Posts Tagged ‘link building’

Handy Charts Help you Easily Understand Cutting Edge SEO Techniques

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Communicating information using charts and graphics provides a useful and fun way to learn about new things.

Search engine marketers now have a handy resource they can use to maximize search engine rankings and online conversions. These easy and fun charts from ProspectMX provide an easy-to-use reference for creating great websites.

Their original chart, “Link Building 101,” has some great insights into how you can get other sites to link to you. Examples of link bait, how to find good sites to link to and the most beneficial social media/news sites are just a few of the things you will find here – all presented in a fun environment that’s sure to pique your interest.

Prospect’s newest chart, “Universal Search Optimization,” gives some great tips on mastering the web’s newest way of ranking web sites, etc. Learn about ‘local search’, image/video optimization, press releases and more. Going forward, search results will increasingly include photos, videos and news, not just individual websites.

Take a look at Prospect’s charts today…print one out and post it on your wall!

Quick and easy reference materials like these are great to have when you’re stuck trying to get your website to the top.

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Characteristics of Natural and Artificial Links

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Other sites linking to yours are one way search engines evaluate your site to determine where it should be displayed in a search engine results page. The more incoming links a site has, the more important the search engines see it.

But it depends on the type of links too – simply having a bunch of links pointing to your site isn’t going to pass muster.

It’s possible to go out and pay lots of money and do other nefarious things to get links to your site. Search engines like Google and Bing can see this, as they can differentiate between sites that have natural links to it versus ones that have artificial links.

So what’s the difference between the two?

First, the anchor-text, or the keywords that contain a link, is very diverse with natural links. One link to a site may contain “search engine optimization firm” and another may be “online marketing experts” for example. Artificial links though will have more uniform anchor-text…all of the links pointing to a site will only have one or two terms for its anchor-text.

This is one red flag to the search engines that you have an artificial link structure which in turn, causes your site to lose the rankings battle.

Another difference between natural and artificial links is the rate at which links appear. Sites with a natural link structure will see consistent increases in their link count while sites with an artificial link structure will see sudden and dramatic increases then a lull in activity.

Sites designed around a natural link structure do not have reciprocal links. Meaning, the site linking to them did it voluntarily and does not expect a link back in return. Almost all links in an artificial environment are reciprocal.

And finally, natural links point to resources that can be of further use to the reader. Artificial links mainly point to link farms and other places that serve no purpose in making the site more useful for its visitors.

Remember these differences when thinking about your site’s link structure. You should strive to create the most natural looking link structure as possible. From a search engine’s point of view, the best links are those that are unrequested…search engines reward those pages and sites that get voluntarily links for great content.

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Finding a Proper Balance of Links for your Website

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! find your website through other sites linking to it. A site with a large number of quality sites linking to it signifies a certain importance to the search engines, boosting your rankings in the process.

There are many ways you can acquire links to your site. They can be purchased from a link farm, or you can get people to link to you through social networks like Facebook, StumbleUpon and Digg. In the end, the highest quality links come from sites in a similar industry whose audience will find your content appealing and useful.

Allowing the structure of links to your site to become too homogenous can cause many negative consequences for your site and its rankings. Links coming from only one type of site, or only to your homepage or links that all have the same anchor text links are all red flags to the search engines that your site has an unnatural link structure.

As a result, search engines will penalize your site, perhaps even de-listing it from the search engines.

To avoid trouble like this, you should attempt a general 80/20 link balancing act, which means:

  • 80% of your links should come from sites that are topically relevant to yours with the remaining 20% coming from unrelated or marginally related sites
  • 80% of incoming links should go to your homepage with the remaining 20% (at minimum) going to sub-pages within your site
  • 80% of links should have your keywords in the anchor text while the remaining 20% having a less optimized link, like “click here” or your URL as the anchor text
  • 80% of your links should be one-way and the remaining 20% reciprocal

Of course, these are just general guidelines but a good rule of thumb to avoid any problems with the search engines. You don’t want your site to appear over-optimized to the search engines so you need to balance your link ratios to avoid this red flag.

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Tracking Who’s Linking to Your Site

Monday, January 4th, 2010

It’s a common building block of optimizing websites for the search engines – links to your site are an important part of a search engine’s algorithm and thus, where your site appears in a results page.

So suffice it to say that link building is an important part of optimizing a site for the search engines.

But how do you track sites that are linking to you?

Many webmasters and SEO professionals use different tools like Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and others to track link building. Sadly, many of these tools are inaccurate and provide different results as expressed in this HighRankings Forum thread. The undependability of these tools is best stated by Rosemary, who says “one month Yahoo would show 10,000 inbound links and the next month only 300.”

Needless to say, it is difficult to rely on tools that you don’t know much about and have no control over fixing bugs and other malfunctions. And none of them are 100% accurate.

Especially if you do SEO work for other people, you need a way to track who and how many sites are linking to you…spreadsheets are one way to do this.

(Read our post Organize Link Building Campaigns with Excel Type Worksheets for more information on tracking link building efforts)

Many replies in the thread focused on spreadsheets and their usefulness in effectively communicating link building efforts to clients. Many SEOs, including us, use spreadsheets to track where and when someone links to a site we’re working on. Spreadsheets also provide accountability, which is impossible with online tools like Google Webmaster Tools.

One more thing to think about that was mentioned – one webmaster in the thread said they don’t focus much at all on link popularity but simply compare their site’s position to others in that niche. Perhaps this is a good way to think about link building since you’re shooting for high rankings in your niche keywords anyway.

Let us know your experiences with link building and tracking who’s linking to you and when.

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4 Places you can Spruce Up your Website to Get More Links

Monday, December 21st, 2009

As we know from here and our search engine optimization knowledge center articles, websites linking to you is a signal to the search engines that your site is important. The more links you have pointing to your site, especially from sites with higher PageRank, the higher your rankings in the search engines will be.

Creating great content for the purposes of getting links isn’t a new idea – search engine optimization experts have been talking about it for years but many small commercial sites still haven’t jumped on the bandwagon.

Why not? We could speculate all day long bit I imagine it probably has a lot to do with the fact that creating valuable content is a daunting task that requires a lot of research and time. But unless you offer a well known brand or have pics/videos that draw a lot of interest, you’re not going to get very far without it.

Fortunately, there are places on your website you can spruce up to get other sites linking to you. Four places you can reinvent on your site to get more links include:

Product pages

Product pages typically are not fertile link building grounds – most only contain prices, specs and not a lot of content. They’re usually contained on pages that have a dynamic URL – one factor that prevents search engines from even crawling the page!

Make product pages more linkable by focusing on 1 or 2 products at a time. Change them over to a static URL with unique content promoting your “featured product” of the month of something like this. Contact bloggers and other people in your niche market and ask them to write about your featured product and link to the page.

Company news page

Unless you’re a part of a big brand that’s unveiling a revolutionary product, most people don’t care what’s going on at your company. Stand to reason you’re not seeing much progress if you’re simply using your blog to write about internal company news. You need to engage your target audience!!

Use press releases and other avenues like blogs to announce company news that impacts people outside your company. Contests, awards the company is giving out, new products and services, etc. And don’t be shy – if you’re company has a good human interest story to tell, by all means do so.

Have a new job opening you’re trying to fill? Create a job openings page on your site and contact blogs, job sites and other social media networks to let them know.

Links page(s)

Most link pages you come across are simply thrown together…they welcome just about anybody to put a link there. Compiling a comprehensive list of useful resources for people or simply re-arranging what you already have can bring you hundreds of links.

Articles or Sales Pitches

If you have great content or articles purely for educational, reference or entertainment purposes, good for you!

But if you’ve never promoted it, then it’s still one step away from linkable. Share articles you’ve invested a lot of time in researching and writing. Research other sites in your niche and see what they’re putting up. Do you offer something new to the conversation?

If you don’t, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to re-write everything but maybe all you need to do is add a different perspective or an analogy to make a complex subject more understandable for laymen.

While it takes time and a lot of work to build links to your site, it can pay off with persistence. But taking your old site, dusting it off and adding some shine can take it from static to a useful, and linkable, resource that people will follow.

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Hold On To Your Rank With Monthly SEO

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Thanks to Jake Walker for this contributed article featuring the link-building aspect of maintaining SEO on a monthly basis. Enjoy!

I’ve seen it a million times. It’s one of the most common mistakes made by webmasters and companies when it comes to SEO. They spend money on an aggressive 6 month link building campaign. Their site starts ranking, the traffic starts flooding in. The campaign expires, and everything appears fine. But then a few months later rank starts to drop. They’ve lost momentum.

Sometimes it takes months, sometimes years, but the fact of the matter is: If you don’t maintain your link building and SEO efforts on a monthly basis, sooner or later, some one will start to compete and take your rankings away.

Now this doesn’t mean you have to constantly spend thousands month in and month out on link building alone. Once rank has been achieved, in many cases you can scale back to maintenance level link building.

For most moderately competitive niches, a few smart moves here and there can help you hold your rank.

The Digg-able Post
Creating a post that is intended for the Digg crowd is a great way to get noticed. If you get noticed enough you’ll be featured in the “what’s hot upcoming section”, usually this is enough to gain some back-links and keep your site fresh in Google’s eyes.

The Information Is Endless
Use various keyword tools to help brainstorm new ideas for pages based on what people are searching for. If you keep adding information that people want, 2 things happen. First and foremost, you build subscribers and gain new readers. You also hold the attention of the SERPS. There is nothing Google loves more than a fresh website that updates frequently. If you couple that with some amateur keyword research for your titles, you will get traffic.

Blogging Works
Yes, using a free platform to maintain a blog does work. People read blogs. Encourage your employees or colleagues to start blogs and ask them for a back-link. Start your own free blog on one of the various free blogging platforms. Update it 3 times a week with fun relative content. Don’t forget to link back to your main site.

Stay Social, But Don’t Over Do It
Building Facebook and Twitter networks is a fantastic way to keep people coming back to your site. When you keep traffic up, you’ll hopefully be earning back-links. Don’t forget to update your social networks on any good news or fresh content.

A word of caution: Don’t overdo it! No one likes spammy messages cluttering up their social feed. So stay fun, relevant, and friendly.

When In Doubt, Reach Out
Contacting other webmasters in your vertical and participating on their blogs and forums is a great way to keep attention focused toward your site. Remember, offering insight and humor are 2 very easy ways to become a respected voice in any community.

The fact of the matter still remains. Back-links are crucial for search engine rankings. The best way to build proper back-links is by networking and interacting with people.

It’s a vicious cycle. The more people who visit your site, the greater your chances are for acquiring back-links. Once you’ve spent the time and money building your SERP rankings, and gaining momentum, it is crucial to keep up with monthly SEO maintenance.

Here’s a mantra for you: Stay involved, stay fresh, stay connected, and hold rank!

Jake Walker is an avid blog builder and search engine optimization specialist. You can read his webmasters journal at www.blogmason.com

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PageRank Data Removed From Google Webmaster Tools

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Anyone intimately involved in optimizing websites for the search engines knows that the Google Webmaster Tools utility is an invaluable part of monitoring your site. It’s easy to login and see your site’s position in all of the elements Google uses to rank your site.

One of those elements is PageRank which we’ve discussed some here – mainly in the context of link building and how web pages with higher PageRank carry more value.

But Search Engine Roundtable is confirming that Google is removing PageRank data from the Webmaster Tools utility. However, they will still keep the data in the Google Toolbar, which is a simple add-on tool available for download.

In responding to an inquiry about the change on Google’s Webmaster Help thread, an employee of the popular search engine stated that PageRank is not that important and advises webmasters not to focus on it so much.

Other webmasters and SEOs argue that if PageRank is something they shouldn’t focus on, why only remove it from the Webmaster Tools utility?

Of course any advice directly from Google should be taken with a grain of salt. For link building purposes, a website’s PageRank data can be some useful information.

While we agree it’s not the Holy Grail, PageRank is important to think about.

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Link Building and Search Engine Rankings – Quantity vs. Quality

Monday, October 12th, 2009

In some respects, manual link building is a critical part of building high search engine rankings. As we’ve said before, informative and unique content is one of the pillars in building rankings…but to really get in the top 10, you need to have other sites linking to yours.

Without any other sites linking to your site, you will only get you so far in the rankings. But which is better, a higher number of links or the quality of those links?

This is a question that may stump some novice SEO engineers. They may have a landing page, article or blog they’re trying to get ranked for certain keywords and have a lot of different web sites linking to it. However, another web page is dominating top rankings and you can’t seem to quite match or surpass it.

Why is that? What does that page have that mine doesn’t?

Below is a quick video from Rand Fish at SEOMoz that explains the reasons why this would occur and what you can do about it.

First, links from web pages with higher PageRank are much more valuable than links from pages with lower PageRank.

Like we recently outlined in our feature post about PageRank and its importance in marketing your small business online, sites with higher PageRank carry more weight in the search engines. It’s believed PageRank is calculated using a logarithmic scale so the difference between a PageRank of 4-5 versus a PageRank of 2-3 is roughly five to ten times.

Links from pages in the top hierarchy of a website are much better than ones from pages deep within a site

It’s always better to get a link from either another site’s homepage or landing page – no more than about two to three pages from the homepage (i.e. category or landing page) in the site’s hierarchy. First of all, these pages will have higher PageRank. Second of all, visitors to the site will find the link to your site much easier.

It all adds up to a more powerful link than one from say a blog post or generic page with a bunch of links on it.

Most importantly perhaps, sites with higher trust and authority provide more link juice for rankings

Links from sites of well known brands, media outlets or institutes are much more valuable – it definitely will not take near as many links from these to get your search engine rankings to the top. It kind of goes back to the whole PageRank thing since one of the ways to identify authority and trust in the eyes of the search engines is through a site’s PageRank.

So how do I find websites and pages whose links will benefit my website’s rankings the most?

If you’re doing manual link building and come across a website you think would be helpful and possible for you to get a link from, you can use tools like Top Pages and Link Intersect from SEOMoz to find out a page’s PageRank and other important characteristics mentioned above.

Or, consult and work with a premier SEO firm like SEO Advantage who can find all of the avenues to boost your site’s rankings, bring in more site visitors and maximize revenues.

Doing this kind of research first and then getting a small number of links from a select group of websites will prove much more beneficial in getting your webpage’s rankings from say page 2 to the top 5 or 3 results in a search engine query for your keywords than just getting a bunch of links from different low level sites.  

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Link Quality vs. Quantity from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Developing a SEO Link Building Strategy that Delivers Link Value

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

As we’ve mentioned here and in our SEO knowledge center, links are one of the most fundamental things to building high search engine rankings.

Links give a site more value in the eyes of the search engines but not all links count for SEO purposes. Some links may be totally invisible to the search engines and in other instances Google may reduce the value of links for whatever reason. So…

How do you know whether a link on a page passes SEO value or not? What are cases in which links do not count?

These are important questions to answer to prevent yourself from wasting valuable time on links that won’t do anything for you. Basically, there are two requirements links need to possess to count for SEO purposes:

1. Link must be coded in HTML

To be certain you see benefits in your rankings from links, code them in HTML. As long as the link uses something like <a href=http://www.seo-advantage.com/> then you’re okay. Google has also started counting Javascript links but HTML is still the preferred method.

2. Be sure the page the link is on is indexed in Google

A link can only benefit your rankings if Google knows about the page it’s on. You can see if a page is indexed in Google by going to the main search bar and typing “site:” and then the URL. New pages usually take a few days to be crawled and indexed so be patient.

But even if your links meet the above conditions that doesn’t mean they’re automatically counted. Technical conditions that would prevent a link from being counted include:

1. Nofollow tag

Google ignores links that use the rel=”nofollow” tag and does not pass any SEO value along. Many blogs use the nofollow feature in their comment areas to prevent spamming and Google requires the nofollow attribute for advertisements and paid links.

2. Robots nofollow

The meta robots nofollow tag found in the header of a page is similar to the regular nofollow and leads to all links on that page being nofollowed.

3. Redirect links

Unless a permanent 301 redirect is used, any time a link goes through some intermediary page to track clicks or sales or display a disclaimer page, the link will not pass any SEO value.

4. Javascript links

As I mentioned above, Google is starting to crawl Javascript links but there is much debate as to whether these links pass any value or not. Use HTML whenever possible.

So you’ve built a bunch of links on your website using the basic outline mentioned above. They are technically sound but you’re not seeing the benefits you should. Read on for symptoms of a link that Google has devalued.

1. Strangely low PageRank

While toolbar PageRank is not that reliable of a metric, it can point to problem areas in respect to your SEO links. If a site is obviously selling paid links, Google will often penalize its PageRank and stop the flow of link value from the site.

2. Slow crawl rate, old cache date

If Google trusts a page and considers it important, it will crawl and index the page quickly and often. If the cache date of the page your links are on is over a month old, that’s a sign Google doesn’t trust that page and as a result, links do not pass any value.

3. Link location

Links in the sidebar or footer of a page are often devalued since Google views these as being used as advertisements to manipulate search results. Editorial links embedded in content are much more valuable so Google gives the most weight to these links.

After all this, you’re probably asking “How do I check to see if a link is passing value?”

There is a way to check but it’s not always easy. What you do is create a link on the target location with unique anchor text. For example, on our search engine optimization firm website, we could create a link in the content saying “jabberwocky SEO”. This is an obscure but related term to what we do. Then, we go to Google and type that phrase in the search bar. If our page comes up in the search results containing that keyphrase, the process worked.

Read more about developing SEO link building strategies that deliver link value in this article from Winning the Web. And if you have any questions about link building, feel free to contact SEO Advantage and get quick answers to your questions from one of our experienced SEO engineers.

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5 Necessary Skills to be an Effective Link Builder

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Successful search engine optimization professionals and link builders possess certain skills that make them good at their craft. When a company or SEO firm is looking to hire an in-house link builder, they often find difficulty in narrowing down the right person with the right skills.

Not every online marketer will excel at the five skills outlined below – the important thing is they can grasp it and over time build on their skills.

Here are 5 skills every SEO marketer and link builder needs to possess in order to be successful.

1. Knowledge of a variety of topics

Especially true for SEO companies, a general knowledge and understanding of a broad range of topics is required. The ability to pivot to different topics during the course of a work day is crucial to being a successful web copywriter and link builder.

Even if there’s only one topic or industry, someone with knowledge of a broad set of industries will spot online marketing opportunities that others will miss.

2. Creativity

Link building and online marketing can be difficult so a creative mind is necessary to be sure all avenues are being explored. Rather than someone getting bored sending hundreds of marketing emails daily, hire someone with initiative and creativity to create custom tools, content and widgets.

If it’s their own creations, they will be much more engaged in marketing those creations online.

3. Task-oriented behavior

While someone may be very creative, they may not be so disciplined at seeing an initiative through to the end. Online marketing for truly remarkable ideas may never end – the effort may revolve around seeking out new marketing channels to reach as many people as possible. Companies should always be on the lookout for things that can produce long lasting results.

4. Attention to detail

Link building and SEO work requires a special attention to detail – you don’t want someone who gets great links and uses the wrong anchor text or someone who doesn’t keep track of who they contact and repeatedly emails the same people, possibly opening themselves and your firm up to accusations of spamming.

5. Ability to multi-task

Many companies amazingly think that link building simply involves sending out thousands of emails a day but in reality, it’s much more than that. Good link building requires good online public relations. A good link builder needs to be able to manage different kind of mediums at once – email, social media, telephone and websites.

Not everyone will have perfect skills in all of these. Someone may be very creative but not quite so good at managing a project. But a basic understanding of all 5 of these qualities is a must.

Read this Search Engine Watch article for more insights into what makes a good SEO marketer and link builder.

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Why Including the Trailing Slash at the End of a URL is Important for Link Building

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Web developers and SEO professionals often debate the importance of a trailing slash at the end of a URL link. Some people not so familiar with link building and search engine optimization dismiss their importance, saying it doesn’t really matter if you include the slash or not.

But the truth is it does matter – if you do business with a web developer or SEO firm who dismisses the importance of including a “/” at the end of a website they’re linking to, find a new one immediately.

SEO blogger Sebastien explained it in pretty simple terms…URLs are like phone numbers in that each character matters. If you take a digit off the end of a phone number, you don’t go anywhere. The slash at the end of a URL shares much the same characteristics. If someone gives you a web address to link on your website, use it as is or not at all.

Make sure you and the other webmaster agree on a format for the URL and stick with it.

Servers have different ways of handling issues like this. Say for instance the link on your site doesn’t contain the trailing slash but the other site does, several things can happen that will negate any link building benefits you’re trying to get. Some do a re-direct while others will simply display an error (404) message.

Some servers may even return a 200 response for both versions of the URL. Not only does this mean wasted time and effort from a link building perspective, you could potentially run into duplicate content problems as well.

Read this Search Engine Journal post for more information.

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Poll Indicates 38% of Webmasters Will Retain NoFollow Links

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

A few weeks ago, Rusty Brick over at Search Engine Roundtable floated a poll asking what webmasters plan to do in light of Matt Cutts’ announcement in June.

As you may remember, Cutts announced at the SMX Conference in late May and early June that noFollow links will not work like they have in the past. Search engine optimization professionals have used them in a practice known as PageRank sculpting.

Instead of having link juice go to static pages like an “about us” or “contact us” page, webmasters could redirect it to higher yielding pages by using noFollow links.

But that’s changing thanks to Google’s new policy…38% of webmasters however will continue to use them according to this poll.

Courtesy of Search Engine Roundtable

Courtesy of Search Engine Roundtable

Forum discussion at WebMasterWorld seems mixed…many SEO professionals are still digesting the news of all this.

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Get Faster and More Efficient Crawling of your Site with a Sitemap

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Looking for the best ways to get your site indexed and ranked at the top of the search engines? One tactic you can employ to accomplish this is to include a sitemap on your site, or a page that has links to every other page on your site.

Technically speaking, a sitemap according to Search Engine News is “a specific page on a website that provides search engines an alternative access to contents and information, and also helps webmasters and visitors to make sense of the information contained in the website.”

Google is now throwing more support to sitemaps and Bing has apparently followed suit…unlike the past however, you do have to manually submit the sitemap to the search engines.

Without submitting a sitemap, the only way Google can crawl and index your site is through other websites linking to yours. It’s quite possible for pages to get missed this way…but it does point out weaknesses in a particular page, like not carrying enough link juice or having unique content. Data you get from a natural search engine crawl is still valuable in other words.

You can easily create a sitemap to submit to Google through their free Sitemap Generator tool. But it may be wise to allow Google to do a natural crawl of your site first to get a better picture of which pages need more work.

Including a sitemap on your site though is also very helpful to visitors – one location where they can easily find any page on your website.

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Google Profiling Search Professionals – 7 Red Flags to Avoid

Friday, July 17th, 2009

There has been much discussion lately as to whether Google treats search engine professionals as criminals, which was sparked by a surprise announcement about NoFollow links by Google’s spam czar Matt Cutts at the SMX conference last month.

No matter if you believe Google profiles SEOs or not, you need to do your best not to be labeled as an SEO. There’s an interesting article at Winning the Web that details 7 Red Flags that Reveal to Google You’re an SEO Criminal – Avoid These!

If you are profiled as an SEO by Google, they will heavily scrutinize your site and hold you to a much higher standard. Avoid this by following these 7 steps:

  1. Don’t bloviate about your SEO tactics – Be careful what you tell others about all the cutting-edge SEO techniques you are using…it could come back to haunt you.
  2. Sites all tied together are an easy target – Separate your sites as much as possible (i.e. different IP addresses, no interlinking). Google can trace IP addresses and has a lot of information about you and your sites.
  3. Do not over optimize for certain keywords – It’s always been pretty simple to optimize content for SEO. But Google now automatically filters and penalizes sites it thinks are “over-optimized”. Focus a little less on things like keyword density and generate engaging content instead.
  4. Unnatural link profile – Google definitely penalizes sites when it thinks a site’s link profile is unnatural. Examples include too many links too fast, too many links from low quality, unrelated sites, etc.
  5. Avoid NoFollow to sculpt PageRank – Using NoFollow is a definite red flag since Google believes the only people that know about this are professional SEOs.
  6. Do not buy or sell obvious paid links – Google has been pretty harsh on paid links since late 2007, claiming any site buying or selling links will be penalized.
  7. Using SEO and links to get a spammy site to the top – Is a big no-no as well…following the previous six tips but missing this one can get you in trouble. Even if you did your SEO under the radar, some money making scheme site may get to the top, but it won’t stay there for long.

SEO is certainly tougher these days. The best advice, don’t do things that draw attention to yourself. Be sure sites you build or maintain provide some value to its readers.

Have you been profiled or seen SEO red flags like these? Leave us a comment below.

Learn more at the Search Engine Roundtable and this forum discussion at Sphinn.

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Exchanging Links – We All Have to Begin Somewhere

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Large websites pay SEO consultants thousands of dollars to get high search engine rankings for their website.

Exchanging links, especially with a large website like CNET, is viewed by Google as a “vote of confidence” in your site who rewards you by improving your search engine ranking in searches for your keywords.

But with PageRank now being the currency to have when link building, does the old fashioned way of emailing a site and asking to exchange links still work?

It really depends – Evan Duffield thinks it does. “It’s kind of a vicious circle,” he said. “To start a new business you need PageRank, but to get PageRank you need links to your service. You have to get the ball rolling.”

Links from sites with higher PageRank are much more valuable than links from sites with low PageRank.

Google advises “the best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community.” But that seems obvious, right?

Since the web is so vast, even getting attention for a new site with superb content is a challenge. Danny Sullivan, who writes about search-engine optimization for Search Engine Land, says “…if you’re a new site, absolutely you want to be doing link building. But you need to be doing that in a smart fashion.”

Paid links are clearly off limits and on the surface and Google appears to ban link exchanges in general. They say they do not allow “excessive link exchanging” without providing any definition to what excessive is.

Read more about building links and PageRank in the CNET article entitled Link exchanges: the poor man’s SEO

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Organize Link Building Campaigns with Excel Type Worksheets

Friday, June 26th, 2009

We have all most likely used an Excel spreadsheet in the past to organize some information into a list – using them for link building campaigns though is a must to keep track of all the links going out and coming in.

Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal has a great short blog piece on link building worksheets. Remember though, these are just examples…do not use an exact variant of the examples below but pick and choose from each and add custom elements of your own that you see fit.

The first example from Garrett French of Link-Building-Guide.com is a comprehensive and concise worksheet that promotes an advanced approach to link building…evaluate each linking page and track keywords in the title, text and within tags. This guide provides a systematic approach to link acquisition and takes into account many advanced SEO features like crawlers and massive amounts of link data.

Another link building spreadsheet from Kalena describes organizing a spreadsheet for directory submissions. Her system creates 5 or 6 Excel worksheets for different aspects of the link building campaign – columns in each workbook have the same headings. Read more about Kalena’s system here.

YourSEOplan also gives suggestions on how to construct a link building worksheet along with examples you can download…columns include: URL of linking page, requested landing page, contact e-mail, date requested, link received? (Y/N) and notes.

Two more examples, Raven Tools and WordStrea, are given in the comments section of Ann’s blog.

Also, see this forum discussion at Sphinn for more insights.

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Associated Press Seeks Outlaw of Search Engine Links

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

It was announced here in this search engine optimization e-blog on April 7th a new A.P. policy aimed at controlling the use of its content on search engines and by bloggers.

Any blog or site that uses A.P’s work must obtain permission and share revenue…or face legal challenge.

At their annual meeting where the announcement was made in April, AP Chairman Dean Singleton stated “The news cooperative would work with portals and other partners who properly license content – and would pursue legal and legislative actions against those who don’t.”

Search engines like Google and Yahoo! and news aggregators like Drudge Report contend using a headline and first few sentences of someone else’s story – linking to that story on the original publication’s website – is allowed under the “fair use” doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Act.

Gain a better understanding of the implications of A.P.’s new policy from a search engine marketing perspective by reading this article by Rich Ord over at WebProNews…and see what others think of A.P.’s new policy in the comments at the bottom.

“Fair use” is in play here – the idea for this post came from the article linked above – but, WebProNews is getting another link to their site so they benefit in SEO terms.

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Inbound Link Building Tips from Google With Discussion at Search Engine Watch

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Inbound links to your website come from external websites linking back to you – they are extremely valuable in most cases (i.e. merit-based and voluntary) as it signals to search engines your site is important to others – inbound links are an important component to search engine optimization.

Relevant and quality inbound links boost your PageRank in Google…these links come to sites that have compelling content or offer some unique service.

Most inbound links enhance search engine rankings but if one is from a spammy sort of site, it won’t be recognized by Google. Let’s say you have three inbound links to your site but one is from a spam site…Google will only recognize two of them.

Google has a brief but very informative article on building inbound links to your website – the first and most important step being the continual addition of unique and interesting content. Start a blog of your own and usefully participate in related blogs across the Internet, teach new ideas or offer some great and unique product or service.

After reading the article, check out this SEO discussion at Search Engine Watch for more insights from the pros on inbound links and how they can accelerate your search engine rankings.

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Who Are the Most Linked-To Websites on the Internet?

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Getting links to your website from others is a very important component in accelerating search engine rankings – not to mention, a key strategy of search engine optimization.

SEOMoz ranks top pages and top domains, recently releasing an updated list of the 500 most popular pages and domains in terms of link popularity…rankings are done in order of linking root domains, not the number of links themselves – getting a set of root domains (i.e. http://www.seo-advantage.com/) is much harder versus getting a lot of links to specific pages on one site.

According to randfish at SEOMoz, this ranking method is “a metric that we’ve found incredibly valuable, both for identifying broad popularity as well as filtering spam.”

An interesting fact that will find with the rankings is the distribution of inbound links – the top domains have the majority of links, which explains why the top 10 hardly fluctuate. Google, which is #1 on the domain, has over 1.5 million links – Twitter.com on the other hand, rising 11 positions to the #46 spot, has just under 135,000 links.

We urge you to take a few minutes and glance through the top domain and top page lists and see some of the interesting trends taking place.

See an outline in this blog post from SEOMoz along with a discussion.

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Learn What Top SEOs Are Talking About with New Forum Watch

Monday, April 20th, 2009

A new addition to SEOe, Forum Watch is a way to keep up with what search engine optimization professionals are discussing.

Find the tips of the trade that can accelerate your rankings to the top…and, know what to avoid and what to do to stay at the top.

SEO Advantage will constantly monitor the forums and seek resources that will help give you a sense of what longstanding professionals in SEO are thinking…of course, if you have a specific issue, post it in the forum and see what the veteran SEOs have to say about it.

Topics run the gamut – keyword research, directory listings, link building, search engine friendly web design and more.

Check here often to see what’s percolating in the search engine forums – and of course, check back for our own feature articles on search engine optimization tips and current events.

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