - -

The age distribution of a document's links is one area where the discerning webmaster will pay particular attention. According to the patent:
... the dates that the links to a document were created may be determined and input to a function that determines the age distribution. It may be assumed that the age distribution of a stale document will be very different from the age distribution of a fresh document.

Be sure to read the entire article. You will not be disappointed.

Google and Link Sales

2006-11-29T11:34:00.000-08:00

There has been a very interesting thread in WebMasterWorld forum regarding the link selling and purchasing practices, Does Google Reward Backlinks Buyers & Sellers? The entire thread was inspired by a post from Matt Cutts blog, "Tell me about your backlinks".

In Mr. Cutts blog he elludes to the fact that Google is getting better at identifing when backlinks have been purchased. Now, this has sparked a big debate in WMW. People on both sides of the fence, "Oh yes Google knows" and "Oh no they don't".

A poster who goes by the handle whitenight made the most sense to me. Basically, their point was that an algorithm is a mathematical measurement, that means that all an algorithm can do is tally metrics that are input. Naturally, the metrics are written by humans, but the only things they could really do to automatically spot paid-for links is to look for things like, "Sponsored" or "Advertisers". Oh, by the way, if you are using tiltes such as these to denote your paid advertising for text links, you would be wise to reconsider. Title tags like that greatly diminish the value of your text link.

"As a "SEO/SEM/Web Marketing specialist" your primary "ethical" interest should be to your clients, not to "be in good standing with the folks of search engines"

Just as Google's primary "ethical" concern is to make money for it's shareholders, not keep webmasters "in the know" or even be honest with them.

Once you come to grips with these realities, it's a lot easier to "figure out" what MC, GG, or Adam is saying and reading between the lines.

Until such time as I hear MC say buying backlinks is "black hat" AND see it posted on their website guidelines page, AND see big name companies (like Yahoo!) losing rankings with obvious bought links, then it is in a SEO specialist's interest to inform their client of potential consequences.

The words of MC should always be taken with a grain of salt as it is not his primary "ethical" interest to look out for webmasters or their sites.

As I've mentioned before, MC says alot of things that Google isn't able to mandate or police their own guidelines.

Sure I keep an eye out for proof (the SERPS) that indeed the new algo is penalizing or rewarding for said behavior. But I most certainly do not take MC's word at face value. It is not in my clients' primary interest to do so.

You shouldn't be scared to pursue link purchases, especially if they are providing benefits of referral traffic as well as improved search engine placements. On Matt Cutts blog he mentions two sites that were purchasing backlinks. Did the sites get penalized? Were they removed from Google's index? No, there placements dropped, nothing a few more quality links couldn't rectify. Of course, Matt can't recommend that these companies BUY more links, but he did tell them to gain more backlinks - just don't pay for them.

The catch is the fastest way to replace those links is by purchasing new ones from other trusted sites. It seems so strange to me that this act is not considered advertising. Essentially, that is all link purchases are, another means of advertising. Maybe we should all change the way the we look at link purchases, because wether the purchase is for referral traffic or improved search engine placements, the bottom line is they are purchased for more exposure. That's just my two cents.

Until Next Time,
Happy Linking,
LinkQueen

Google and Link Purchases

2006-10-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

There is a long standing debate on how Google handles websites that are buying and selling links. Now, Google's algorithm is based to rank sites on a number of different metrics, but it is agreed that link popularity is their top determining factor. Well, that means by their very nature Google has created the demand for link purchases, yet they openly state that they penalize (penalize might be to harsh of word, maybe neutralize is more appropiate) for for such practices. Now, to me this seems like such a double standard. To create a demand for a market and then "slap" websites that use and/or cater to that demand, but that is not the point.

Google's Matt Cutts often makes cryptic statements in his blog and on forums such as, "be careful what you pay for" and he also states that Google technology is getting better at determining what sites are selling text link ads. He says that sites that are caught participating in such acts will lose their credibility or "trust" with Google. This all may be true, but I find it difficult to concieve that the algorithm designed to give credit for links is able to easily detected a site that is selling text links. Of course, I have no insider information with Google, but I would imagine that the "technology" they refer to as being able to spot these sites is a lot more like people physically researching claims of links being sold on a site and a human actually making the determination.

Bottom line is it doesn't seem that Google is any better at having a spider identify a site selling links than they ever were. It seems a lot more likely that more and more people are squealing on their competitors to the Spam Team at Googleplex and then the sites being manually identified.

You may hear a lot of people stating that link purchases are "unethical". Even those stating that the ethics are invovled are participating in link exchanges, using a link to their site in forum posts, blog posts or submitting to tons of directories. This is the same type of practice, just without paying a site directly. So in my opinion ethics should not be an issue. Is it unethical for a website to be able to monetize ad space? If it is then Google's own AdWords are unethical.

All of this being said, if you are considering buying or selling text link ads, you should still probably watch out for obvious markers that the ads are purchased. While I still believe that most sites that have been identified have been done by a human, it is very likely that the Google algorithm has certain filters built in to look for things like text reading "Sponors" or "Advertisers" - there are several variations, but you should get the idea. Links that are embedded in to the meat of a document are always the best, so try to secure that whenever possible. That is not to say that text links incorporated in the side, header or footer navigation are not effective, but they can be easier to spot if someone was looking.

There is a great thread going on at WebMasterWorld Forums, Does Google Reward Backlinks Buyers & Sellers? covering this topic. I was particularly impressed with the points made by whitenight. The thread is rather long, but it is a good read with some excellent points.

Until next time
Happy Linking,
LinkQueen

The Value of Content Hosted Pages

2006-09-20T06:51:00.000-07:00

A content hosted page (also referred to as a pre-sell page) is simply a page that is hosted within another site, preferably related, that features your product or service. The only outbound links on that page should point to the target site. The page should be incorporated into the hosting site's internal navigation and set up with the hosting sites template.

These pages should contain unique content. In other words not some regurgitate RSS article nor should it be the same as the target page. A few minutes will need to be invested in writing a few paragraphs, between 250 - 500 words and links should be embedded with the proper anchor text.

Content hosted pages have, in my experience, been extremely successful, for both the site hosting the page and the target site. They provide a benefit to the webmaster hosting the page because it gives them unique, related content and shows search engines that the site is being updated. It provides benefit to the target site with referral traffic and by providing 100% irrelevancy to their links.

Generally, the hosting site will place in the SERPs first, which really shouldn't be a problem for the target site. That is because the information contained on the page will show all the features and benefits of the target site's products and/or services. That means the searcher is looking for what is being offered and will click through to the target site for more information, or if the copy on the page is effective, a sale.

There are some instances where the target site will begin to place first. This all depends on how trusted the site hosting the page is and how trusted the target site is. Let's say the target site is 3 years old, has a PR 5, quality directory listings and backlinks. The hosting site is a year old with fewer backlinks and lower PR, in this instance the target site would probably place first, BUT the placement would be due to the content hosted page.

Since the only outbound links that should be on the content hosted pages are to the target site it will receive the full link popularity passage. The more content hosted pages a site has, the better the results. In my experience, you can see more results, more quickly with a few well written, well placed content hosted pages than you can with a whole lot of standard text links.

Now for the shameless plug. Offsite Optimization has hundreds of partners that will run content hosted pages. The prices start at $25 - so they are cheap. Think about what would a full page ad in any magazine or newspaper cost you? A lot more than $25 bucks! If you are looking for an effective method to get your site moving, we can help. Contact us with your details and we can get you what you need.

Until Next Time,
Happy Linking,

What Is the Fastest Way to Get Links?

2006-09-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

People are always asking what is the fastest way to build links? To be honest, the fastest is way is to purchase them, but this can put a strain on a company's pocketbook. Some companies, particularly new ones, have more time than they do adverstising budgets. That means they are available to do a lot of the footwork to begin link building themselves.

Link exchanges are a good way to start developing links. Offsite Optimization offers a forum where you can request a link exchange. DigitalPoint is an excellent forum and they too have a category dedicated to link exchanges (this site is best viewed in IE, btw). This is a nice way to find other people to swap links with and develop relationships. However, for a truly effective link campaign, exchanges are only part of it, but they are a great place to start.

Another way to begin developing links is directory submissions. Now, directory submissions are an terrific source and many of them offer listings for free. The only drawback to the free submissions is that it can take weeks before your site is reviewed and many of them do not send notices to let you know if your site was accepted or rejected. So, you could submit to 100 directories and think that your really building up some links only to find out two months later (through your own investigation) that there was problem with your site and it was not accepted. When you are submitting to directories make sure that:

Your site is compliant with the directories guidelines and terms and conditions. Before you start submitting, make sure you have read the directories guidelines. This is the single biggest mistake I have seen people make when submitting their sites. If you don't know what the directory is looking for in a submission, the chances are that you are going to make a mistake and get ousted before some even looks at your site. The guidelines and TOS are there to help you, take the time to read them, it will make your directory submission link campaign MUCH easier.
All of your links work. This is very important, if someone is considering a site for inclusion into their directory they are not going to list a site with broken links. There are several tools available for this, but I recommend either Xenu or Trellian SiteMapper.
Easy to find contact information. This too is extremely important, especially if you have an e-commerce site. The editors want to know that there is a way for them to get a hold of you and that your customers can easily contact you. Since posting a general email address on your website can lead to tons of spam email, you may want to consider using a contact form. In addition for a way to be emailed, you should include a phone number and a brick and mortar address. Not only will this add credibility for a directory editor, it will add credibility to your customers.
A privacy policy is a good idea. Having a privacy policy listed may not necessarily influence an editor's decision on whether or not to include your site, but it is a good idea to have one, not only for directory editors, but your customers.

Now that you are aware of some of the things that might help you get included, you need to know where to find these directories.There are a couple of directory resources I have mentioned in the past, SEO Directory Whiz and Info Vilesilencer . These sites provide lists of directories that you should find very helpful. There are also ways that you can do searches that will help you find even more directories.

Go to your favorite search engine and type in the following keywords:
"submit site"
"add site"
"add url"
"submit site"

Be sure to use the quotation marks so you will be delivered pages that have that text. You can even narrow down your search by typing the following:
"Submit Link | Latest Links" niche keyword.

On a side note the expressions that you are using to perform these searches are known as boolean. If you are not familiar with boolean searches, you really should be. Using boolean expressions helps to eliminate a lot of spam and unwanted results. Take a moment and read Danny Sullivan's article on boolean searching. It was written in 2001, but the information is still the relevant.

Until next time,
Happy Linking!

Invisible

2006-09-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

While "dejunking" my inbox after this long weekend, I ran across an email from one of the newsletters to which I subscribe. Usually they have pretty good stuff, but hey we all gotta eat, so more and more frequently they are sending advertisements instead of news. Anyway, the subject line was "Get Top Google Rankings". I am always interested to hear other people's ideas and advice (I am not too old to learn something new) so I decided to read on.

Typical sales hype, "Yadda, yadda, yadda". Of course I understand that this is a sales letter and the whole idea is to get people to buy their service, but I was sincerely disappointed to read this line, "The reality is if you're not on top of Google, Yahoo and MSN you are essentially invisible."

Yes, I know what a top placement in these three engines can do for your traffic levels, but invisible seems ridiculous to me. I have a little hobby website that has a few placements (very, very few) on all of these engines, but it is a new site so it is not placed very well yet. This little hobby site of mine is generating about 2500 uniques a month. I know, I know this is not a huge amount of visitors, but for less than three months online without any real promotion, I am pretty pleased. You might be surprised to learn that 85% of my traffic comes from other websites and bookmarks, NOT from the search engines. In fact search engine traffic only accounts for 3% of those unique visitors.

You wanna hear something even more amazing? I have never requested one single link from any other site, with the exception of one directory submission to List My Niche (If you want to count directory listings). Now in all fairness, when I created this little site my whole objective was to be able to generate traffic through a community and not have to depend on search results.

The site is a portal dedicated to a very small niche. By listings other webmasters in the directory and sending an acceptance letter to the webmasters I choose to include the site has gained its links, without ever having to ask. These days people understand the importance of links and generally will provide one if you have done something for them.

Ok, I am getting a little off topic, my whole point for this post is that just because you are not top ten for your target keywords in the major search services, does not mean you are invisible! To me, this is antiquated thinking and borders on a blatant lie. It is unfortunate that people are still using scare tactics like that to make a sale. So be weary of people that tell you things like that, because the web is evolving and this is not true. You can get better quality traffic by working through your community and it won't cost you an arm and a leg - just a little work.

Social Networking

2006-08-31T08:35:00.000-07:00

What is social networking? Well the answer is fairly simple. Social networking is link development through a community of like minded peoples that is based more on tags and bookmarks. With the inception del.ic.ous, (my new favorite) stumbleupon, digg and technorati the search engines have found that this human reviewed data is invaluable to determine relevance.

By looking at what people are bookmarking and tagging, search engine spiders can identify patterns of people that hold similar interests. By using individuals, instead of directory editors, to determine relevance spam is becoming a less effective measure of attaining top search engine placements. Don't get me wrong, this system is far from perfected but it is coming along in the right direction.

Think about your bookmarks, do you ever bookmark spammy pages with no information? Of course not, why would you? When you bookmark pages you are doing that because they offered something of value to you. It might be information or resources, maybe it is a story you are following, whatever reasons you had to bookmark a page, I bet it wasn't because you wanted to go back and to click on an Adsense ad.

Again, this method of determining relevance is a way for technology to capitalize on what people really think. By reviewing their search patterns and bookmarks from real individuals looking for real information with no incentive to add a link because of a promise of reciprocal link is a really smart way of getting unbiased opinions.

So what does this mean in terms of link development? Well, it means you need to be providing a real service, resource or helpful information to your target audience. Write quality, unique informative information that can really assistance the people that come to your site. Add interactive tools for stickiness, you need to find something that appeals to those in your niche and flaunt it. Basically, you need to get involved in your community.

Until next time - happy linking,
Link Queen

Anchor Away

2006-08-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

For those of you that might not be familar with SEO^[1] lingo, anchor text is simply the words that go in a hyperlink. Anchor text is extremely important to search engine spiders because it should tell them what the page being linked to is about. In fact anchor text is so important, particularly to Google, that it is possible to have a page place in their results without having a reference to the term anywhere on your page!

This means when you are seeking links you want to make sure that you are using the most effective and descriptive words you can about your site. It is a good idea to avoid setting up links that point to you that say things like "Click Here". It will serve your purpose much better if you use a keyword in the anchor.

So if you have a site about dry erase markers and that is the target phrase you want to place in the serps^[2], then you need to set your links up in a way that has those terms in your link. So an effective ad might be, "Super discount deals on dry erase markers. Visit us Today!" instead of, "For discount dry erase markers click here".

Anchor text has been responsible for something known as Google/Yahoo Bombing. Since the discovery of Google Bombing it seems to me that the search engine spiders are looking more carefully at the anchor text being used. So, if you have 1000 links and every one of them have the exact same anchor it seems that your placements would not be as effective as they would if you added some diversity to your anchor text. So instead of always having people link to dry erase markers you could have them link to blue dry erase markers.

Personally, I like to use anchor text that reflects a page within a site. So when I set out on a link campaign I would review the interior pages of a site to determine what the best anchor text to use would be. This allows for diversity and relevancy. So before you go anchoring away check your sitemap (you are using a sitemap, right?) and use the keywords and phrases that are already set up within your site.

SEO - This is a term that is acronym for Search Engine Optimization.

SERP - This is a term that is acronym for Search Engine Results Page. If this word is new to you, it won't be for long, SEO and SEM (stands for Search Engine Marketers) guys and gals use this term very often.

New Hyperlink Law

2006-08-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

The US Congress passed a law on how links to adult material can be displayed. Basically, the law states that using misleading domain names or anchor text to a domain that has sexually explicit material is now illegal. This is an attempt to stop child predators on the internet. You can view the bill here.

The excerpt below was taken from Cornell Law School listed in the above link.

Whoever knowingly uses a misleading domain name on the Internet with the intent to deceive a person into viewing material constituting obscenity shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
Whoever knowingly uses a misleading domain name on the Internet with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material that is harmful to minors on the Internet shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 4 years, or both.
For the purposes of this section, a domain name that includes a word or words to indicate the sexual content of the site, such as “sex” or “porn”, is not misleading.
For the purposes of this section, the term “material that is harmful to minors” means any communication, consisting of nudity, sex, or excretion, that, taken as a whole and with reference to its context—
1. predominantly appeals to a prurient interest of minors;
2. is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors; and
3. lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
For the purposes of subsection (d), the term “sex” means acts of masturbation, sexual intercourse, or physcial [1] contact with a person’s genitals, or the condition of human male or female genitals when in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal.

This law was passed to help protect children from child predators, which is a good thing. I just wonder how this will effect webmasters and particular individuals that own directories.

We would love to hear your feedback on this. Visit our forums and tell us what you think!

Until next time,
Link Queen

Niche Directories and Communities

2006-07-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

A lot of SEO's are realizing the importantance of niche directories. However, it seems to me anyway, that many of them are realizing the benefits for the wrong reasons. Most search engine marketers are singing praises for niche directories because of the organic link building that comes with getting listed in directories that are related to specific communities.

Of course the links are beneficial, but in my opinion that is secondary to the benefit you receive by having your site displayed to people that are looking for what you offer.

I believe that communities have always been the best way to generate traffic to your website. It is just that until recently the tools needed to build a community have been difficult to use - most of them certainly weren't for any novice - hard to find and expensive! More and more people are becoming familiar with tools such as blogs, forums and directory software. Not to mention the programmers producing these tools have paid attention to what people need to build a community and have made their software easy to use for anybody. With the development of services such as blogger and livejournal putting up a blog is a snap - even if it is your first day on the web. Best of all these services are completely free.

There are so many opensource scripts available for community building and adding website stickiness, that you should have no problem finding what you need.

There is a discussion at ThreadWatch regarding small directories, where one directory owner states that some of his advertisers have reported his site sends them 90% of their traffic. He chalks this up to the sites being in flash and not well indexed in the serps, which might be part of it. However, I believe it has almost as much to do with the advertiser's identifying their market and placing an effective ad in front of the right eyeballs.

Of course, there are a lot of "faux" directories. You know, sites that have added a "directory" structure for link exchanges or to trick a search engine into believing the site is an authority site, when it is just more spam crap. If you know your community you will easily be able to identify these types of directories. Even if you are new to a community these sites are still fairly easy to spot - and believe me, if you can tell so can a search engine spider. It might take a spider longer, but eventually, they catch on.

You know your niche and that makes it easy to find other people that share your interest. Seek them out and start submitting.

Happy Linking,
LinkQueen

Cheap and Effective Links

2006-06-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

Cheap doesn't always mean low quality. You can pick up quality links without paying quality prices.

Directory Submissions
Ok, ok, I know not all directories are cheap to get listed in. Yahoo! charges $299.00 a year for their listings, however, this is money well spent as long as you know how to write an effective title and description using proper anchor text. But Yahoo is not the only directory out there. There are hundreds of quality directories, many of which provide a listing in their directory for no cost at all.

Many of them request link exchanges, but they are not required. However, if the directory requests a link exchange, your participation can get your site listed faster, so I generally encourage link exchange offers with these directories. You don't even have to provide a link from the site you would like indexed. In fact, most of the time when I submitting client sites to directories, I will use another domain to host the link to the directory. That way the directory gets the link they want and my client gets the listing. Everything is as it should be.

SEO Directory Whiz has a great list of directories that you can submit too. Info Vilesilencer offers a downloadable list of directories that have been reviewed. Both of these are extremely helpful in locating directories.

Link Bait
When you start a link campaign you will want to make sure that you have good, original quality content. As, I have mentioned in my other posts, writing quality, unique content is the best way of developing natural links. By providing a resource to your community others will want to link to your content, this is called "Link Bait".

Not to keep harping on this subject, but this is, in my opinion, the most important step in getting quality links. The truth of the matter is most people are lazy and would much rather post a link on their page than to actually have to go out, research something and then write an article. By you doing the footwork you have saved another SEO from having to take the time to learn something and you have just started your link bait. The few hours (which once you get into the habit will turn into a few minutes) you take to do this should provide you with enough trusted links to pay for itself. Seriously get in the habit of writing something that your target audience would be interested in, not only do you provide a resource to your potential customers, but you will expand your audience by so much more.

Link Exchanges
Link exchanges can be very effective and should have no cost involved, other than the few minutes it would take to post the link(s). I personally like to use link exchanges that are indirectly linked to one another, a three way link exchange. That is to say, you own site A, the person you would like to exchange links with owns sites B and C. You provide a link from site A to site C and site B provides a link to site A.

Content Hosted Pages or Article Exchanges
This is a method I prefer to using standard link exchanges. This provides dual benefit of adding additional content to your site and extremely relevant linking. The way this works is you write an article about your products and services, embed your links in the text of the article (be sure to make proper use of meta tags and all on-site optimization techniques) then "swap" an article with the site you are seeking an exchange. Have them provide you with an article similar to the one you gave them, incoprate the new page to your navigation - make sure they incorporate you new page to their navigation as well - and then you are done.

Jim Westgren has written a great article on this topic as well. Take a few moments to read his article, Link Building Guide

That's all 'til next time!

Happy Linking,
LinkQueen

Gaining Link Popularity Through Unique Content

2006-06-05T09:05:00.000-07:00

It is no secret that "content is king". Search engines love unique, original content and so do other webmasters.

By writing original articles for your site you are showing the search engines that you are out to provide a true resource for you customers and by providing good information other webmasters will want to provide a link to you for their visitors. There is multiple benefits for taking the time to write something relevant to your site.

I know that constantly finding something new to say about your product or service can be difficult, but you can easily branch out to other areas of interest.

Let's use our old shoe site analogy. So you own a website about shoes and you have provided information on how to get the best fit, what shoes go best with a particular style of dress and what handbag will match your shoes. You have covered everything there is to know about shoes, so why not start writing about which socks will fit best with sneakers or loafers. Write about why not to wear an alligator belt with Keds. In other words use a little imagination.

Just because you have a "niche" doesn't mean that you are restricted to information only about that one product. There are some many ways to spread your niche to include valuable information to your visitors and to the search engines.

A lot of people will post an RSS feed on their site to pull in original articles from other webmasters to try and keep fresh content on their site. This can be effective and I would recommend that those webmasters continue to do that as long as their users are receiving benefit, but this is no substitute for good old-fashioned work. By rolling up your sleeves and spending a few minutes to write something of value you could generate tons of placements from one article.

Consider getting a blog for your articles. You can use your blog to post your articles to RSS feeds. By embedding your links in your article you are creating link popularity. This is the cheapest, easiest and probably one of the most honest forms of link development available today. Use this to your advantage.

In addition to the blog, simply by getting your article out there you will find people that have found value in what you have written and naturally, they will want to show that value to their visitors.

Here is an article written by Rae Hoffman about what truly unique content is. "When Unique Content Is Not Unique".

Until next time!

Happy linking,
LinkQueen

Traffic Acquisition Through Link Development

2006-05-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

Traffic Acquisition Through Link Development

Most people are aware of the role that links play in relation to the placement of their site in the organic search engine results. There is no question of the significance of links; they are what the web is made of.

However, I think a lot of people get misguided when they are searching out new link opportunities. Too many people are too concerned about PageRank and how the search engines will view the link pointing to them. In my opinion there is no such thing as a bad link. I personally have never seen a link pointing to a site damage the target site. That is not say that if the questionable site is penalized and quits passing "popularity" that the target site won't have a shift in placement. Hopefully the site has a well-rounded link campaign developed and this will not happen. If it does, it does not mean a penalty has been applied to the target site, it simply means the link is not providing the trust it once did. You can overcome the placement drop by acquiring more links from more trusted sites.

I am digressing, that is not the point I wanted to make with this blog. So on to what I really want to talk about.

Now, when you are setting up a link campaign quit thinking, "Will this link improvement my search engine placements?" You should be thinking, "Will this link send me more CUSTOMERS?"

The real point of any commercial website is to provide a service, information or resource, not to be placed in the top of the results. Yes, that is important so that people are aware of what you are offering, but that should not be your primary concern when you acquire links. When you are acquiring links place your focus into getting links from sites that appeal to your target market.

If you own a shoe site consider gathering links from a site that sells belts, purses or clothing. It is very likely that the person purchasing a new alligator belt would be interested in your alligator shoes. It doesn't matter if the belt site has no PageRank, the site still offers you value in the way of potential customers.

A lot of people try to acquire links from sites that offer the same product or service for "themed links". This is something that has never really made since to me. Why would a site want to link to a competitor and why would a consumer leave the site they are currently purchasing from to go to another site that offers the exact same thing? It just doesn't make sense, at least in my mind, from a business standpoint.

In fact, when I am acquisitioning links for a client I VERY RARELY place their link on a site that offers the same service. Whenever I am selecting links I do my best to match up sites that are of similar interest, so that the client can benefit, not only from improved placements, but by having the site refer customers as well.

Why does anyone want their site placed in the top of the search engine results? There is only one real answer, TO MAKE MONEY! Whether the revenue is generated through AdSense or product sales the goal of the site is to earn a dollar.

I know, I know, you are saying what about personal blogs or family homepages? Well I have never ever heard of anyone running a site for their own personal use be concerned about ranking. The people that want to place are businesspersons, not Ms. Smith keeping a blog to correspond with her son stationed overseas.

So when you are looking for links ask yourself, "Does this site have the potential to send me customers?" If the answer is yes then you should request a link regardless of the PR.

Happy Linking
LinkQueen

The Importance of Directories

2006-05-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

Just the other day I was asked AGAIN how important are directory listings for link campaigns. In my opinion these are EXTREMELY important.

Directory listings are not only important in link campaigns, they are also important for providing you additional exposure. So there is a two-fold benefit for the time that needs to be invested in submitting your site to directories.

Directories tie in with TrustRank. Again, this is how technology is depending on humans to provide them with quality sites. Programmers are smart enough to know that if someone has submitted a site to a human reviewed directory that a person had to go in and evaluate the site. This person had to verify that the site was truly what the Title and Description outline and that the site is not being cloaked or using hidden text or any other activities of which search engines disapprove. So a listing in a directory gives a little extra "bump" to your site.

However, not all directories are treated equally. For example a listing in a Yahoo directory is worth a lot more, in the eyes of a search engine spider, than a listing from a new independent directory. But you should not be submitting to directories solely for the purpose of link popularity. These directories can bring in quite a bit of traffic on their own.

There are so many directories out there, some of them are general directories and others appeal to a niche. Niche directories can bring you paying customers, as you are placing your product in front of eyeballs looking for what you are offering. And best of all most niche directories do not ask for an inclusion fee. That means you, in essence, get free traffic. What a deal!

If you are looking for a good listing of directories SEO Directory Whiz has complied and excellent list of over 600 directories for you. Info Vilesilencer also has a downloadable excel spreadsheet with a well-organized list of directories. With their layout you know the PR of the directory, if a reciprocal link is required and if you need to register before making a submission. Really handy information when you start out.

For anyone that is doing a lot of directory submissions, I highly recommend picking up RoboForm. They offer a free and paid version. If you are only concentrating on one site then the free version should work fine. But if you are working with several sites, like me, you should go ahead and pay the $30, as the free version limits how many identities you can save. This tool has been so handy to me and has truly simplified the task of directory submissions. In addition it saves all your passwords too!

When you are submitting to directories by sure to drill down the most appropriate category. Selecting a broader category will not provide you more link popularity, nor will it convert into more sales. The more specific you can get the better off you will be for both of those aspects.

After you have selected the best category you should be ready to submit your site. This part can be tricky because you want to be sure you have effective sales copy, without "hype" and you want to be sure and make effective use of your keywords in your title and description.

The title will be very important for link popularity because it typically sets the anchor text to your site. Now, this can be especially sticky for those of you with more generic URLs and site names, because a lot of directories insist that the site name be listed in the title. You can overcome this with a little creativity.

If your site is ABC and you sell widgets. Then write your title something like this "Widgets from ABC". Now, that is pretty bland and I am sure that you will do a much better job, but that is just to give you an idea.

Well, you have your list and surely you are downloading RoboForm while reading this, so you should be set. Roll up those sleeves and get submitting!

Of course if you have questions, come over to the forum and ask so we can all learn from one another!

Happy Linking,
LinkQueen

Internal Linking Structure

2006-05-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

Are all of your pages indexed in the major search engines? If not do you know why? Are the pages so new that the spiders have not had a chance to grab them? If not then you need to review how your internal links are structured.

It never ceases to amaze how many people miss this simple step. There have been numerous occassions that a client will come to me for help and they are just positive that all of their problems are because they don't have enough links pointing to their site, when that simply isn't the case. Often all of their links are in a javascript, or the navigation of the site is laid out so poorly it is difficult for a spider, let alone a human being, to find all of the pages.

If you have a large site or if you utilize javascript or DHTML for your navigation without providing a static link to a sitemap, you could be hindering your site from receiving all of the benefits of your content. It is crucial that any link campaign start in your own backyard, so to speak. Before you ask for the first link swap or before you submit to your first directory MAKE SURE A SPIDER CAN FIND ALL OF YOUR PAGES!

The best way to make sure all of your pages are accessible is by adding a link to a sitemap into your navigation. Personally, I like to use CoffeCup's Google Sitemap Creator. It allows you to create a sitemap based on the files on your hard drive or by spidering the site from the web. By having the software put together the sitemap based on what it finds online, you can get an idea of how well a search engine spider can read and follow your internal linking structure. Of course, if you use it to create the sitemap based on the files on your hard drive, it will grab all of the files for you and create your sitemap. Once the map is created you simply upload it to your folder and incorporate the link onto the pages of your site. It only takes a few minutes and it is well worth the time.

Internal Linking Structure Elements Strategy is an article written by RustyBrick that provides a lot of useful information. He explains the different types of links and how to make the best use of them. While the article was written in 2003 the information here still holds true. Thank you Rusty for this little gem!

Until next time,
LinkQueen

Google's Patent Leaks the Secret of Top Placement

2006-05-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

Well, there is more to top placement on Google than what will be covered in this post. But, these are some tips that could make a lot of difference your placement.

Last year Google filed a US patent, United States Patent Application 2005007174, that tips their hand a little at what they are looking for in identifying TrustRank.

Of course links and content are still extremely important, but the thing that a lot of webmasters found interesting, including myself, is the fact that the length of your domain registration now comes into play. Yes, Google is paying attention to your registration as well as how visitors access and use your site. Through the Google toolbar they can learn a lot about your site. In my opinion, they know too much, but that is for another topic.

Why does it make a difference if I register my domain name for one year or ten?
Well, that is a good question, why does it matter to Google. It matters because a lot of spam domains are registered for only one year at a time, because the webmaster of the site knows the likelihood of a penalty to all the cloaked pages and blog links is very very high. Once the penalty has been placed on the site it no longer produces enough revenue to make renewing the domain worth it. However, if a domain is registered for a longer period of time it tells Google that the intention for the site is to build and cultivate it. In other words, it is not a "fly by night" domain. It seems to me however that any webmaster can easily shell out an extra few $$ in the beginning for a domain to initially work around this, but who am I to question the brillance of Google. It just doesn't seem to me that an extra five bucks is going to deter spam to the point of oblivion, but it might help.

While the registry of the domain now has more significance it certainly doesn't mean that it is the end all be all for top placements in Google. There are a number of other factors that come into play. However if you have a quality site that you have been cultivating - quailty content, regular updates, steady link acquisition and general SEO techniques applied, but still seem to be falling short of placing, try extending the registry date of your domain.

For more information visit Great Site Ranking in Google The Secret's Out by Darren Yates of Buzzle.com.

Also SEOmoz has put together a comprehensive report regarding Google's Patent: Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data. This site is ran by Rand Fishkin and his remarkable team. Rand has worked hard to make a name for himself in this industry and his efforts speak for themselves.

Is PageRank Dead?

2006-05-05T14:26:00.000-07:00

There are so many opinions on this and personally I think they are all right in some respects. PageRank is no longer the creature it once was. There has been a very definite change in the way Google treats a sites PR. However, that is not to say that there is no value in the PageRank of a site.

In many cases a site's PageRank is the first indicator that I use to determine whether or not to research the site for linking. Generally, the PR of a site can tell you a lot about the past practices or lack of practices of a site. By looking at the PageRank that a site has you can get a general idea of how Google feels about the site. For instance, when I see a site with no PR or a gray bar, I know right away one of two things:

It is a brand new site.
The site has either participated in nefarious activities OR has not participated in ANY activities.

This is not always true, but it is right more than it's wrong.

On the flip side there are several sites that have a decent PageRank that are not necessarily a quality link. Just because a site has a PR of 7 doesn't mean that it is "trusted". The major search services are shifting more and more focus on TrustRank. TrustRank is a way for technology to capitalize on human reviewed data.

Here is a link to the technical outline of TrustRank.

"Web spam pages use various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings in a search engine's results. While human experts can identify spam, it is too expensive to manually evaluate a large number of pages. Instead, we propose techniques to semi-automatically separate reputable, good pages from spam. We first select a small set of seed pages to be evaluated by an expert. Once we manually identify the reputable seed pages, we use the link structure of the web to discover other pages that are likely to be good. In this paper we discuss possible ways to implement the seed selection and the discovery of good pages. We present results of experiments run on the World Wide Web indexed by AltaVista and evaluate the performance of our techniques. Our results show that we can effectively filter out spam from a significant fraction of the web, based on a good seed set of less than 200 sites."

Does this mean PageRank is dead? In my opinion, no it's not dead, but it is evolving into a much more sophisticated animal. The Google toolbar allows for a "glimpse" at what is really going on with a site, but to determine the actual value of a site, sleeves need to be rolled up and elbow grease should be applied.

When I am evaluating a site, these are typically the initial steps I follow:

Establish the PR
Check the backlinks using MSN and/or Yahoo! (These two engines give a MUCH truer picture of who is actually linking to the site. Google only shows sites providing links with a PR 3 or higher. Than can literally limit thousands of results and since a site can have a low PR and still be trusted it is important to know all of the sites that are providing links.) During this process I pay close attention to how many directories have the site listed as well as any links from .gov, .org and .edu sites. (Be careful when evaluating the .org and .edu sites sometimes they are not what you think they are. Many people scour for abandoned sites, such as these, sites that would have been trusted. If a site like this falls into the wrong hands the trust associated with the site is shot.)
Establish the age of the site by using WhoIs

There are several different factors that will come into play but those are the top three things that I check before going any further. If they can't pass those three little things there is no point, in my mind, in wasting any more time researching them.

Of course, I am not the only person with an opinion. Here are some other articles to help you form your own opinion on this topic.

What Price PageRank?
This article was written by Mike Grehan the founder and CEO of Smart Interactive Ltd. He's recognized as one of the foremost SEM experts and is the author of multiple books and white papers on the topic.
Google Page Rank Dead?
This is an article from Lee Odden, President of TopRank Online Marketing, a search marketing agency that provides search engine optimization, online public relations and blog marketing services. TopRank has been recognized as a leading SEO firm by TopSEOs.com and PromotionWorld and has been the only Minnesota search engine optimization firm included in Marketing Sherpa’s guide to SEO firms for the past 2 years.
Is Page Rank Dead?
An insightful discussion on the evolution of PageRank.
Google's Page Rank Is Dead - Or Is It?
Martin Lemieux of SmartAds Newsletter present his view on the topic. As an Internet marketing professional, Lemieux has truly made his mark on the industry. His weekly tips are published on thousands of websites worldwide; his articles are truly unique, helpful and simple to implement. Many top Internet marketing news centers have published more than one of Lemieux's marketing tips over the last year.

Until next time,
LinkQueen

P.S. Here is a tip:
Experience has shown us that placing Google Adsense, or Yahoo! Publisher Network code on your pages will help them be spidered faster.

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New Hyperlink Law

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Traffic Acquisition Through Link Development

The Importance of Directories

Internal Linking Structure

Google's Patent Leaks the Secret of Top Placement

Is PageRank Dead?