As long as the focus is getting links, you’ll fail miserably. It’s like Guy Kawasaki says: “If the focus of a startup is to make money, it will fail.”

The idea that getting links is the objective is the result of bad reverse-engineering. The common idea is: “All successful, high ranking, website have many backlinks,…. therefore if my website has many backlinks, It will be successful and rank high.”

That’s like thinking: “All rich people have lots of money,.. therefore if I have lots of money, I’ll be rich.” (if you don’t understand why this is not correct, you’ll never be rich.)

Money is the result of some form of success, it is never the cause of the success. The same applies to links. Links are the result of some form of success, they never are the cause of the success.

To most this feels like a chicken and the egg problem (what’s there first? The success or the links?) If you really want to know what was there first, the chicken or the egg, then you’ll study evolution and find that neither one was there first. They evolved!

The same applies to success and links. They evolve from something else, something more basic. Trying to take evolutionairy shorts cuts by link building just doesn’t work. It may help a bit, but it hardly ever works.

Links do come by them selves, first from your friends and family, then from colleagues, then from customers, then from some newspapers, then from communities, and eventually, if you´re really good, from already recognized authorities in your field.

Most sites however, hardly get passed the colleagues and customer links. There’s a reason for that,..  But it is also necessary to recognize that in many cases, that’s all people want. Success is a very relative concept.

Posted by Peter (IMC)
http://www.brane.com.br/

Want to know the link-building methods that still work to improve your popularity? Read the article here.

According to an article in eMarketer, most people don’t believe most of what they read on the Internet.

Which, of course, means credibility can be harder to get than traffic or high ranking. Something to keep in mind, whether writing link bait or filler posts, is that everything you post can add to (or detract from) your credibility.

So… which group are you in? Color me orange.

From what I can see, TWO of the sites Patrick referred to should be in the top 5.

Alex King, creator of the “Share This” social bookmarkting plugin, has higher technorati authority than the #1 “authority” site - but isn’t listed. 

PhotoMatt, aka Matthew Mullenweg, is the founding developer of Wordpress. I’m sure a lot of the top bloggers appreciate what his baby has done for them. How sad that he’s not allowed to appear in the top 5 despite his sufficiently high technorati authority.

So while the blogging community enjoys traffic and profit that comes from the wordpress platform that is Matt’s baby, and enjoys more exposure from the social network community through the “share this” plugin Alex created - Alex and Matt clearly are not welcome in the Technorati Top 100. And that sucks.

Patrick’s article did two things for me. I found a new blog that I’ll be reading regularly (his) and it opened my eyes to what’s happening at Technorati. I think I’ll head over and see how these two Wordpress heavyweights fare in the other social networks. Watch for an update.

If you think Alex and Matt should not be edited out of the Technorati Top 100, please link to this article and help pass the word among bloggers. Thanks!

If you’ve ever had stumbleupon, digg or technorati melt your hosting (raises hand) you know what I mean.

But here’s what your favorite marketing guru didn’t tell you about social network marketing and driving traffic through social networks.

Hobby oriented networks consistently get more users than social networks or business networks.

But then, a lot of marketers tend to forget that we’re flesh and blood people with personalities,  hobbies and interests… not just opt-in prospects to be captured by a squeeze page and measured by an analytics program.

Do you have hobbies?  Like, besides Internet Marketing? Maybe look for some hobby networks that you can actually have real conversations in.  You know… the kind that don’t include squeezing anyone.  You might just be surprised at the connections you make.

It’s amazing how interested people become once they actually know and like you.

Read the entire social network report at eMarketer.com

Turns out the deal killer was Google.  The search giant offered to sell ads for Yahoo, giving them the bulk of the revenues - and Yahoo plans to use the money to develop their own search – to rival Google.

Does that even make any sense? Sure it does.

Google’s founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) and Yahoo’s founders (Jerry Yang and David Filo) all hail from Stanford.  Yahoo gave Google its first break, hiring Google to power Yahoo search back when Google was the new kid on the block. It appears Google is returning the favor. (more on this at the NYT blog)

So, Google preserves their number one spot (meep, meep!), Yahoo remains free to order up the next search anvil from Acme Corporation, and Ballmer Fudd is left scratching his head and muttering about “those cwazy wobots!”  

What’s the takeaway lesson here? Google is still the place to rank. And if you play your cards right, your closest competition could be your saving grace when you need it most. After all, if you don’t have the customer, odds are – they do.

If you’re like most website owners, you don’t have untold hours to obsess on every little change at Google. You have a website to look after and work to do. Maybe a day job and family sprinkled into the mix.

Should lack of time for seo translate to lack of ranking? No. Because your ranking is ultimately about what you bring to the marketplace, not how much time you have to obsess on seo.

Thing is… there’s two different approaches to seo.

• One approach includes algorithms and page changes and obsessing on details.
• The other approach smaller increments of time – and has more longevity.

Want to learn the other approach?

I’m teaching this class free.  Once.

The class will be 6-8 sessions over 3-4 weeks…. to save a seat, just fill in the form, below…

Go into My account ->  Videos, Favorites, Playlists -> Manage my Videos.  Then click the “About this Video” button.

You’ll be able to see how often your video is viewed in different geographic regions. You’ll also be able to see details of the lifecycle, such as how long it takes your vids to become popular and hit peak for views.

If you’re using video for business or marketing concepts, take a minute to wrap your brain around the power of that kind of information.  You’re welcome.

As a side note, some of the comments on the YouTube blog are interesting.