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October 28, 2008
Follow Intrapromote on Twitter
We've been using Twitter as an internal communications tool for a while as a "protected" feed. In the spirit of TwitterGlasnost, however (and because we were surprised that several people found the feed and requested to follow it), we want to open it up.
What's in the stream?
- Links to posts from this blog
- Links to other SEO-related posts and articles from Intrapromote staffers
- SEO/M "required reading" -- a list of important SEO/SEM-related articles from around the web that our staff members have shared with one another
- Any upcoming speaking gigs or seminars we'll be attending
- The obligatory, enigmatic "and anything else we can think of..." items
Posted by erik at 8:28 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 24, 2008
Why .edu Link Acquisition “Services†Don’t Last Long
Recently, I had a client send me an email saying they had been approached by a company who could get them some .edu links in an “under the radar†kind of fashion and they asked me what I thought. Needless to say, I’m not crazy about these types of services. There are lots of reasons why, so I’ll hit on a couple of them now.
Many of these services say they will create original content for you on .edu domains and give your site a couple of links. They also put a couple of links to other resource sites like Wikipedia or a government site that provides a lot of value to the user, but is not a direct competitor of yours. Here are the issues with this:
1. The content is not worthwhile for any human to read. It doesn’t provide any value and just reading it tells you that the person who wrote it doesn’t have very good English skills.
2. Because this is the common trend with these types of services, it’s not hard for a search engine (or link development specialist) to figure out what’s going on.
3. Anything that promotes itself as being “under the radar†isn’t something you should engage in as a white link development specialist or firm. That should be the first warning sign.
4. Links are seldom built to these types of pages and when they are, they aren’t relevant nor are they valuable.
To further elaborate my point, I’ve monitored these types of pages and it doesn’t take long for them to get devalued by the search engines. One page I’ve been watching (no link, and for a reason) went from a PageRank 3 to a gray bar within 2 months of being live. They were also stripped from the indices of the search engines in that time period. I monitor lots of pages like this and while some of them (perhaps 5% of the ones I watch) slip past the requirements and provide PageRank value to the pages that it’s linking to, most of them become worthless pretty quickly. And for the price that you pay (I’ve seen as high as $3,000 a month for some of these pages) that’s a lot of wasted money.
Posted by angela at 7:45 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
October 20, 2008
Error in Google's robots.txt Docs
Update: This was fixed rapidly; see Riona's comment.
I don't want to get too deep into the complexities of robots.txt parsing (if you want that, try this, this or this), but I found something odd at the bottom of this page, one of Google Webmaster Help's many pages on robots.txt.
The page says:
URLs are case-sensitive. For instance, Disallow: /private_file.asp would block http://www.example.com/junk_file.asp, but would allow http://www.example.com/Junk_file1.asp.
Here's a picture just so you trust me:
This is wrong in a lot of different ways. Let's look at them with my comments following in bold.
URLs are case-sensitive.So far, so good.
For instance, Disallow: /private_file.asp would block http://www.example.com/junk_file.aspIt would? How?
..., but would allow http://www.example.com/Junk_file1.asp.
I suppose Disallow: /private_file.asp would allow /Junk_file1.asp, but not because of capitalization style. It's because /Junk_file1.asp has nothing to do with the excluded file, /private_file.asp
So what did they mean? If they're anything like me, this was a paragraph started, edited a few times, and never really finished. It appears to try to cover a variety of the issues covered on the page, including cap style, pattern matching, and wildcard characters. Here are a couple alternatives I'd suggest:
URLs are case-sensitive. For instance, Disallow: /private_file.asp would block http://www.example.com/private_file.asp, but would allow http://www.example.com/Private_file.asp.
or, to continue along the pattern-matching theme also discussed on the page, this would work:
URLs are case-sensitive. For instance, Disallow: /private_file*.asp would block http://www.example.com/private_file.asp, but would also block http://www.example.com/private_file1.asp. It would not, however, block /Private_file1.asp.
This is a pretty minor detail at the bottom of an esoteric page, but if you're looking for specific information on cap style and robots.txt, it could cause some head-scratching.
Posted by erik at 7:30 AM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
October 8, 2008
10 Tips for Doing Link Development Research
When you are hunting for links for your site or for a client’s site, there are lots of avenues that you could pursue. Some work, some don’t. That’s just the nature of the business. There are a couple of things I have gleaned along the way that have helped me when I’m doing that sometimes tedious research for link development.
So here are my 10 favorite tips for doing link research:
1. Be a user first, link developer second. If your link is not going to provide value, why bother? Think like a user and make sure that the link makes sense before you post it or submit it.
2. Keep hunting for the contact info. This is something that Eric Ward has talked about and the extra effort can go a long way. If all you’re finding is the webmaster@domain.com email, keep hunting. Check the site map, About page, staff page, etc. until you find an actual person to contact.
3. Check more than the PageRank. PageRank is good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the end all – be all of a site’s value. It’s a snapshot. Check who’s linking to them, how many pages are being indexed in both Yahoo and Google (major discrepancies here can send up a red flag), and the overall quality of the site.
4. Check partner sites. Even if the site that you want doesn’t take links or turns you down, find out who else is linking to them or has links on their site. If the relevancy and quality factors are there, send the email.
5. Evaluate who is linking to the competition. While some link developers say you shouldn’t do this because you’re always chasing the competition’s coat tails, I disagree. If the competition is on a page, why should users only have that option? They should have the option to choose the site you’re working on.
6. Let randomness take over. I tend to have a bit of ADD, which actually helps in my line of work. I roam the net, clicking what interests me and let the user in me take charge (yes, this relates back to #1). Chances are other users will surf in a similar fashion. I keep track of all the pages that I find that may work for a link request.
7. Use Google blog search. Or other social media monitoring tools. If people are talking about the site you’re evaluating, that’s a good sign. But make sure it’s not all negative. A mix of both positive and negative comments and posts regarding these sites make it legit to request a link from them.
8. Document everything. Inevitably, you’ll find yourself at a point where you’re wondering “where did I see that information…†and it will be lost. Be sure to document any pages you stumble across that may be helpful in later work.
9. Check the authority site. Let’s say you’re doing link work for a health site dealing with breast cancer. What are the online authorities for this? Obviously, the Komen Foundation and BreastCancer.org. Who is linking to them? Dig in and see what opportunities are there.
10. Investigate some forums. I’m not advocating SPAM here. But people who are passionate enough to talk about the content of what is on your site will have a long list of sites they regularly visit that may be relevant to what you’re looking for. Ask questions, check out discussions, and view user’s profiles for interesting leads.
Posted by angela at 7:31 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack