Link Building Articles by SEO Speedwagon

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason Four
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December 26, 2009

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason Three

Table of Contents
Ten Reasons Why Good Link Builders Fail (Introduction)
Reason One: Self-Doubt
Reason Two: Not Learning Best Practices

We've covered two really basic reasons why good link builders don't become great. Obviously self-doubt and the lack of best practices in their approach are slightly "duh" reasons. Well, prepare yourself because we're about to cover a third topic like that.

Ready? The third reason why good link builders fail is that they fail to expand their link building education.

Before you completely write off this post as another "duh" reason, hear me out. Because I think EVERY link builder has fallen victim to this. We (as an industry) have a nasty habit of getting into a rut and then camping out for a while. Or perhaps an eternity.

So consider these questions:

Are you questioning the "experts?" If not, why? Do you (deep down) know a better way to do something? Just because someone blogs that you should or should not do something do you automatically rush out and do it or do you think it through? People get really good at what they do because they constantly question things and try and find a better way. They differentiate themselves from everyone else. It's a good thing. If you're not doing it, try it.

Assuming that you read some link development blogs, who are you reading? Has it changed at all since you started building links? If you've been doing this for more than six months and the answer is no, consider a red flag coming your way. Things change and new link builders who are really good at what they do are appearing every day. Have you met them yet? The best way to find them is to browse the blogrolls of other link builders. Who are they recommending?

But, I'm going to go back to the "question the experts" note. Just because I think link builders should read Wiep's blog (and yes, he does rock), that doesn't mean he'll help you specifically. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

And beyond that, are you reading blogs that cover social media and copy writing? I've found those types of sites to be awesome fodder for some amazing link building concepts. Don't limit your ability to learn by only focusing on link building blogs. You could be missing a whole lot of awesome stuff.

Have a hunch about something? Test it. The best link builders out there are always testing things to see what happens and what impacts can be made by isolating variables and making evaluations. Learn your analytical jargon and start tracking what happens when you apply something to a site.

So, here's what you need to do: make education a priority. Don't pass up on free webinars, read some white papers and update your Google Reader.

And all the education in the world is great, but it amounts to nothing if you don't apply it. So get busy.

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason Three
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December 20, 2009

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason Two

Table of Contents
Ten Reasons Why Good Link Builders Fail (Introduction)
Reason One: Self-Doubt

So, we've covered the biggest reason why good link builders fail. The second reason? They don't learn best practices.

It seems counter-productive to want to do something and do it well and not learn the best way to do it. And "best practices" can mean different things to different people. There's so much talk about "black hat" vs. "white hat" and the ever elusive "gray hat" way to do link building. But let's face it: there's a good way to do it and a not so good way.

The first question you need to ask yourself is "Who Am I Learning From?" Are you learning from a "guru" who advocates SPAM methods? What about someone who just learned this a month ago? Or someone who writes all the time about link building but has never had a happy client? Take some time and do some research on that person before you trust everything that they say. Do they have any recommendations from clients on their site? LinkedIn? What about forum or blog posts? How do they handle disagreements that go public?

Check your sources. I repeat, check your sources. When it's your reputation on the line, wouldn't you rather be sure that you're doing the best possible job you can? One bad mark of publicity can derail your entire career. Treat your reputation wisely and be sure you're not repeating bad information.

The other thing I see a lot is a link builder who gets a link through a questionable (and sometimes deceptive) method then advocates this as THE way to build links. Just because something works once, don't count on it as a long-term strategy. Do the less than tactful approaches to link building work? Sure, sometimes they do. Personally, I'd rather do it the right way every time. But that's just me.

Link building teams are incredibly dynamic and I love the team I work with. (Translation: I have the best link builders working with me.) We're a group of really talented individuals that put the needs of our clients first and work our rear ends off to do the best job we can possibly do. We're also a group that argues from time to time. But it's a good thing.

My team is great at bringing up things that they've tested, read about or are curious to learn more about in our regular team meetings. Sometimes, as the leader of this Motley Crue style group, I need to put my foot down. But I enjoy the conversations and the debate that it sparks.

My answer most of the time? Show me. Don't test this stuff on clients, but set up a test and run it by me. Prove me wrong. I'm willing to admit it when I'm shown it. But you have to show me.

The moral of this little anecdote? Speak up. If you're working with a group that's testing some choppy waters, speak up. Afraid to do that? Maybe you should re-read the post about Self-doubt. Link building is a combination of art and science and a little bit of gut instinct. If the group shuts you down, ok. But at least you spoke up. That's worth its weight in gold at the end of the day.

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason Two
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November 26, 2009

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason One

Table of Contents
Ten Reasons Why Good Link Builders Fail (Introduction)

Last time, I talked about the fact that over the years, I've seen so many people that could have been amazing link builders fall way too short. And through those experiences, I've been able to pick up on some recurring trends and see why this happens.

The top thing I see happening over and over again that keep potentially great link builders fall short is Self-Doubt. I've put it as the top reason because I've been the victim of it more times than I can count.

Here's the thing. Self-doubt is rooted in fear and fear, by its very nature, is horridly corroding. It will not only take away any confidence you've built up, but it will keep the confidence from returning at all. And specifically, when it comes to link building, self-doubt can do any number of things to you including:

- Not let you make that potentially amazing link request
- Not point out a unique link building opportunity or partnership
- Not let you hit "publish" on that blog post because you think it isn't that great
- Not volunteer for speaking engagements because you're convinced you don't know your stuff that well
- Not refer or even think of yourself as an expert or that you are well-versed in the industry

Self-doubt limits you in your ability to continue to grow as a link builder and get your name into the industry. There are some link builders who throw their names everywhere, but when push comes to shove it's just a lot of show. I know of several link builders who have gotten attention and it's been well deserved. But I guarantee that nearly all of them had to overcome self-doubt.

For those of you who struggle with this, I recommend reading a ton of blogs and make a note of the ones that have taught you something new. If you've been doing this for a while and you've been diligent about your link building education, then the list shouldn't be too long. Take the new things you've learned to heart and apply them to your work. Go to conferences and get involved. Again, pay attention to how much you know and how much is new. When you really start paying attention, you'll find you know a lot more than you think.

Lastly, the best thing I can recommend to you is to take a chance. Put yourself out there. From there, you'll figure out that you either have a lot to learn still or that you're doing all right. But you won't know until you take the risk.

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason One
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November 19, 2009

Ten Reasons Why Good Link Builders Fail

Having worked in link building for nearly three years, I've seen a lot of people come and go. It's the nature of any business to be sure, but sometimes it's a little more heartbreaking than others. Without a doubt, I have met some brilliant link builders. I've had the privilege as a manager to train some incredibly talented people who have really taken link building as a concept and run with it. It makes me proud in what I do.

But then there are those who "get it" but don't "get it" at the same time. Those individuals are the ones that frustrate me. They have all the potential in the world to be incredibly successful at link building and they just... don't.

What I have learned in the past couple of years is to recognize patterns and there are definitely patterns of behavior that lead to a potentially great link builder either only becoming "good" or failing completely. I've identified the top 10 things I see happen time and again that contribute to this. Those 10 reasons are:

1. Self-Doubt
2. Not Learning Best Practices
3. Not Expanding your Link Education
4. Moving Too Fast
5. Poor Writing Skills
6. Lack of Creativity
7. Not Asking for Help
8. Missed Opportunities
9. No Personal Outlet for Frustration
10. No Support Team

While this isn't all the reasons, most of the situations I've witnessed fall into one of these categories. And because I see it all the time, I've decided to write about it. But the more I planned out this post, the more ridiculously lengthy it became.

So, this post is the kick off to a 10 part series on the most common reasons link builders that have amazing potential fall short of the mark or fall off the map completely. Some of these things can be changed immediately with some focused discipline. Some of the reasons are through no fault of their own, but can still be fixed. The point is, what good is potential if you can't tap it?

This series has been designed for the following groups of people:

- Link builders who feel like they are constantly struggling
- Managers of link building teams and interns who may want to do link building at some point
- People who are just cracking into the industry but are a bit intimidated
- Experienced link builders who feel like this is a good time for gut check of their progress to date

I'm sure that this list can be expanded exponentially. But I encourage you to watch for future posts on this topic and if you start to identify with things, keep reading. Over the next couple of months, this series will come to fruition and I hope that you will find at least one thing that you can take away and work on and become truly successful in what you do.

When it comes to link building, the worst thing you can do is give up prematurely. I'm just here to help.

Ten Reasons Why Good Link Builders Fail
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August 20, 2009

Five Approaches to Creating a Link Building Strategy

If I have learned nothing else about link building in the years that I've been focusing on it, I've learned this: There is no end to the creativity that can go into a link building strategy.

Without a doubt, link building can be explosive when it comes to the creative and brainstorming approach of the strategy portion. And yes, you need a strategy. You cannot, I repeat, you cannot have a successful link building campaign with measurable results without a strategy. Sure, you can get lucky. But your competition is probably cooking up a strategy that will top you in no time. It's a fact of the online world.

So where do you start? In my experience, there are five basic approaches to crafting a link building strategy.

The Competition Approach

It makes sense to start with your competition. What are they doing? Who are they targeting? Are they even doing a link building campaign? How do you know? Tip: Look at their links. Are they in directories? Are their links full of keyword-rich anchor text? Where are their links coming from? Are they buying links. Using tools like SEO SpyGlass (one of my personal favorites) or other backlink analysis tools will give you a comprehensive sampling of your competition.

The Keyword Approach

What keywords do you want to rank for? Obviously, the main focus of link building is to improve your rankings for specific keywords, so this is another logical approach. Who is ranking for your top keyword? Who is linking to them? Who are they linking to? Take it a step further and use tools like Google Insights to see what variations of your primary keywords are on the rise. Go into popular forums in your industry and see what people are most interested in. Then, create some quality content around that topic and you can acquire links that way as well.

The Niche Approach

In every business, there is a niche that is basically waiting to be dominated in the Search Engine results pages (also called SERPs). List out as many niche areas of your business as well. How many do you serve? Do you have content on your site that tells your potential customers about it? Do you have content on your site that answers common questions in this niche areas of business? (Hint: If not, you should.) Submit your site to niche categories on directories, find the online resource hubs for that specific topic and ask for a link or explore different popular sites that people in your industry naturally gravitate to and see if there are opportunities to gain links that way.

The Regional Approach

Do you only serve certain areas of the country or world? You should list yourself in regional categories in directories online. If you have a physical address, you should have a Google Local Listing and you should be listed on other local-based sites that users are likely to access. Check and see if one is already listed and make sure that the information is listed correctly. This is vital as local is taking on a life of its own in the online space.

The Authority Approach

You know your business inside and out. You should be telling people about it. Invest some time creating content that is directly relevant to your primary audience and publish it on your own site or a blog. Beyond that, find the most popular resource sites in your industry and see if any of these sites have "guest writer" or "guest post" opportunities that you could potentially participate in. Be sure to include the links in your content if it's appropriate and in your bio as well.

What do all of these approaches have in common? Content and time. You won't get very far without either. And no one strategy is "the" answer for you. Most likely, it will be a combination of things that you work on.

Five Approaches to Creating a Link Building Strategy
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July 14, 2009

Tweeting Without a Blog? You're Missing Link Opportunities

In today's Twitterfied online world, more and more companies and individuals are jumping on Twitter and expecting immediate results. If you're engaging in Twitter without a well-planned strategy, then you're operating in a complete fallacy. Even worse, if your site is only pushing products and not information, you could be missing out some valuable links.

Links that are generated from your activity on Twitter are all indirectly built. Yes, you can build up some link equity to your Twitter profile, but links within Tweets and Twitter are nofollowed, so that link value is presumably being lost instead of harnessed. But let's say that a blogger sees your Tweet and is so impressed, they build a link back to your site. There's an indirect link as a direct result of your actions on Twitter. And those can be extremely value.

Many people and companies are engaging in Twitter to drive conversions and establish themselves as an expert in a particular industry. The first may be easier if your site is product-driven. But what about the second?

Twitter (and micro-blogging in general) is the new and most popular way to share information and network online. But if you don't have a blog that your Twitter stream complements, you're probably missing out on some links that will help build your industry expertise and here are a few reasons why.

140 characters can only say so much.

I have no doubt your Tweets are witty. And perhaps they've even gotten retweeted numerous times and you were a Twitter celebrity for half an hour. That's fantastic. But what did those Tweets really say about you and your expertise? Perhaps your witty Tweet also included a link to your latest blog post (which was equally witty and thought-provoking). This can have twice the impact and give people the ability to learn more about you, rather than just surfing through your Twitter stream and seeing what other random thoughts you're pumping out to your followers.

You can link to Tweets, but then what?

So let's say I find a Tweet to be phenomenal and I link to it in a blog post. One of my readers clicks on the link and goes right to the Tweet. Then what? They could click on your profile and then go to your blog (assuming that is the link on your Twitter profile). But we're talking about the people who don't have blogs. So then what does the user do? They are stuck in linkless limbo. And what if the link goes to your site that is product-driven and offers no information or no place for your visitors to join in a conversation with you and your brand, you're doing yourself (and your brand) a disservice.

Your blog will build your credibility, not your Twitter stream.

Think about this: can you really dive into your 5-Step process that you've patented in 140 characters? Or even 700 characters? (For you non-math people like myself, that's 5 Tweets with 140 characters each.) Probably not. You may hit your key points, but your blog can be your platform to divulge the details of your brainchild and also start a public conversation about it via your comments.

Since the rest of my reasons are going to sound a bit repetitive, keep the following things in mind when you're deciding if a blog is right for you:

Twitter is meant to be complementary, not a stand-alone.

Twitter lets you push out ideas, but not develop them.

Twitter is about conversation and community. Your blog is your expertise platform (and can then turn into a conversation-driven community).

And keep in mind, that a blog isn't the only answer (but it definitely is one of the best options out there). You can also use articles, guest posting on other sites, press releases and more. But your blog is the best place to push out relevant content on a regular basis. Plus it's your own voice and it gives you something to Tweet about.

Tweeting Without a Blog? You're Missing Link Opportunities
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June 08, 2009

Google Doesn't Like Nofollows Anymore. Shocker.

Recently, Google's Matt Cutts made some hints about nofollow links and their value going down. I have to be honest. I'm not surprised.

Once again, we're seeing something that Google did to try and make link popularity "fair" across the board become a nightmare for them to measure because of many people abusing the original intent of it. What? People trying to abuse a system instead of just doing good work? Unheard of.

This story has been developing for a while and there are some interesting elements at play. The biggest factor is that some sites have abused this link attribute in order to funnel the link value to a few of their internal target pages or for other purposes (of which there are many). The situation is not unlike the paid link debate: while some uses of the tactic are completely valid and ethical (assuming you follow the guidelines put in place), those that overuse and abuse the tactic ruin it for the rest of us. Let's face it, for every really good link builder (meaning ethical, transparent, creative, etc) there are 100 link builders that are only it for a short time and try to figure out a way to game the system instead of creating a long-lasting strategy.

Let's remember that the purpose of link building is not to trick the search engines. The purpose is to provide search engines and users with what they want: relevant results for their keyword queries by providing links to the content and having those links adequately describe what's on that page. Sadly, most people don't know how to do this very well and they begin schemes like link farms, blatantly irrelevant paid link campaigns and other less than savorty tactics to try and push their sites to the top.

Basically, from what I can see happening and what I’ve seen happen in the past few months is this: nofollow links coming from external sites are being followed by the search engines (many of them are showing up in my link reports) as well as affecting the ranking of certain keywords that I monitor. Now, I don’t think they are counting as much as a link without the nofollow attribute, but they are certainly adding some value. In regards to internal links, nofollow links are still valuable for PageRank sculpting and harnessing the values of the links coming in, but for sites that overuse this attribute, the value will not be as great as it once was.

Once again, Google will be trying to take things on a site-by-site basis, but I have not seen them fully succeed at that through the years. Even the algorithm, which was designed for a “site-by-site basis” style of analysis likes to make blanket assumptions on things and we’ve seen the SEO industry get worked up about it before. So what can we expect from this? It could be anything from an announcement from Google introducing a new alternative to nofollow, blanket rules and blanket statements that apply to all nofollow links (which was the original intent anyway: the search engine would not follow the link, but look what has happened), the ability to report “nofollow abuse” directly to Google (much like the paid link report form) and other various methods to try and control the issue.

The bottom line is that if you have an array of tactics and creative approaches to link building, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Nofollowing links (when appropriate) will still have some effect, and how great that effect is will be completely dependent on what the search engines do in the following months.

So, are you prepared for whatever comes your way? If you have a diverse portfolio of skills and tactics and don’t rely heavily on only one thing you should be fine. But if you've been banking on your nofollow strategy, you may be starting to panic.

Google Doesn't Like Nofollows Anymore. Shocker.
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May 27, 2009

Dafforn First to Discover Google Changes Profile Hop from 302 to 301

I am happy to report I am not the only one so oddly obsessed; money quote:

About three weeks ago, [John Lustina] noted that Google numerical-based URLs were redirecting to custom profiles, but they were using a 302 instead of a preferable 301. Today, however, I'm happy to note that's changed. As of this writing, the 302 has changed to 301.

And with the step toward doing what they tell us to do, me Google Profile hops another steep up, to 5:

Is this why they wanted to 302 Hop[e], originally?

Dafforn First to Discover Google Changes Profile Hop from 302 to 301
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May 18, 2009

Google Profiles Now Above the Fold?

In spite of that odd numerical URL that persists and 302 hops, my Google Profile has proven to indeed be a climber, for the first time breaking above the fold for the vanity search I have been vainly keeping my own eye on from day one:

Now, as is normally the case with a non-temporary 302--THE problem with a non-temporary 302 you might conclude--I don't know whether to link to http://www.google.com/profiles/John.Lustina or http://www.google.com/profiles/116187582762783426547 when I am referring to it.

Google?

Google Profiles Now Above the Fold?
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May 04, 2009

Google Profiles Doing the 302 Hop?

Continuing in my vainglory of days past, I was surprised today while exploring below the fold to see my Google Profile suddenly appear as a tenth result along with the standard extra bottom result (with smiling picture) for a vanity search:

Even more surprising, if you look at the yellow highlighted rectangle, is that Google choose to show www.google.com/profiles/116187582762783426547 as the URL for the result, rather than the www.google.com/profiles/John.Lustina vanity URL that I selected as my preference, when offered, in the initial setup of my Profile.

Now, I was happy to see that it redirected to http://www.google.com/profiles/John.Lustina when clicked, yet wondered why the numerical URL would yet list if the redirect were a 301. My SEO senses tingling, I went to Rex The Answer Man to find this:

Why a 302 temporary redirect? Why not just keep them numerical rather than vain if they are not going to implement a proper 301?

Isn't that what they would have us counsel our clients in a similar scenario?

Google Profiles Doing the 302 Hop?
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April 28, 2009

Bonfire of the Vanity Search Revisited

Not three days later, the Google Profile influence now has ordered the top six:

Note to self: the right column space is pretty important:

Bonfire of the Vanity Search Revisited
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April 25, 2009

Bonfire of the Vanity Search

Although unveiled in the innocuous position last--always, mind you--of the first page for your name, it seems more likely ever-prescient Google has a larger share in mind than the 10th result on a page; namely, a cover page for Socially skitzophrenic above-the-fold situations like the following:

Are they actually after, rather, One Profile to rule them all?

Bonfire of the Vanity Search
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February 11, 2009

Is Your Industry too Boring for Link Building?

So often as I am discussing link building strategies or the concept of link bait, I am faced with the same question:

"Aren't we too boring for all this? Who is going to want to link to us? All we do is (fill in the blank)."

The short answer is no. You are not too boring. Why? Because in every industry, every niche, SOMEONE cares about what you're doing.

The long answer involves discussions around target markets and their demographics, the various services offered, and industry trends. Since it's a bit complicated, let's take a purely hypothetical example.

Let's say we are dealing with a client who sells pens. Not too sexy, right? I mean, they're pens. Everyone can get them and you can pretty much get them anywhere. Even gas stations. Well, let's take it a step further and say that these pens are around $150 each. Why would people want to buy a pen for $150 when they can get 12 pens for around $2? That becomes the source of our link bait and link building campaign.

Asking questions like this is the next step for designing a campaign for a seemingly boring industry. What makes your pen worth $150? Can you write under water with it? Is the quality of the actual shell of the pen magnificent? Does this pen never, ever, in a million years "skip" when you're writing unless it's completely out of ink? Does it have some sort of indicator to let you know when it is about to run out of ink? What about refills? Do customers get them when they initially purchase the pen? How expensive are they? What type of ink is it? Has it been safety tested around kids? Pets? Is it child-proof?

Of course, this is all hypothetical. But when you hit on that one thing that makes this pen stand above the rest, you have your link bait concept. Branching out from there, you need to find the people who would want this pen. Business executives, writers, celebrities who sign a lot of autographs, lawyers... there are people out there who will not only love your product but want to tell others how great it is too. How about people who just plain love pens? Don't think they exist? I beg to differ. So, where do you find them? Blogs, social networks, resource sites, and other authority hubs will be the go-to locations to find these people. Simple queries will tell you where you should start researching. From their, the web of links that you are sure to find will also give you more avenues to pursue.

Now, what do you tell these people when you find them? You can do a myriad of things on your site and show it to your target market. Showing a video of all the amazing things your pen can do would be one option - Blendtec perfected this with their "Will it Blend?" series. How about a contest? An interactive widget? User-generated lists of what people want in their perfect pen? Top 10 lists?

All of these are good options. By really working to match your efforts with your target market, you will see the benefit as people blog about your pen, post links on their sites back to yours and help you spread the word about your magnificent pen.

My point is that no matter what you're selling or trying to promote, someone out there wants to hear about it. Combining elements like quality and differentiators with your target market and a catchy way to grab their attention will generate links before you know it.

Is Your Industry too Boring for Link Building?
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December 17, 2008

What the Economic Times Mean for Link Building

So unless you've been living under a rock, you realize that the economy isn't as strong as it used to be. And yes, that is a rather large understatement. Many industries have been pushed into the limelight to discuss their dire situation and ask for help. Many search bloggers are also talking about the economy and what it means for the search industry at large. We're seeing stories about how to get the most out of your search campaigns right now, looking for SEO opportunities in tough economic situations, and big brand SEM strategies.

In the past few months, I have recognized several trends that could ultimately benefit link development.

1. The need for information. If your site is providing information on financial tips or if you have ideas on how your target market can save money within your industry, publish the content. Do some keyword research and find out what exactly people are looking for and create a title and a content piece that will rank in the search engines. Since most people are looking for ways to be more economical right now, you've basically just created some nice link bait.

2. Blog Explosions. Bloggers know that if they publish content that provides timely tips and advice, their traffic will increase exponentially. Reach out to those bloggers and ask how you can help them get the content they need. Every day, new blogs are created on every conceivable topic. Keep an eye out for both the established bloggers and the up-and-coming candidates.

3. Looking for experts. In tough times, many executives tend to hide out. Be up front. Grant some interviews with some bloggers who write about your industry. Be honest about what's going on. Talk about your plans when it's appropriate. Be the face of your company.

4. Now is the time for shake-ups. If you've been sitting #5 or #6 for a particular keyword, a little extra investment into your link development campaign will pay off. Many sites that are sitting #1 and have been there for a long time have relied on that fact without much thought. The companies that are investing in SEO and link development are making big moves and the momentum could keep them there as time goes on.

There are lots of ways to stay afloat in tough times. The biggest need right now is information and hope. When you give that to your consumers, they can often reciprocate with some unsolicited links and a window into your target market.

What the Economic Times Mean for Link Building
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November 27, 2008

Don't Think Like a Student for .edu Links

I've written posts before on some tips to fixing existing .edu links and why .edu link acquisition services are typically worthless. But what about when you're trying to get links the old-fashioned way? By providing valuable content to users and then telling Webmasters where to find it? What do you do? Where do you start? How do you go about it?

When you're doing research to gain some much-coveted .edu links, be sure to do your homework. You want to find sites that cater to your target market. But stop and think before you channel the zen of a college student to get your links.

Why not? It's simple. College students don't dictate links on University sites. Professors and staff do. How do I know this? Take a look at any college Web site and find a resources page of sorts for students. These days with so many college kids graduating with excessive debt (and I'm not just talking about student loans) many sites are now putting up a page packed full of resources on how to manage your credit from the start rather than how to fix it (although there are links for that too).

Let's take a look at this sample page from Baldwin-Wallace College on how to manage your finances. Lots of good stuff in here, right? Perfect opportunity to maybe place a link to a well-respected site that offers additional tips and financial information? Want to put a link to a big and flashy Web site that college kids just seem to love? Stop. Read the content again. The thing I heard most in college is "You're an adult now." Colleges are set up to groom promising professionals into upstanding citizens (not to mention that whole education thing). The content on this page is geared towards the students with a parental tone.

"But wait," you might say. "College kids love my big flashy Web site!" True, but they're not the ones who are managing a large university's Web site. Even if they are, a professor is mentoring them and watching their every move. Those links, even if they do get put up, won't last long. The biggest mistake I see in trying to get .edu links is that some link builders think that you are marketing to the students. You're not. You're marketing to their parents. And their professors.

"So what do I do?" I'm so glad you asked. Market to the professors and parents of these students. They're the ones who, ultimately, dictate what types of content goes up. Typically, parents pay the bills to these schools. So, professors and staff answer to them. The staff and teaching professionals are responsible for the education of these young minds. They don't want something as glaring as a junk link on their Web site. Think like an adult when marketing to .edu sites.

The bottom line in all of this? You must provide valuable content to the user to get .edu links. No ifs, ands, or buts. Sure, you can get other .edu links without much effort. But I doubt they'll provide any long-term value for search engine rankings. And in link development, long-term is the way to go.

Oh, and by the way... Happy Thanksgiving!

Don't Think Like a Student for .edu Links
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November 13, 2008

Perceived Competition vs. Actual Competition

It happens 80% of the time I ask the question. I am talking with a client on the phone and I ask “who do you feel is your direct competition in your industry?” What I then receive is a list of competitors that are prominent in the industry. But how many of these competitors are showing up in the search results? Generally, less than 10% of the competitors that I get from my client are actual competitors in the SERPs.

If my client is a big brand, then I get a list of other big brand companies that have a Web site. These competitors typically are not engaging in SEO nor are they targeting the same keywords that my client is focusing on. These competitors tend to rely on their brand name to draw customers and make online sales. There are times when big brand competitors are showing up in SERPs for broad keyword phrases due to their brand name and domain. For instance, if I’m doing research on the keyword “toys,” it makes sense that Toys R Us shows up at or near the top. “Toys” is in their brand and their domain. Since most people link to Web sites with the brand name, that adds to their ability to rank.

But what about my clients’ actual competition? There is a tremendous amount of value in doing a thorough competitive analysis that focuses on link development. Why? Because a) it shows you what your competition is (or is not) doing in terms of link development, b) it tells you who your actual competition is for specific keywords that are valuable to your SEO efforts, and c) it is a springboard (or smorgasbord of information) into researching potential sites that you can acquire links from.

Big brands aren’t always optimizing their site nor are they engaged in an active (or well designed) link development campaign. More often than not, I find resource sites, niche brands, and other lesser-known players in a particular industry performing the best for these types of keyword phrases. And, surprisingly enough, these smaller sites tend to out-perform the big brand competition in their link development efforts. They have a more varied link portfolio than the bigger companies. Why? Generally because they teach themselves the ins and outs of the industry because they know they are competing with bigger brands. And also because they tend to have a little more time on their hands since they are not managing the daily activities of a multi-million dollar corporation.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. Auto insurance is a great example. Several of the big players in the industry are actively engaged in strategic SEO and link development campaigns. While some are definitely performing better than others, there is quite a bit of evidence that points to the fact that these companies are SEO savvy.

So the next time you think of your competition, think beyond the big players in the industry. Do some queries and find out who is truly at the top. And dig a little deeper to see what more you can be doing.

Perceived Competition vs. Actual Competition
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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.

Why .edu Link Acquisition “Services” Don’t Last Long
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October 08, 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.

10 Tips for Doing Link Development Research
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September 16, 2008

Local and Links: A Match Made in Heaven?

A good friend of mine, Adam, suggested that I do a post on How can local information, events, news, and other local fodder help your link development campaign? Oh, let me count the ways. Local search is a huge marketing push right now online. From Google maps to your local radio station’s Web site, the opportunities are endless for link development.

Of course, this is taking into account a couple of factors. First of all, that you are, in fact, local. If you have a brick and mortar location, you have the opportunity to be listed in the local search engines of Google, Yahoo, and the like. You can also get submitted to other Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs) and Local Directories like Best of the Web’s.

But there’s more to it than that. There is a world of opportunity when you look at your community and what is currently happening in it. Of course, the second assumption I am making is that you are active in your community. Whether it be community service, local festivals, or other popular events that you are participating in, you can make a name for yourself (and get some links) by doing some selfless service.

1. Sponsoring community organizations or events – Do you faithfully sponsor a local race, fundraiser, hospital or charity every year? Ask for a link from their Web site to yours if you don’t already have one. If you do have one, check to see if the link says what you want it to say. If the link is actually a hyperlinked image, make sure an ALT tag is included.

2. Receiving awards from local organizations – Ask if the organization has a page on their Web site for past recipients and see if a link has been included by your name. If not, a gentle suggestion may be a good idea. But, of course, don’t be pushy. It’s their site, they can do what they want. Additionally, ask if you can do an online press release about the award. Ask for a quote and syndicate it to an online service. Include a link to the organization as well as to your own site. If they are planning on doing their own, ask them to include a link to your site as well.

3. Current events – is your community going through some rough times and they need your expert advice? Create content that is specifically geared towards the current state of affairs and give tips on what the community can do. Then reach out to your local newspaper’s site and let them know the resource is available on your site.

4. Local Business Organizations and the Chamber of Commerce – Are you a member of a local group that is affiliated with the professional community or your particular industry? See if your terms of membership include a link from their Web site to yours.

If you’re not currently doing any of these things, get active. If you can make a positive impact on your community, you’re sure to be rewarded. Of course, I’m hoping that links are not your only motivation for doing good things for those around you. But, getting active in your community and staying on top of the needs of your potential client base will pay dividends in the long run.

Local and Links: A Match Made in Heaven?
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September 11, 2008

How to Evaluate a Link Development Firm

So, you’ve embarked on an SEO campaign and now you want to get more links. Welcome to my world! You understand it’s critical to your optimization efforts and you’re evaluating a firm that offers link development services. For many in the industry, link development is the thorn in the side. Very few people actually like doing it (present company excluded) and I’ve seen that some companies’ approach to the process is indicative of how they feel about it.

Here’s how to tell if you’re getting a good deal whether you’re hiring them only for link development or it’s part of the SEO campaign they are executing for you.

1.Tactics – does the firm offer only tactic (ie directory submissions) or are their campaigns more diversified? The more white hat options that a firm offers, the more keen they are as to how link development works. If a content development strategy is a part of the puzzle, even better.

2.Communication – how often will they be talking to you about your campaign? Regardless of whether it’s by phone or email, regular and thorough communication will make you feel more comfortable about what’s going on behind the scenes.

3.Reporting – how often you get reports and what is detailed in them is important. Are you only getting bare bones information? Like how many links are pointing to your site? Or are they telling you where those links are coming from, what pages on your site those links are pointing to, and what anchor text they used? The more data that is incorporated into a report for you, the more that firm actually cares about your project.

4.Competitive Information – this goes back to tactics, but if a firm is telling you what the competition is doing (something more substantial than “they have more links than you do”) they’ve taken the extra step to dive deep into what’s happening online on your behalf.

5.Analytics – does the firm jump into the analytics fray and tell you what’s going on beyond just how many links you’ve gotten? Do they talk about site referrals, type in traffic metrics, increases or decreases in brand-related searches? All of these and more would tell me that a firm is in tune with all the benefits of link development, not just rankings.

This is just a small sampling of what you can look at in regards to a link development firm and how they will handle your campaign. Other things can include what advanced strategies they offer, results of brainstorm sessions (if they are having them), and industry trend information being sent your way. Be sure you are spending your money (and your time) wisely by choosing a firm that not only does a good job, but actually cares about your links.

How to Evaluate a Link Development Firm
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September 02, 2008

Link Development Vocabulary

First, I want to say thank you to the entire Intrapromote team for the warm welcome and another big thanks to Erik for his introduction on this blog.

Now, onto the thing that I love to talk about: Link Development. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about link development. A lot. So, it's probably a good idea to start with some basics and clarify some of the lingo we use in the industry.

Link Popularity: First and foremost, it's a metric. Why do we care? Because Google says it's important, so all professional SEOs and Google-wannabes have followed suit. This measures both the quantity and quality of the links coming into all the pages on a site. Link Popularity is more than just how many links are coming into a page / site. It also measures how good the linking sites are by looking at things like how many links are pointing to that site, the quality of the content, the history of the site online, PageRank, and how often that site is updated, among others. The better the site, the more valuable the link. And these links play into the ever-elusive algorithm of how Google returns search results for keyword searches.

Link Building: In a nutshell, this refers to "getting" more links either through solicitation, submitting to directories, or other various methods. It focuses on only getting new links. In fancier terms it can also called "Link Acquisition." I prefer the latter when referring to this type of link work. It sounds prettier.

Link Development: This is more holistic in its approach. Not only are you building links and getting new links to a site or page, but you are also looking at the links that already exist and identifying ways to improve them. There are lots of ways to do this and it's most often referred to as "Link Reclamation" or reclaiming the links that already exist. It is also called "Link Sculpting." This is what we focus on at Intrapromote.

I'm sure we'll get more into a lot of this as these blog posts continue to roll in, but for now I think that's a good start. Again, I'm excited to be a part of the Intrapromote team and I'm looking forward to the exciting conversations ahead.

Link Development Vocabulary
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August 23, 2008

Intrapromote Welcomes Angela Moore as Director of Link Development

I wanted to let everyone know how happy we are with a new addition to our staff. Angela Moore has joined us as Director of Link Development, a position that we built around her significant experience and skills. She'll be managing a team and will really broaden the scope of our link building services. We have already seen great things and expect that to continue.

Here's the release. Angela is also a mod at SEW Forums and is already a veteran blogger, so keep an eye on our link-building category (& feed). Welcome, Angela.

Intrapromote Welcomes Angela Moore as Director of Link Development
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March 04, 2008

SEO Success Factors

I was recently asked about the success factors of an SEO campaign. There are many, but let's take a look at three of what we consider the most important success factors:

1) Knowledge Is Power

It's very important for us to know what prior SEO activities have been conducted on a site. This can make or break the campaign. On a few occasions, our team of site analyzers have uncovered controversial techniques that even our client didn't know had been performed!

It's also very important for us to have access and learn from your web site analytics data. SEO is about getting the right people to your site from search engines. Your analytics data prior to SEO and after SEO is a constant gauge to see if your SEO company is traffic-focused, not just placement-focused.

Finally, the knowledge of understanding how your target audience is searching for your offerings allows an SEO best practices firm to shoot for the bullseye where visitors convert, not the outer rings of the target where visitors are "just browsing". Since the early days of SEO, this has not changed.

2) Link Popularity

With the significant weighting of link popularity in Google's algorithm, there are very few sites that can ignore link building. Now crucial to your site's success at major search engines is the continual effort of adding quality, relevant third party links to your site. Trust me, most of your competitors are doing just that.

3) Flexibility To Site Changes

We always make sure to take the temperature of potential clients as to their flexibility to make changes to their site that will make the site more search-engine-friendly. If you are considering SEO, I would suggest you rate your flexibility to site changes on a scale of 1-10. Bottom line, if you are below a 5, you may want to consider Paid Search along with Natural SEO.

SEO Success Factors
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February 27, 2008

Debra Mastaler's Link Building Roundup

Many SEOs contribute extensive rumination to the Link Building confabulation, but pure Link Building dictation carrying with it SEO-like education seems almost an aberration. Wouldn't you agree with that postulation?

Debra Mastaler is one of the few exceptions. Her Link Spiel is a very enjoyable read woven together with excellent Link Building tips. Debra doesn't keep secrets. If something works, she tells you about it. Debra's most recent post at Search Engine Land is an all-encompassing collection of the best Link Building tools available. I recommend it to anybody interested in Link Building.

Debra Mastaler's Link Building Roundup
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December 13, 2007

The Mitchell Report - Baseball's Bad Neighborhood

The path to Cooperstown is beset on all sides by exceptional links. The player must put up link worthy numbers (hits, home runs, RBI's, wins, strike outs, saves . . . ) in his campaign to attain the right links (Golden Gloves, Cy Youngs, MVPs, All-Star games . . .). If he gets enough of those links over a long enough period of time, he just might find himself a HOFer.

Now in Link Building, I have seen many incredible links and many horrible links, but I have never seen a single link that makes or breaks a site in pursuit of SERPS. So here is the question: Is the Mitchell Report such a bad neighborhood that a link from it kills all other links?

I know how Kenesaw Mountain Landis, or even Paul Giamatti's dad would probably answer that question, but I can't wait to see how Bud Selig answers it.

The Mitchell Report - Baseball's Bad Neighborhood
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November 30, 2007

Will Google's New Linking Stance Create Innocent Victims?

Color me at least somewhat concerned about the latest revision to Google's stance on buying and selling of links. Here's the phrase that worries me:

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

Conventional wisdom, until now, has stated that "you can't be penalized due to who links to you; you can be penalized only because of whom you link to." Because otherwise, if you could be penalized based in inbound links, all a competitor would have to do is purchase a ton of "noteworthy" links on your behalf, right?

Isn't this reason for concern?

Will Google's New Linking Stance Create Innocent Victims?
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November 28, 2007

Are You A Canonical Fascist? Stand Tall!

We are sticklers with our clients when it comes to issues of content duplication, sometimes to the point, I think, of being viewed as Canonical Fascists. This can be annoying, much like fascism mostly can be annoying, so it is gratifying to see Mr. Google himself lay out just why such annoyance is worthwhile advocacy, even approaching the subject of PageRank Splitting in the process:

When I did a wget from the Googleplex, I eventually got a 301 from the seomoz.com url to the seomoz.org url. But look at the timestamps: " --09:28:33-- " was the initial fetch and "--09:32:41--" was when the 301 came over the wire. Assuming that I'm reading right, that means almost a four minute delay on getting the 301 from seomoz.com to seomoz.org. Googlebot will wait around for several seconds for a page, but it won't wait four minutes. Instead, the connection will time out and we'll treat those urls as separate (and think that we couldn't fetch the seomoz.com url). So if a bunch of people are linking to your article, and some link to seomoz.org and some link to seomoz.com, that PageRank is getting split between two urls, and the long delay on the 301 response can cause Google to believe that the urls are separate and therefore cause dupe issues.

Hat tip to Randfish for calling forth such manna in his heavily commented comments area.

Are You A Canonical Fascist? Stand Tall!
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November 13, 2007

A Link Building Rap - Why Didn't I Think of Thap?

Link Building is not exactly an attention grabbing party stopper. When civilians query my occupational passion, my rousing explanation scatters the masses like a Harry Chapin song dropped on a dance floor. While most answer a silently ringing phone or feign illness, some remain, trapped by eye contact or some other barricade. Upon conclusion, I transition to them with, "Guess I'm Not Ready for Prime Time. So what do you do?"

Well, thanks to Chuck, AKA the Poetic Prophet, we Link Builders may find some party invitations in the mailbox this holiday season.

I am having a hard time pulling this off on my own though, as any rap sounds like "We Didn't Start the Fire" when I get done with it. Perhaps there is a Link Building Power Ballad out there for me. Pull out the lighters.

So now I link to you
With HTML
Nothing is blocked
Confirm with Rex Swain
So here I am
With HTML
Hoping you'll see
What your link means to me
HTML

Any other suggestions?

A Link Building Rap - Why Didn't I Think of Thap?
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October 24, 2007

PageRank Punches Perennials

[Cue Bob Eucker]

In case you haven't noticed, and judging by the attendance you haven't, the Indians have managed to win a few ball games . . .

. . . and . . .

[Cue 1982]

The Google PageRank for major sites is plummeting like the careers of Soft Cell, Dexys Midnight Runners, and Toni Basil.

Below are some articles discussing Google PageRank drop for the biggies:

Major Sites Taking PageRank Hits
Google Reduces PageRank of Many Sites
Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm?

The drop in PageRank is most likely a result of Google devaluing links pointing to major sites from very large networks. Because of the removal of the value of those links, the sites experience a drop in PageRank. You can call it a penalty, but that does not get at Google's intention or tell you anything about the process. These sites still have PageRank and they still show in results. We are seeing the cumulative result of one piece of the puzzle being altered.

Why is this distinction important? It tells you that you need to vary your links. Google is getting much better at categorizing links and devaluing certain types that exist solely to impact rankings. A huge, old site will survive because so many other links and/or so many other pieces of the puzzle are very strong. However, you will not survive if you are a smaller, younger site that relies on rankings based on an overwhelming number of one type of link pointing to your site.

[Cue Lloyd Bridges]
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

PageRank Punches Perennials
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October 10, 2007

2007 MLB Playoffs Definitely Not Decided by Link Building

Apparently some variable other than Link Building was at play in the divisional playoffs. It's a good thing they decided to go ahead and play the games.

Below are the results from our 2007 MLB predictions.

NLDS
Prediction: Colorado Rockies lose to Philadelphia Phillies
Outcome: Wrong

Prediction: Chicago Cubs beat Arizona Diamondbacks
Outcome: Wrong

ALDS
Prediction: New York Yankees beat Cleveland Indians
Outcome: Wrong – Congrats Doug!!!!!!!!!!!!

Prediction: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim lose to Boston Red Sox
Outcome: Right

Back to the drawing board.

2007 MLB Playoffs Definitely Not Decided by Link Building
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October 08, 2007

Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology

I was quite humbled to see via Link Spiel heute morgen that yours truly unwittingly birthed the SEO Virginia genre long, long ago, circa Summer 2001.

And while they say everything changed after September 11, really the only thing the genre lost in the aftermath was the Really Is convention I thought was authentic at the time. Turns out while I had invented Really completely out of thin air, but not the all-important Is, what we really lost in exactly half of the genre along with our innocence was the comma after the introductory Yes I had faithfully inserted at the time.

SEO Virginia genre history buffs will note Danny Sullivan took less than a year to catch, and correct, his own mistake, the only such self-correction on record. He really is that good.

UPDATE: Reader Brainmuffin e-mails to suggest the genre be officially known as The SEO Virginia Monologues.

Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology
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October 02, 2007

Linking MLB Postseason

You've seen us handicap March Madness with alarmingly mediocre accuracy. Now we give you every series winner of the MLB playoffs. That's right! The same crew that predicted the New York Mets demise in secret is giving away October.

Disclosure: Our MLB picks are based completely on which team's site has more external links pointing to it from pages that contain the exact phrase "World Series" and the number 2007, according to Yahoo. [linkdomain:angels.mlb.com "world series" +2007 -site:mlb.com], for example.

NLDS
Colorado Rockies (1,400) lose to Philadelphia Phillies (3,630)

Chicago Cubs (10,700) beat Arizona Diamondbacks (2,570)

ALDS
New York Yankees (16,400) beat Cleveland Indians (2,330) Sorry Doug! Perhaps an LB campaign for the Tribe?

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (3,810) lose to Boston Red Sox (13,600)

NLCS
Cubs beat Phillies

ALCS
Yankees beat Red Sox

World Series
Yankees beat Cubs

Run to the MLB Postseason Bracket Challenge and reap the benefits. Let us know if you devise a method of picking number of games in each series. Our techies are still working on that one.

Linking MLB Postseason
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October 01, 2007

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles

Frank and Maureen and Thomas, oh my!

The chipped cement still has yet to be cleaned up fully from the wall being torn down at that historical error known as TimesSelect, and already we are seeing NY Times columnists able to commune with readers freely at point of search, at least at the Frank and Maureen level:


As internet titan Alan Meckler noted in his posting of the Times e-mail to subscribers, search results like these were the driving force:

Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free flow of New York Times reporting and analysis around the world. It will enable everyone, everywhere to read our news and opinion - as well as to share it, link to it and comment on it.

Sharing it, linking to it, and commenting on it are the currency of being able to find it in search, and that might be important to a newspaper if, as the latest surveys indicate, 91% of adults use a search engine to find information and 72% get news therefrom.

Ya think?

LATE UPDATE: We just noticed that similar to 1989, another Eastern Block Web Site is about to topple...

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles
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September 28, 2007

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization

In May of this year, Google announced its new Universal Search System which blended traditional search results with news, video, music, images, local and book search engine portals, as well as Blogs on a single page to help users find information with greater ease. Universal Search, a new platform which represents a major shift in information display and retrieval, is causing search engine optimization companies to rethink how they conduct service offerings. So what does this mean for SEO professionals?

For those who conduct Search Engine Optimization services for clients, “Universal Search” is yet another marketing opportunity worth considering. Our industry is already known for dealing with extreme change on a monthly basis, and as a result of being able to adapt to this ever-changing market, this has enabled us to thrive in the industry. With these changes, we must re-invent or enhance our offering to meet the growing changes presented by Google in order to stay ahead of the curve. The emergence of Google’s Universal Search now forces SEO professionals to look outside the box for providing their customers with bleeding edge Internet marketing solutions.

To be able to help our clients rank in the top Google search results, we now have to look towards creating effective SEO strategies that involve RSS, news, videos, audio files, images, local and book search engine portals, and Blogs. With so many new things being displayed in Google’s search results it will be much harder to attain a top ten search engine listings for clients. However, this doesn’t mean that the world is coming to an end for SEO’ers. Nevertheless, it means that we must look towards existing Google search platforms and integrate them into a new strategy called “Universal Search Engine Optimization.”

Universal Search Engine Optimization encompasses traditional SEO (on-site & off-site) methodologies as well as combines Web 2.0 marketing tactics, i.e., RSS, Online Optimized Press Releases, Podcasts, Vodcasts, Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social News sites, Image and Book listing optimization, as well as Local Search, that aids clients in gaining a greater market share within Google’s Universal Search results.

The following Internet marketing activities make up a large part of Universal SEO:

"Definitions in parenthesis taken from Wikipedia"

RSS -- “RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.”

Online Optimized Press Releases -- Tailoring a company’s news in such a manner to gain greater visibility online through optimizing elements within the press release.

Podcasts -- “A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.”

Vodcasts -- "Video podcast (sometimes shortened to vidcast or vodcast) is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand or video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures.”

Blogs -- “Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.”

Social Bookmarking -- “A way for Internet users to store, organize, share, and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share.”

Social News Sites -- News aggregation (social network) sites that gain stories from community members online.

Image Optimization -- Effectively optimizing image file names, alternate text, and the utilization of photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, etc.

Book Listing Optimization -- Optimize Book company Web site pages to enhance placement in search engines for the titles of books for sale.

Local Search Listings -- Create local business listings and optimize Web sites to better perform amongst local search engine (Google Local, Yahoo Local, etc) listings.

To stay competitive in the ever-changing SEO industry, we need to create strategies for our clients that focus on all aspects of Universal Search. I believe this new form of search results presented by Google will open many doors for companies seeking to embrace the evolution of search.

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization
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September 24, 2007

Topix TLD Migration -- Six Months Later

I'm a big fan of Rich Skrenta, co-founder of NewHoo (née Gnuhoo, which eventually took the more recognizable name DMOZ), co-founder of Topix.net, and -- what may be the coolest of all -- author of one of the first known computer viruses, one of the few to be written before the actual term "computer virus" was even coined.

So that's all very cool, but the search-related part of all this was how, six months ago, Topix finally purchased the .com version of its domain and decided to make the move away from .net. The Wall Street Journal, in a mainstream SEO article that actually managed to hit most of the salient points pretty accurately, highlighted Skrenta's anxiety at the global domain change:

Such a simple change, Mr. Skrenta has discovered, could have disastrous short-term results. About 50% of visits to his news site come through a search engine -- and about 90% of the time, that is Google. Some companies say their sites have disappeared from top search results for weeks or months after making address switches, due to quirky rules Google and other search engines have adopted. So the same user who typed "Anna Nicole Smith news" into Google last week and saw Topix.net as a top result might not see it at all after the change to Topix.com.

Like a lot of SEOs, at the time I wondered what was so "wrong" with the time-tested (at least in my experience) method of full-on 301 redirects from the old site to new -- especially since the code would be short and sweet, with each old .net URL going directly to its .com counterpart.

The Topix crew had apparently heard too many domain migration horror stories. On his own blog, Skrenta noted,

...there've been a whole bunch of the seo posts saying essentially "hey, it's easy to move a domain, you just 301 it." Of course I know about 301 and 302 redirects. The problem is that half of these people follow up and say "you'll only be out of the index for a few months". They also ignore the problems that big sites have. A redirect for a small site may work great, but if you have hundreds of thousands of pages or more, there are lots of cases where this caused some form of not-in-the-index-anymore doom.

The number of seo consultants who claim to know how to move a 100k+ page site is much smaller than the number who have actually done it.

That last point is a good one. Conventional wisdom in SEO is frequently spawned by 5% research and 95% extrapolation, which is often the best you can do. The other dirty little secret of SEO is that when you start seeing the same sort of anecdote often enough, it's tempting to put it in the "research" column.

Still, I'd not seen or heard of the type of monumental tragedies that Skrenta was talking about (at least within the last few years), and neither had Danny Sullivan:

I still remain surprised that the 301 is that much of a problem for even a big site. I just haven't heard of that trouble, of half the people saying you'll be out or whatever. If that's what you had been hearing, I can understand your concern. But it seems a pretty straight-forward change, and it shouldn't even be a burden on the server in that you're not actually talking about 100,000 of physical redirects that have to be created and check but a change of one domain to the other.

Ultimately, Topix listened to its heart (or maybe its board) and surprised me by opting for all-out duplication, running identical content on the .net and .com sites, avoiding any sort of redirection plan. So to call it a TLD migration isn't quite accurate. it's more like Topix.net bought a summer house and called it Topix.com. Again, from the WSJ article:

Concerned about that [redirection] strategy, Topix has run its site at both Topix.net and Topix.com for awhile. One danger with that approach is that it is unpredictable; Google will see two versions of the same page and could choose to show the Topix.net page most prominently.

This course would appear to run contrary to the advice even Matt Cutts gave in the article:

Google's Mr. Cutts says the search engine should ultimately understand what is going on when a site changes its Web address. He says the best strategy is to move one section of the site to the new address and see what happens before switching the whole thing.

Skrenta has since left Topix, but the duplicated domain strategy hasn't. Go to any page on the Topix.net site, and you'll see that the exact same page exists on the .com version of the site. Currently, Google shows about 2 million Topix pages indexed on the .net TLD and about 1.2 million on the .com TLD.

So six months ago, had you asked any SEO "expert" about what to do, almost no one would have suggested the present course. But has it hurt anything? Maybe, maybe not. Topix.com has a PR6 home page with about 1.2 million inbound links, while Topix.net has a PR8 home page with almost 7.4 million inbound links. So at this point, in terms of raw accumulated power, consolidating those domains would create one very powerful site.

But would that be better than the current situation? Perhaps not. What about that "unpredictability" the WSJ (and zillions of SEOs) talk about with dupe domains? That even in the best case, Google will pick one page or the other at its own discretion -- and it might not be the one you want? Consider the SERP for [detroit local news]:

A page from Topix.net shows up in spot 8, and a page from Topix.com -- an exact mirror of the .net page -- comes in at spot 9. Not exactly Google choosing one over the other.

But if the pages are identical, why do they have different titles on the SERP? Because Topix.com is heavily linked to from DMOZ, and the .com page shown in this screen shot shows the title used on the Detroit News and Media category of DMOZ. This leads to a question: When Google pulls one page's title and/or meta description from DMOZ, does that override the duplication filter?

Detroit's hardly alone here. Do some searches yourself with a city name and "news" or "local news" and see for yourself.

There's really no moral to this story, other than every time something like this happens, the "guidelines" from engines lose more and more bite. I'm happy that (at least according to my superficial research) Topix is doing well; it's a great idea, smartly executed. But these SERPs are yet another frustrating case of mixed signals from engines.

In my opinion, in a case like this, once Topix owned the .com version, that was all that needed to happen. I don't think the .com even needed to have any content for the problem to be solved. Looking back, my advice would have been to keep all content on Topix.net and immediately set up a 301 from Topix.com to Topix.net -- the exact opposite direction that most people recommended. That way, the authority of Topix.net content would never have been in jeopardy, and any links that mistakenly found their way to Topix.com would immediately transfer link popularity (as well as the user) back to the main (.net) site. They could have even promoted the site as "Topix.com" with no major headaches. Almost no one would care (or even notice) if they were redirected, whether it was type-in traffic or someone that clicked over from a news story.

Topix TLD Migration -- Six Months Later
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September 18, 2007

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989

We knew it was coming and we tried to bake a cake for Maureen Dowd more than a Month ago, yet we are still surprised at how search-friendly they are being in their explanation today:

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

If you have any doubt that this is the SEO equivalent of 1989 scroll a bit further down the page for this money quote:

The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company, is the only major newspaper in the country to charge for access to most of its Web site, which it began doing in 1996. The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue.

Dow Jones and the company that is about to take it over, the News Corporation, are discussing whether to continue that practice, according to people briefed on those talks. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online.

Mr. Murdoch, tear down that wall!

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989
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August 16, 2007

Link Building in the Google Supplemental Aftermath

Having gone to play basketball with Chuck Cunningham, Google Supplemental enjoyed a stint just long enough to present questions that shouldn’t go away. Although we no longer see the GSI tag identifying the doghouse inhabitant, does it not behoove us to believe that, like Tiger, that dog still exists? We must continue to ask ourselves what places a page in the doghouse, and more importantly, what pulls that page out of the doghouse.

From a Link Building perspective, we know a deep page with no links is likely to be tagged. Search engines will consider a page important (read as not supplemental) if it is linked well throughout the site. All pages cannot be linked from every page, obviously, but a site’s structure must both allow and encourage spiders to get deep into a site to deem those pages as important.

Also, an external link building campaign must add links into a site, not just to a site. We have found that applying this slightly adjusted preposition to a site generates a huge impact on that site. Links pointing to deep pages indicate to the search engines that those pages are important, push the spiders farther into the site, and indicate to the search engines that the pages linked from that entry are also important. Deep links are necessary for better indexation as a whole, and they are necessary for greater importance at the page level.

Thankfully, Google took the high road with the disappearing character. I’m not sure there would have been anything to gain from the replacement of Google Supplemental Index with an adorable child or a farm boy from back in Hanover . . . although there still is time for Google to wake up and realize it was all a dream . . .

Link Building in the Google Supplemental Aftermath
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August 15, 2007

NY Times Select(s) Death over Charade

As you probably know, the NY Times has been the most prominent experiment in the paid content-behind-a-firewall-yet-at-least-partially-indexable model, and they are indeed now, finally, announcing via trial ballooning they are no longer going to put their most popular columnists behind that magic curtain one has to pay to sweep aside. After the magic show ends and the same fingers which initially drew the curtain are finished being pointed this way and that, this failed experiment will have had much to do with the principles of Link Building.

A party-goer cloaks her content as Maureen Dowd. Found on Flickr. Copyright 485i

First a great quote that helps explain the decision's relevance to our industry:

But the truth of the matter is that you get far more eyeballs when you're not locking away your content from the general public. The reality of Web 2.0 news is that people a rising tide raises all the ships. If you've got good content, and the Times does, people will link to it. When people read a technology blog like Engadget or a political blog like Daily Kos and find links to articles at the New York Times, everybody wins. Keeping your archives, op-eds, and other content locked up means that blogs and news sites won't link to you, won't give you credit for finding a story first, and won't drive up your traffic.

This lack of inbound links to the content-behind-the-firewall damaged traffic to the site not only through a paucity of visitors being able to click on these links to the columns themselves...:

...the share of traffic that the NY Times sends to NY Times Select has been decreasing over the past year – down by 16% year-on-year in July. With NY Times Select receiving more than two thirds (67%) of its US traffic from NYTimes.com, the decline had an impact with US visits to NY Select down 22% in the past year.

...in having to rely far too heavily on the parent site rather than third party links for traffic, but also in the residual effect such had in these columns' search engine visibility. With few third party inbound links accumulating with each new column, in fact from a deliberate online community decision not to link to content-behind-a-firewall, it is also very difficult for each new column to be judged more relevant than similarly themed columns emerging on the same topic that immediately acquire inbound links in the form of the same online community recommending them. It's no wonder the Times Select had to rely so heavily on clicks from the parent site for visits, as a great many of those visits were likely already subscribers. In that situation it is difficult to grow at the rate of the internet. Try these two simple searches for Frank and Maureen alone: nary a column to be found. Haven't they written quite a few?

I think everyone likely to read this blog knew this would happen. But to say we knew it would happen ultimately is not to say we are not happy to see even giants felled by an algorthm rejected, not select(ed).

NY Times Select(s) Death over Charade
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August 08, 2007

Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)

I get the feeling that most people, even in our industry, using Google Webmaster Tools for themselves or a client aren't scrolling far enough on the Query Stats page to reach this link:

What you get if you click is rather unwieldy, sure, especially if you are dealing with a very large site, but the payoff is simply as large by the same degree. We are beginning to view it more and more here as a kind of matrix for how Google views your site architecturally, especially in light of GSI now having been moved to an undisclosed location. Actually, now that I've said it I'm a bit afraid it, too, will be taken away...

Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)
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June 14, 2007

The Google Supplemental Index Inbound Link(s) Threshold

Wagon Rider Pat Fusco penned a great primer this Month on the issue of Google’s Supplemental Results as they are tied to duplicate content, if you’d like to orient yourself first. Our own Wagoneer Doug offers some points on Getting Out of Hell Free (that is, at least, without requiring direct payments to Google), the last method of which involved examining backlinks, and the fact that a great number of pages in the GSI we have examined across the massive sites we spend time with each day seem to share the commonality of zero inbound links.

We are finding, increasingly, that the distance from zero to one in terms of inbound links to a page seems to be much more of a threshold for exiting the Google Supplemental index than, say, 2 to 100. This is not to say that 1 gets you out, bada bing, but that there is a great more deal of love granted from Google on that single giant step from nil to 1 than there seems to be on the next link steps a page takes out of infancy.

A baby’s first steps are much more exciting and remarkable than the subsequent toddling around the room that follows, and it may be helpful to think of Google watching a page with no links in the same manner.

The Google Supplemental Index Inbound Link(s) Threshold
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April 26, 2007

Rosie O'Donnell's Google Sitelinks Value Meal

An interesting thing happened on Rosie's way out of the door of The View; her sudden, earth-shattering departure caused a quake of an anomaly in the Google result for her name -- namely, the exact same URL appearing twice as a result, both #1 and #2:

What gives? SEO purists might argue that as result #1 is in the Sitelinks formation and Rosie’s site itself links out in the main navigation to her blog, the URL highlighted above exists as both a shortcut that will save users time, per Google’s explanation of the criterion for URLs selected for the formation--

Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

But surely this rare achievement cannot be helped by the fact that Rosie's site itself argues against that very justification with its Title Tag. Aren't those supposed to be quite important, and importantly unique?

Does Rosie's massive influence extend even into the algorithmic sphere?

Rosie O'Donnell's Google Sitelinks Value Meal
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April 10, 2007

Del.icio.us Cloaking Update, More on Google Link Data

Last August, I wrote about how Del.icio.us was cloaking its robots.txt file, showing engines one version (which gave them full access) and showing users another (which appeared to restrict crawling and indexing). In addition, it was showing a set of robots meta tags to users, but not showing them to regular users.

Here's an example of what Del.icio.us was doing back then, at the page meta tag level:

Following is the famous meta tag from the Del.icio.us "SEO" tag page - the meta tag that makes everyone think the page won't be crawled:

But if you set your user-agent to Googlebot, here's what you see:

Since then, Del.icio.us has stopped one of these two techniques. The site still cloaks at the page level -- showing the robots meta tags above to users, but not to engines. But the robots.txt issue (discussed in the first paragraph above) has been changed. Now everyone sees the same version, with all major engines given these crawling parameters:

Allow: /
Disallow: /inbox
Disallow: /subscriptions
Disallow: /network
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /post
Disallow: /login
Disallow: /rss

The /subscriptions and /rss lines above, for those keeping score, are new since August.

Also note that Del.icio.us has used the "nofollow" link attribute for quite a while -- possibly since its inception. As a result, the cloaking matter is moot to many people, because to them, who cares if a page is crawled or indexed if the OBL aren't given any weight anyway?

The other reason I'm writing about Del.icio.us today is due to a comment on a recent post about Google Webmaster linking data. Offhandedly, I mentioned to "remember that Google reports nofollowed links" in its reports of incoming links to specific URLs, and I'm not sure a lot of people realize this.

(Important: Now, the "nofollow" I'm talking about is the link attribute, not the robots meta tag.)

So let me rephrase:

Just because Google sees and reports a link coming into your site does not mean that link does you any good.

As an example, I've looked through many Google link reports and gone to the specific page linking in to our site or our clients' sites. Links such as the following will show up in Google link reports, but according to everything Google has said over the past two years, the links aren't helping you:

• Del.icio.us
• Stumbleupon
• Links from comments and signatures from any blog/forum site that utilizes "nofollow"
• etc.

So again, don't take those linking reports at face value, at least to the point of making an assumption that all links are beneficial, even when the site they come from is highly respected and authoritative. Certainly, they're important for the potential traffic, but not for building your site's link popularity.

Del.icio.us Cloaking Update, More on Google Link Data
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March 29, 2007

A Tale of Two Link Counts

The following doesn't tell the whole story, but I think it's an important chapter. The image at right shows a section of an inbound link report from Google Webmaster Tools.

This is the "external" link report -- that is, measuring links from outside domains. I've highlighted the inbound link counts for two deep URLs. On first glance, you might expect the first one (638) to be a dominant force in driving traffic, but you'd be wrong. Here's some deeper data on both URLs:

URL 1: 638 inbound links

• The 638 inbound links represent 14 total domains. (For the purposes of this analysis, I'm saying that foo.blogspot.com and bar.blogspot.com are distinct domains.)
  
• 615 of the links come from an ROS (run-of-site) blogroll link on one personal blog (blogspot.com).
  
• Of the remaining 23 links, 14 come from eight other blogs at sites like blogspot, livejournal, or blogsome.
  
• Of the remaining nine links, four come from social bookmarking-type sites, most of which "nofollow" their outbound links. (Remember that Google reports nofollowed links too.)
  
• The final five links come from a total of three separate blogs on unique domains.

When you break down the links, there's not a great deal of substance there. The page is a poor traffic driver, although it's premature to blame that entirely on the quality of the incoming links.

URL 2: 38 inbound links

• The 38 inbound links represent 33 unique domains.
  
• Only one domain in the list of 33 is easily identifiable as a blog host (livejournal.com)
  
• About half of the remaining 32 are low-quality and/or scrapers.
  
• The other half of the remaining 32 are decent sites whose foci match the point of the page on my client's site.

Week in, week out, URL 2 is the site's top entry page, outperforming even the home page. Again -- not necessarily because of the quality of the links. But this reinforces the point that quantity of inbound links cannot make up for lack of quality.

A Tale of Two Link Counts
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February 05, 2007

Google Unleashes THE Mother Lode of Link Information

Once upon an evening dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of inbound links,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some feed gently rapping, rapping at my inbox door.
"'Tis some spam," I muttered, "tapping at my inbox door -
Only this, and nothing more."

Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my screen surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the links unknown -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the Googlers keep unknown -
Nameless here for evermore.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
Yea but the silence was broken, friends, the feed gave a token,
Though the only words there spoken were the whispered words, "Webmaster Central?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the words, "Webmaster Central!" -
Merely this, but something more.

The silken sad uncertain rustling of each link: operator no longer
Need fill me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis the mother lode unloaded at my inbox door -
The mother lode entreating entrance at my inbox door; -
This it is, and so much more."

Google Unleashes THE Mother Lode of Link Information
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January 21, 2007

One text link? Is that all it takes for Page 1?

I was looking at rankings for auto terms and noticed this SERP for [2007 Ford Explorer]. Notice the site in the #4 spot, 2007fordexplorer.com:

Curious to see whether that site was an official Ford site or just an enthusiast site, I clicked over. It's neither, apparently. Just the words "2007 Ford Explorer" on an otherwise blank page.

So how can it rank for that phrase with just the domain name and that title and simple body copy going for it? Must have a ton of high-quality inbound links, right? Not exactly.

A few things of note here. First, slightly off-topic, is that Yahoo is clearly reading CSS files, just as a few people are discussing about Google right now. But that's not important.

What's impressive is that the page (according to Yahoo, at least, which is about the most accurate source) is that it has just one external link pointing to it. Clicking the Inlinks (1) link shows us the page that's linking in:

And on that page? You probably guessed it - nothing but anchor text to various other pages with only the year and model name (or other similarly shallow text) as body copy:

And this page full of text links has only one incoming link - from its root page. As far back as I cared to search, nothing but garbage links. Maybe I've been working too hard...

One text link? Is that all it takes for Page 1?
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November 15, 2006

Are You Giving Away Links You Don't Know About?

Recently, I was looking through a client's list of indexed pages at Yahoo Site Explorer. (Get ready for another "All Hail YSE" post.) I noticed what looked like a lot of junk pages, and I found a site vulnerability that many sites could potentially have.

Link spammers had been attacking the site with an interesting attempt to get more links to their sites:

1. Use the site's internal search feature to create a search results page that "searched" for links to the spam sites
   
2. Get my client's site to output a search results page that links to the spam site
   
3. Link to that spammy search results page to get it crawled and indexed

If none of that makes sense, here's an example. Let's say the spammers were trying to create links to Apple Computer (they weren't). They go to your internal search box and type the following:

...and then hit Submit.

Their goal is that your site outputs a search results page that includes text showing the search term. For example, this is what they want the search results page to say:

Search Results for iPod stuff

Next, they link to the page from their own site (or some site in their ugly network) and it gets crawled and indexed. And voila - they have a new link pointing to their site - from yours.

The spammer's plot failed for several reasons - one of which is that my client's site does not output a heading (or any text) that lists the search term.

But many sites do. So be careful and make sure that if you have a internal search engine that outputs unique search URLs that contain the query string, that someone's not indexing more of your site than you'd like.

Based on the client's unique needs, fixing the issue isn't as easy as you might think. We're looking for ways to ensure that this doesn't happen in the future, including some creative uses of robots.txt, changing form methods, and some contact with Yahoo.

Are You Giving Away Links You Don't Know About?
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October 06, 2006

Paid Directories for the Quick 6

I had a conversation today with a newer link building client. He questioned everything, which is an excellent way to make sure you are getting the most from a campaign. It was a long call, indeed, but a worthwhile reminder that even the steps that are most often taken for granted occur for a specific purpose.

One of the questions had to do with the order of events in the external linking phase.

Why does paid directory submission come before competitor linking? If these competitors are performing so well, why not go straight at their links?

Great question. Let's look at this in terms of a football game. You can go deep on the first play of the game to get on the scoreboard, but that strategy alone will not win a game. Especially for a site that does not have many external links, paid directories represent the only trustworthy quick 6. Trustworthy because they are human edited, and quick in terms of being added and crawled. Most other external links should involve correspondence prior to addition. Most likely, these will be from sites not crawled as often as the major directories, and not built to be as quickly and deeply indexed as those directories.

In the course of the game, these links will prove just as valuable, but it will take a much longer time to get that value. Get that quick 6, and then settle into the running game.

Paid Directories for the Quick 6
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September 28, 2006

The Site Map and Simple Link Building Concepts

The site map is the most basic way you can show a list of urls to the search engines, but that does not mean that your site map has to be basic. Below is a very simple approach for applying link building concepts to your site map.

• Add Link Text. It’s not good enough to show urls to the search engines. Tell search engines about those urls by placing each page’s most important keyword phrase in the link.

• Subtract Descriptions. Do not waste time and space with descriptions. Get rid of them so robots can focus solely on links.

• Divide Site Map into a Series of Site Maps. Spiders will only crawl so many links per page. A series of sitemaps allows you to (a) include all unique pages that you want indexed, and (2) increases the likelihood that each page will be crawled. Use as many pages as necessary.

• Multiply Sitemap Links. Depending on the number of site map pages, either link to all in your footer or just the main site map page. If you choose the latter, link to all site maps at the top of all site map pages.

Easier said than done, of course, but well worth it.

The Site Map and Simple Link Building Concepts
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August 30, 2006

Del.icio.us Leaves a Bad Taste

If this has been covered already, let me know. If so, I'll graciously provide attribution.

"Social tagging," the process of users sharing bookmarks and feedback about specific sites and pages, is near the top of the list of cornfields on which SEOs are trying to erect slick new subdivisions.

As social media sites have gained popularity, many SEOs have lamented the fact that Del.icio.us uses the robots meta tags nofollow, noindex, and noarchive as a way to avoid spam. If links don't pass popularity, then they won't be abused, so the theory goes. (Don't confuse this nofollow with link attribute nofollow.)

This has left many people wondering why a query for [site:del.icio.us] shows about a million and a half pages indexed, and why the site ranks for queries like [seo] and [popular]. Some people believe it's due to incoming linkage and Google's tendency to show URLs in results even though Google has been told not to index them.

For better or worse, the truth is much simpler. Google was never told to not index Del.icio.us pages. YOU were told that GOOGLE was told not to index pages. But Google? They never got the message, because Del.icio.us has been using user-agent delivery (yes, cloaking) to tell you one thing, and engines another.

Following is the famous meta tag from the Del.icio.us "SEO" tag page - the meta tag that makes everyone think the page won't be crawled:

But if you set your user-agent to Googlebot, here's what you see:

Where did those highlights go? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.

The robots.txt file for the site is no different. Here's the file for standard user-agents:

I left some extra whitespace in the screen shot to show that nothing follows the code lines.

User-agents Googlebot and Slurp each get additional lines in their versions of robots.txt. Following is what Google sees:

What annoys me about this process is not that Del.icio.us is trying to put one over on Google or Yahoo. (The latter would be especially odd, given that Yahoo owns Del.icio.us), but that Del.icio.us is trying to put one over on YOU. Certainly Google and Yahoo know what's going on. Millions of pages don't magically appear when valid noindex tags are in place. Del.icio.us wants to be a popular destination, wants its search engine rankings, but it doesn't want all the riff-raff that popularity brings. Old-school cloaking that a 10-year-old could detect isn't a way to achieve that.

Del.icio.us Leaves a Bad Taste
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August 21, 2006

More Link Exchange Madness?

If I am missing something here, please call foul.

But if you're trying to get bloggers to join your ad network by offering front page blogroll links to their blogs from your outrageously popular and influential domain, should you then publicize it to the point that an algorthm might get wise to the pay-for-link placements? Wouldn't you at once be undoing what you are trying to do?

I have a hard time interpretting Jeff Burkett, head of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive's sales development team, any other way:

"Some bloggers are open to putting advertising on their site, so why not strike deals with them and help them do that," he wrote last week on his own blog, "Media Landscaping." "The revenue gets shared (in the bloggers favor of course) and we throw in one additional component...A link to their blog on the homepage of washingtonpost.com."

Unless Jeff is planing on throwing in the free condoms, he might be wise to rethink his pitch lest he sully the Washington Post link juice. From the mountainview top at Google, via Matt Cutts himself:

Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.

Scroll all the way down to the bottom and have a gander. At least the folly is honest.

UPDATE: No rel="nofollow�? as of 9pm EST this evening...

UPDATE II: Ominpresent Google is on the scene, and they are trotting out a javascript link blinding precept surprising quite a few in the forums...

More Link Exchange Madness?
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August 17, 2006

Google Says Index This!

Recently, the Wagon has noticed a new option at play over at Google Sitemaps. Next time you're in the area, click on Preferred Domain.

Google is giving you the opportunity to choose whether you would like your urls listed with or without the www (http://www.yoursite.com or http://yoursite.com). Google follows this opportunity with the following note:

Once you specify your preference here, it may take some time for changes to be reflected in our index. While Google doesn't guarantee that we'll show your URLs in the form that you prefer, we will use your choice as a suggestion to improve our indexing.

We think this is important for a few simple reasons. Google is trying to improve its index of your site, and they are allowing you to help them. Further, Google is acknowledging that the www vs. non-www indexation issue is causing duplicate pages to appear in its index. And finally, and most importantly, Google is telling us that sites can improve their indexation by clearing up the www. vs. non-www issue.

Click over there to learn how to 301 redirect non-www pages to their www equivalent, or vice versa.

Google Says Index This!
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June 22, 2006

Anatomy of a Blog/Newsletter Archive

Archive, Archive, Archive.

The following transcript is loosely based on many client conversations. For our purpose, we will join this conversation in progress, and leave it in much the same fashion.

Consultant: Oh, so you have a newsletter. Do you archive it?

Client: No. Should we?

Consultant: Absolutely!

Client: Well, we’ll see

. . . And Scene.

The recommendation repeatedly . . . dare I say ritualistically . . . receives reluctance. Why, man, Why? If you go to the trouble of creating fresh, useful content for a targeted audience, why not show it to the search engines? How different is that from a blog? Not too many people argue that blogs do not have search engine value, including newsletter pushers not yet ready to be called bloggers. What they do not realize is that the blog structure is flexible enough for the newsletter pusher to plug in newsletter content postfactum, thus protecting his or her newsletter status.

Enter Jill Whalen. You would be hard pressed to find someone that balances search engine value and user focus better than Jill. When she makes a move, you can guarantee that both parties are justly considered. Jill Whalen has always archived her newsletter, but she did not always archive it like this.

In adopting the blog structure, Jill Whalen has made it easier for humans to peruse her archive, for search engines to index her archive, and for me to advocate such archives. Jill's linking structure is perfect. She drives traffic and correspondence to the archive by linking to the archived location from that article in the newsletter. The article will have a temporary home on the archive main page, as well as permanent homes on its own page, within the monthly and other relevant categories.

With the release of each new issue, the archive will show search engines new pages of fresh, relevant content. And Google loves new content, but Google also loves old content when there is proof of new content, so the older articles will continue to gain steam as new issues are added.

And look at those links, a completely different navigational structure than the main site. Just one link on the left. Jill Whalen is completely emphasizing conversion. And on the other side, she points out the previous issues, beneficial to human and search engine alike. Then she links (with keywords, of course) to her most important sections of the main site. As for the body, every article links to itself in the title, then all categories under which it could be found at the end of the article.

More pages, more fresh content, and more keyword-rich links equate to more relevance, more importance, and better indexability. If you will not do if for me, please do it for Jill Whalen.

Anatomy of a Blog/Newsletter Archive
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June 15, 2006

User Vs. Search Engine Vs. Perception?

We have a client that has developed a beautiful interface. What I enjoy most about it is that it seems so different from other directory structures. You can tell that it was created absolutely with the user in mind. I won’t mention the site because this sounds way too much like a commercial already. Stay tuned because there is a story here, I promise.

We had the typical battle: molding this site into something search engines could crawl and credit properly without detracting from its user-centric interface. When this battle was reasonably conquered, we began searching for external links. The Link Building campaign has received a quite favorable response – until this morning that is.

A free, minor (but respected) directory rejected the site on the grounds that it was “full of hidden spam.�? After some shock and some correspondence, we were able to clear up the misunderstanding - mouseover text spawned by JavaScript was assumed to be "stuffing" - but how common is the misunderstanding? We have received very few rejections and even fewer explanations for rejection. How many sites incorrectly categorized our client as a spammer and deleted our request/submission?

A site’s need for external acceptance has increased our dilemma to a 3-pronged battle. In addition to finding the balance between user and search engine, a site must also appease perception. So a site must be geared towards the user, easily digested by the search engines, and accepted by the user who is ignoring usage and attempting to view the site as a search engine.

As SEOs, we understand and abide by webmaster guidelines, but as link builders, we are further subject to that which might be perceived as an infraction of those guidelines. When link candidates are searching for reasons not to link in a matter of seconds, the only thing that matters is perception. If we know the stimulus of their false perception and judge it as reasonable, we must consider making a change even though we know better as best practices SEOs.

Is that what you had in mind, Mr. Page?

User Vs. Search Engine Vs. Perception?
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June 06, 2006

Link Request Craziness

We get a lot of emails from others asking us to link to their site or suggesting a reciprocal link exchange. What I can’t figure out, though, is how dumb some of these folks are.

Now I don’t mean they’re dumb because they are working on adding new links to their site. That's actually pretty smart. What I’m referring to can be found in the first line of many of their emails.

Can someone please explain why some people think that all email addresses use a person’s name first followed by @ and the domain? How else would the link request emails we receive start out with some of these brilliant salutations:

Hi Site-Contact!

Hello Accounting,

Just a tip to anyone out there sending out link requests to affinity sites. Don't buy a list or pay for an automated program (spam) to send out emails to potential link partners. Actually spend some time finding true affinity sites, get the person’s name that you are sending your email to, and send a personalized email!

Do you really think someone is going to read an email that starts with:

Dear Services,

Link Request Craziness
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May 11, 2006

Who’s Winning American Idol?

Our friends at WordTracker tell us that 68,324 searches will occur today for [American Idol]. So who is winning American Idol? The answer . . . when we return from break.

OK, Fox has #1. No surprise. But look at #2. Call it David vs. Goliath. Instead of the network behemoth occupying the #2 spot (there is no reason it shouldn’t) or some other serp behemoth (Wiki and IMDB are further down the page), true American Idol William Hung is hanging right there! This makes me proud to be someone who spends way too much time analyzing Google Results.

So what forces are at play?
A. The American Dream.
B. Link Building.
C. Irony.
D. All of the Above

Yes, William Hung! She Bangs! She Bangs!

Speedwagon Out

Who’s Winning American Idol?
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May 04, 2006

Silent Bob Carries a Big Stick

When Kevin Smith releases a movie, his audience knows about it. In fact, when Kevin Smith does anything, his audience knows about it.

A Kevin Smith movie will not have Titanic advertising, and it will not have Titanic returns, but there will always be Kevin Smith movies. His movies make more than enough money with limited enough advertising to afford him auteur status, a rare condition these days.

Kevin Smith's online presence is largely responsible for the life he leads, and the films he makes. He does not have to rely on offline expenditures to sell tickets. His audience hears about upcoming work from him online. Below are just some of the ways Silent Bob is growing his audience for Clerks II.

• The Main Site
• The News Site
• The Message Board
• The Blog
• The Movie Site
• The Merchandising
• MySpace
• Wiki

The Clerks II site was purchased in 2004, and the movie is not due out until this August. I doubt Kevin Smith is worried about the sandbox effect.

Silent Bob Carries a Big Stick
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April 20, 2006

Link Building in Film

If we paid better attention to the great filmmakers, we would have a much better name for Link Building. Wouldn't your response rate improve dramatically if you were in the Homage (pronounce O-mäj for instant film snob status) Building business?

Great filmmakers link out whenever the opportunity presents itself. Scorsese’s best include La Motta mumbling the contender speech from On the Waterfront, and this visual link from Tommy D to the original film outlaw in 1903’s The Great Train Robbery. The image does not appear within a scene, but on its own following a scene, just like the original.

You have also seen that link in the intro to Tombstone.

Everybody links to Hitchcock. Imagine what his PageRank would be if he hadn’t been penalized for duplicate content following Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake. De Palma has made a brilliant career of linking to Hitchcock, but his best link – and the best link to the Odessa Steps sequence – comes from The Untouchables.

Terror in the Aisles is 84 minutes of links to the best horror films, proving that a links page can be worthwhile as long as it is focused and/or narrated by Donald Pleasance.

We link for the same reasons that filmmakers link. We increase meaning of a given subject by linking it to another known source. Contrarily, we can send traffic to a lesser-known source that we feel is worthy of greater attention. Like filmmakers (and search engines), we think in terms of links. We express ourselves in terms of what has already been expressed. And audiences (human and search engine) identify us based on to whom we link, so we impact our rank based on such choices.

Choose links wisely, but do link!

Link Building in Film
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March 30, 2006

Wagon's Final Date With March Madness 2006

After a humbling 2-2 last week, the Wagon has decided to pull the plug on the Texas Update to the March Madness Algorithm. To those who bet the house based on our predictions, we will soon be opening shelters throughout the country.. Already being called the George Mason Update, our most recent dance number is guaranteed to finally get it right! That being said, please gamble at your own risk.

The March Madness Algorithm now takes the number of Yahoo backlinks pointing to the Athletic Department and divides that by student enrollment.

LSU (21,100 links / 30,564 students = .687) loses to UCLA (36,400 links / 38,000 students = .958)

George Mason (201 links / 29,728 students = .007) loses to Florida (73,400 links / 49,693 students = 1.48)

... and then Florida takes the 2006 NCAA National Championship!

This will be the last March Madness post until next season, unless of course we ace the finals, in which case you can expect to see a press release, merchandising, and a low budget film starring C. Thomas Howell.

Wagon's Final Date With March Madness 2006
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March 23, 2006

NCAA March Madness 2006: Sweet 16

The Wagon has not received much feedback on the March Madness Algorithm, which can only mean it is producing relevant results. The only man bold enough to place his Keds in front of the Wagon was Ray Brower, who suggested we base our predictions on links to the athletic department as opposed to the school. Thanks, Ray. We love the idea!

So if you want to win deep in the tournament, you better have some deep links (or a separate site with lots of links). Here goes nothing, and I truly mean nothing.

Tonight's projected NCAA winners based on links pointing to their athletic department:

#4 LSU (257 links) loses to #1 Duke (945 links)

#13 Bradley (109 links) loses to #1 Memphis (591 links)

#6 West Virginia (4,760 links) beats #2 Texas (948 links)

#3 Gonzaga (385 links) loses to #2 UCLA (1290 links)

NCAA March Madness 2006: Sweet 16
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March 20, 2006

NCAA March Madness 2006 Proves an Untamable Shrew

The belief that link popularity conquers all just might have some kinks. We'll take our 12-4, but the Wagon was looking forward to the sweet satisfaction of 16-0 and the distinction of being the first blog added to the Vegas Black Book. In sooth, our March Madness prognostications were probably on par with the alleged savant 3 cubicles to your left.

Below are results from Friday's Round 1 games:

RIGHT - #15 DAVIDSON (1,820 links) loses to #2 OHIO STATE (8,310 links)

WRONG - #14 NORTHWESTERN STATE (452 links) loses to #3 IOWA (10,200 links)

RIGHT - #9 WISCONSIN (28,000 links) beats #8 ARIZONA (9,910 links)

RIGHT - #9 BUCKNELL (1,850 links) beats #8 ARKANSAS (1,470 links)

RIGHT - #10 NORTHERN IOWA (2,880 links) loses to #7 GEORGETOWN (3,440 links)

RIGHT - #11 SOUTHERN ILLINOIS (530 links) loses to #6 WEST VIRGINIA (5,540 links)

RIGHT - #16 MONMOUTH (649 links) loses to #1 VILLANOVA (2,340 links)

RIGHT - #16 ORAL ROBERTS (351 links) loses to #1 MEMPHIS (1,850 links)

RIGHT - #12 KENT STATE (4,060 links) loses to #5 PITTSBURGH (6,820 links)

WRONG - #11 GEORGE MASON (3,590 links) loses to #6 MICHIGAN STATE (8,480 links)

WRONG - #10 NORTH CAROLINA STATE (8,430 links) loses to #7 CALIFORNIA (15,700 links)

RIGHT - #16 ALBANY (2,220 links) loses to #1 CONNECTICUT (5,870 links)

RIGHT - #14 MURRAY STATE (1,110 links) loses to #3 NORTH CAROLINA (21,400 links)

WRONG - #13 BRADLEY (841 links) loses to #4 KANSAS (4,540 links)

RIGHT - #15 PENN (9,320 links) loses to #2 TEXAS (29,700 links)

RIGHT - #9 UAB (654 links) loses to #8 KENTUCKY (3,850 links)

We are planning to update the March Madness Algorithm prior to Thursday's games, so please share feedback and suggestions.

NCAA March Madness 2006 Proves an Untamable Shrew
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March 17, 2006

NCAA March Madness 2006 Decided by Link Popularity

Many people assume they will outrank competition for important keyword phrases if they have the most links. Link Building involves so many other variables. This assumption is as arbitrary as today’s NCAA tourney matchups being decided by number of links.

Well the Wagon is all for arbitration, so here are today’s guaranteed winners based solely on Google backlinks. Guaranteed! 2006 March Madness has been tamed!

#15 DAVIDSON (1,820 links) loses to #2 OHIO STATE (8,310 links)

#14 NORTHWESTERN STATE (452 links) loses to #3 IOWA (10,200 links)

#9 WISCONSIN (28,000 links) beats #8 ARIZONA (9,910 links)

#9 BUCKNELL (1,850 links) beats #8 ARKANSAS (1,470 links)

#10 NORTHERN IOWA (2,880 links) loses to #7 GEORGETOWN (3,440 links)

#11 SOUTHERN ILLINOIS (530 links) loses to #6 WEST VIRGINIA (5,540 links)

#16 MONMOUTH (649 links) loses to #1 VILLANOVA (2,340 links)

#16 ORAL ROBERTS (351 links) loses to #1 MEMPHIS (1,850 links)

#12 KENT STATE (4,060 links) loses to #5 PITTSBURGH (6,820 links)

#11 GEORGE MASON (3,590 links) loses to #6 MICHIGAN STATE (8,480 links)

#10 NORTH CAROLINA STATE (8,430 links) loses to #7 CALIFORNIA (15,700 links)

#16 ALBANY (2,220 links) loses to #1 CONNECTICUT (5,870 links)

#14 MURRAY STATE (1,110 links) loses to #3 NORTH CAROLINA (21,400 links)

#13 BRADLEY (841 links) loses to #4 KANSAS (4,540 links)

#15 PENN (9,320 links) loses to #2 TEXAS (29,700 links)

#9 UAB (654 links) loses to #8 KENTUCKY (3,850 links)

NCAA March Madness 2006 Decided by Link Popularity
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March 09, 2006

If the Brady Bunch Were a Links Page . . .

Sha na na na na na na na na, Sha na na na na.

If the Brady Bunch were a links page, how would you know the Bradys had jumped the shark?

It is necessary for Link Building to be about as time consuming (and exciting) as trying to set the teeter-totter record. After all, you cannot judge a room by its beaded entrance. You have to check out each site, but if you are going to be efficient, you must train your eyes to easily catch the least groovy characteristics of a links page and move on.

So here are some Link Building thoughts inspired by the one day when the lady met this fellow.

• Don't waste time looking for Tiger if you go to his site and get a 404. Just find a new dog.

• If Greg invites you to his room but takes you to his dad's den, assume the worst. A redirected links page is a bad sign!

• Vacations bring bad luck. If you see links to travel sites (and you are not in the travel industry) avoid it like the Brady Tiki.

• Just one Cousin Oliver link can kill. A page linking to a gambling, payday loan, or adult site bears the kiss of death.

• If a site looks like it took a football to the nose, assume it is not being updated or damaged goods, at best.

• A Marcia Marcia Marcia links page has the same keywords repeated too often and is considered Spam Spam Spam.

• Like a bathroom occupied by 6 kids, you never get your due and proper on a page with too many links. Just go somewhere else.

• It looks like somebody stole the playbook when you start to see the same links section duplicated on many different sites. Don't get involved, unless of course it was DMOZ's playbook.

• If you cannot easily find a site's contact information, consider him George Glass.

• Paying someone to date your sister is wrong, unless that person is Yahoo or an established, relevant directory offering link text.

You see kids, a gift is only a good thing when the giver has given thought to that gift. But when the gift the giver gives gives grief, then that gift should give the givee regrets.

If the Brady Bunch Were a Links Page . . .
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February 23, 2006

Join Bode Miller in a Temporary Relocation

Much like his ability to dominate Alpine Skiing, Bode’s website has been temporarily redirected. Bode may prompt you to join him at www.joinbode.com, but this is not where you will find him.

Although it is not the intention of the 302, big brands use it to combine catchy-name appeal with trusted-site value.

Google shows an attractive first result for [Join Bode] with “join bode�? throughout, and because Google believes the redirection is temporary, it shows the Join Bode domain name. Click on the result and you are taken to a page at Nike boasting a Nike-like PageRank.

Now Nike could not have predicted Bode’s performance -- of course, that did not stop them from signing him, designing his site, shooting his commercials, and airing them – but let’s pretend that Bode Miller’s Torino performance was good enough to garner more than 40 searches per day for [Join Bode]. Nike and Bode would still just have one good result for one keyword phrase, and way too much room for stolen traffic. If they used the actual Join Bode domain then discussed and linked to it at Nike, they could have had the top 4 results for [Join Bode], and much better results for other Bode searches. Instead, they have a no link presence and no Nike mention. If you think flashing a web address constitutes search engine marketing, see Erik’s post about domain deafness.

If Nike did not want to concern themselves with search results, they should have hidden them like NBC does for [Bode Miller], which grabs 1400 searches per day. The second result is only slightly visible above the fold because the first result has no description.

Fortunately for Nike, all will blame Join Bode’s sub-par performance on Bode.

Join Bode Miller in a Temporary Relocation
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February 16, 2006

Atop Brokeback Mountain

If you need help inserting a joke here, . . .

I must admit that I devised the linking structure for IMDb (that should be read as “I have absolutely nothing to do with IMDb, but I love the site�?). The site is incredibly helpful to its visitors in terms of quickly tracking down important (some people might read that as “trivial�?) information about your favorite movies, and its linking structure is more than helpful when it comes to ranking well in search engines.

It is no surprise who is atop [Brokeback Mountain], a phrase currently searched for more than 27,000 times per day. IMDb adds movies to its database as quickly as possible, and thereafter generates internal links from all involved parties ranging from star to assistant dialect coach. Each link -about 200 for Brokeback, which is not a large budget movie by an means- includes the movie name in its text and comes from a page filled with unique content. If that were not enough, other features like Movie News, Now Playing, and Awards keep the content and internal links coming.

2 Thoughts in closing:

Your internal linking structure has the power to propel your Link Building campaign.

and

IMDb, I'll never quit you!

Atop Brokeback Mountain
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January 19, 2006

Link Building is Getting Easier

It has always been my practice to make outrageous claims like I invented the question mark, so it is against character that I do not take credit for improving results in Link Building campaigns. While recent times have seen great improvements, the two greatest factors leading to improvements are completely external and available to all link builders.

The spams getting spammier, and Leon’s getting larger.

I have stated before that the open rate for link requests is very low because people delete anything they think might be spam. Well, spam is getting much worse and much more obvious every day. Open rates are improving because a well-written link request is looking less and less like spam.

The Seed of Jagger

Similarly, a good link is looking less and less like spam. Google is getting much better at devaluing bad links, which leads to increased value for every good link. Your relevant links, internal and external, are gaining value.

Stay the Course, Link Builders!

Link Building is Getting Easier
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January 05, 2006

'Tis the Season for Link Building

Like my friend Erik, I have developed an allergy to the ubiquitous 2005 retrospectives and 2006 prognostications. The clichéd trend reminds me of college years past when party discourse mandated Swingers statements about being so money, baby, and not even knowing it, at a clip of 7.1 per conversation. Escaping this game might have been the only reason I felt compelled to graduate. One might wonder what I would have become without this venomous dose of motivation.

Obviously, we all hope for our new year's post to be picked up like a Jean Shepherd movie, but what about other holidays? Can we not manipulate them for blog links, as well? We can at least try. Below are just a few suggestions for 2006 Holiday manipulation:

• Ask Matt Cutts to be your Valentine.
  
• Give updates for an industry conference taking place at a pub on St. Patrick's Day.
  
• Claim your blog's success is due to automatic search engine submission and scraped content on April 1st.
  
• State the reasons why a search engine ground hog might not see a site's shadow.
  
• Post a Declaration of Independence from typical blogaucracy.
  
• List the Top Ten Halloween Costumes for spammers.
  
• End a post with Happy Festivus!
  

'Tis the Season for Link Building
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December 23, 2005

Avoid Link Candidates that Stop Short!

It’s not acceptable for someone to stop short with your wife, and it shouldn’t be acceptable for someone to stop short with your link!

Most times, you can predict that a link candidate will stop short. If other links on the page indicate a predilection for the stop short, get out of the car! Unless you feel that the stop short link will directly send traffic, save your time for link candidates that will give you full value for your link.

When link candidates stop short, their links do not impact your search engine relevance. Below are the most common stop short tactics:

• seoblog.intrapromote.com – A url link only tells the search engines that your site is about the url.

• seoblog.intrapromote.com/ – If links are not clickable, they do not tell search engines anything.

• SEO Speedwagon Blog – If you see JavaScript when you mouse over a link, assume search engines will never see it.

• Click here – Your site is not about click here, so avoid sites that tell search engines your site is about click here.

Your time is your greatest commodity. Devote it to the quality sites that also offer clean text links.

Happy Festivus!

Avoid Link Candidates that Stop Short!
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December 15, 2005

Directory Submission: The Wagon Way

Since the birth of the link building craze, opportunists have responded with the creation/inundation of directories awaiting your submission fee. Pay me to “review�? your site, and I will add it to my directory if I “approve�? it. Not much different than Dr. Lecter’s quid pro quo tactics or your average reciprocal linking arrangement, methinks.

You can easily get lost while searching for directories to which you should submit, so stick to the path created by various blogs and forums. Also, largely since Jagger’s birth, search engines strive to assess value to directory links in a fashion similar to how they treat reciprocal links. Value still resides in links from human-edited, focused directories, but the opposite types are bereft of value, even harmful in extreme cases.

What should you pay for directory links? Below is the short answer:

• $299 – Yahoo is a must.

• $40 – Only if substantial traffic is associated. Joeant, for example.

• $10 - $20 – Only if focused, human-edited, and offering text links. Yeandi, for example.

• Free – Only if focused, etc., and RESPONSIVE. DMOZ is an exception, Illumirate is an example.

Directories are essential, but guard your time and wallet closely.

Directory Submission: The Wagon Way
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December 07, 2005

Yahoo Site Explorer Enhances Backlink Feature

The Yahoo Search Blog announced enhancements to the Yahoo Site Explorer yesterday that make your backlink searches more efficient than ever.

The interface now allows you to filter your backlinks (Yahoo calls them "inlinks") so that your own domain does not appear in the list:

• Select Except from this domain to filter out your top-level domain, along with all subdomains on that domain.
• Select Except from this subdomain to filter out only your specific subdomain. For example, if you have a blog on the blogspot.com domain, selecting this option will show links from other blogspot.com blogs, but not your own.

Like always, Yahoo shows incoming links even if they contain the "nofollow" attribute. This underscores the point that the nofollow link attribute is quite different from the nofollow command in the robots meta tag. Links that contain the nofollow attribute are recognized as links and crawled just as any other link. They're simply not offering an authoritative "vote" that might help the recipient site's rankings.

Yahoo Site Explorer Enhances Backlink Feature
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December 02, 2005

Respond to All Link Building Responses

Even if it is just a thank you for responding to your link request, respond to all responses. It is a simple, but important link building rule.

As I have often discussed in link building articles, the most important thing to establish is that you are not a machine. A personalized response shows you are a human who is really interested in a link, and that is what leads a link candidate to consider your site. Furthermore, not responding as a human has very serious repercussions. You could easily be mistaken for a spammer, and your link candidates aggressively hate spammers.

We have found that a link candidate responds to your request for only a few different reasons:

• The person hates you(r link request). Respond very briefly with an apology. As you never want to contact someone not interested in link requests, this is a very important response.
• The person loves you(r link request). Respond with a thank you. Let them know you appreciate their consideration.
• The person has questions. This is an excellent opportunity to tell somebody more about the site in extended fashion. You certainly do not have this luxury in your initial request.
• The person has objections. If the objection is valid, thank them for considering the site. If the objection stems from a misconception, politely attempt to clarify.

Any correspondence is helpful to your site. At a minimum, you are introducing your site to a new set of eyes. At maximum, you are helping to create a link with a very personal touch, which search engines love to see. Whatever the reason for the response, indulge the candidate who sent it.

Respond to All Link Building Responses
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November 28, 2005

Comment Spam the Wagon? ITSOK with Me

Maintaining the SEO Speedwagon is not quite as glamorous a task as, say, Alfred might have with the Batmobile, or Q with his fleet of Aston Martins. In fact, our version of machine guns hiding behind headlamps is a simple button marked "Ban IP Address," which we reserve for commenters and trackersback who attempt to hijack our fair vehicle to carry dirty links across the border.

I'm not the first one to notice a new, two-tiered spamming tactic among blog comment spammers. First, the links these spammers are pointing to are usually large, legitimate brands, such as Apple or Microsoft. Second, they include the rel="itsok" attribute on a link. Of those sites that have noticed this approach, however, not too many have figured out exactly why spammers are using it. Surely, SURELY, they're not dumb enough to think that it's overriding the rel="nofollow" attribute (definition), about which I became all sappy last week.

Turns out they don't believe that at all. A very articulate explanation at Concurring Opinions reveals the motive - which only hardcore spamhunters (or hardcore spammers) would naturally intuit:

These comments are a funny sort of trojan horse. They are designed to be easily and readily flagged as spam; however their links are to popular and legitimate sites. Spammers do this so that popular legitimate sites will be added to the blacklists, corrupting them. If the blacklists are full of mainstream sites, and kill comments that use links to apple.com or yahoo.com, then bloggers will stop using the blacklists. And they will once again be easy prey for the spammers.

Comment Spam the Wagon? ITSOK with Me
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November 23, 2005

No Fearing the Nofollow Link Attribute

While I believe that sites that are ultimately successful do have high quality, user-focused content, many people incorrectly infer the converse of that statement: that if they have high quality, user-focused content, they will be ultimately successful. I don't necessarily believe that, because the demand is simply not great enough for all the high quality, user-focused sites out there. Many will do great, but not everyone is going to get rich.

But my pessimistic outlook is still no reason to avoid creating the best content you can - both at your own site and elsewhere. Think about the "nofollow" link attribute and its recent influence in SEO.

The mass adoption of the "nofollow" attribute about a year ago meant that site owners now had a way to illegitimize comment and trackback spam, even if they couldn't control its spread. If a link on your site has the "nofollow" attribute, engines know that you don't "vouch" for the authenticity of the link. Consequently, the engines won't reward such sites with any rankings benefits.

This effectively squashes a spammer's chances of benefiting from your site's status. He can add all the comments he wants to your PR4 post, but the links back to his site don't get a vote of confidence like they would if you made the exact same link in your post.

Unfortunately, however, many people promote their sites via forum and blog comments that are well reasoned, helpful to the discussion, and quite informative. And many of these people now feel that their sites no longer benefit from the links in comments. A mass exodus from SEO Chat forums is a recent example. While the introduction of the "nofollow" attribute was only a small reason for the members leaving, it was certainly a factor.

But if you think back to the days before link popularity was a religion, it's no different now. If you have something intelligent to say, if you're contributing to the discussion, and if you're offering a fresh perspective - and you do this long enough - you'll earn links the old fashioned way: By earning them. People will click through to your site via your profile, and eventually, if you impress them long enough, they'll want you to be a part of their community.

You've always had to impress potential customers with your intelligence and perspective. Be glad that "nofollow" is here, because all it has done is allow the specter of easily gained popularity to find peaceful rest.

No Fearing the Nofollow Link Attribute
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November 17, 2005

Link Building Anecdote: Big and Small Business

The Intrapromote client list shows off a diverse bunch. While the big names may seem more impressive, we are just as proud of our small business clients. It has always been our goal to succeed with big and small brands alike.

You learn not to be surprised when you deal with such a variety. Take a couple meetings I had this morning, for instance. The first was with a large client. As I made recommendations to the site’s internal linking structure, the client told me he would have to run the changes by marketing, legal, IT, parliament, and the Vatican. About a half hour later, I was making similar recommendations to a much smaller client. Before I finished speaking, he told me to refresh the page and asked me if the changes looked right.

Just Another Day. Du Du Du Du Du

Link Building Anecdote: Big and Small Business
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November 15, 2005

An SEO Checklist for Site Redesign

When you're about to unleash a site redesign, your to-do list probably appears endless. And once you've taken care of the design itself and the graphics, page files, and remaining assets are accounted for and tested, you still have to consider SEO.

A more comprehensive SEO checklist for site redesign surely exists somewhere, but my goal is to show things that site owners typically overlook and that, when added up, can have significant impact on a site's performance over time. Note: When I refer to "redesign" in this context, I'm not talking about changing domains. Instead, I'm referring to changing the entire file, folder, and page structure of the existing site, and perhaps (but not necessarily) a migration to a new code type, such as going from PHP to ASP (or back).

• Account for your top URLs. Analyze the last few months of web stats and determine your highest performing pages, both in terms of entry pages and strict page views. Brochure-type sites will have a smaller number than database-driven sites. Determine whether these top pages will have counterparts on the new site. If so, map the old pages to the new ones using a 301 (permanent) redirect. (James discusses 301 redirects here.)

  As for your non-performers, that's a judgment call. Even if certain pages don't get too many views or don't have new-site counterparts, you need to account for them when you roll over and make sure that if users land on them, they end up somewhere relevant. You can map those remaining pages to the home page (again, using a 301), or, you can avoid a lot of work and let a custom 404 page handle it (see below). Using a 301 will transfer lots of little fragmented bits of link pop and PR to the root, but a well built custom 404 page will likely be more help to your users and save them a click or two in getting to their final destination.

  Along these lines, do a thorough backlink check to see who's linking deep into your site. (Yahoo Site Explorer is currently one of my favorite backlink checkers.) Even if these links don't send much traffic, chances are the traffic is pretty qualified, so you should take special care of the visitors that come from reputable industry sites and make sure that the page they land on isn't a black hole.

  I often read articles that recommend you contact everyone linking to you and request that they update their links. In my experience, this hasn't been necessary. When a 301 is properly implemented from old_page.htm to new_page.asp, I've always seen links to old_page.htm eventually show up in a backlink check of new_page.asp.

• Prepare your custom 404 page. A custom 404 page is like a trapeze artist's safety net. Even if a user calls for a page that doesn't exist, she'll still end up on your site instead of seeing the ugly (and near-useless) default 404 page. A well made 404 page is often a variation of the site map, along with an introductory note that apologizes for the lost page, and an earnest hope that the user will find what she needs by following one of the links on the page. Most important, make sure that the links on your 404 page correspond to your new site content, not the old content. Otherwise, your users might just end up swallowing themselves in an endless 404 loop. (One more thing: If you're on a Microsoft platform, make sure that your 404 pages give a true 404 error code.)

• Update your robots.txt file. Many people forget to update their robots.txt exclusions when their folder structures change. If your private data, images, or testing area has changed locations, make sure to add a line in the file to account for it. Now this is important, and it needs emphasis: Don't replace old exclusions with new ones. Instead, add new exclusions and retain old ones. From the engines' perspectives, those old folder structures will still be around for a while, so if you delete old exclusions, you could see some funky things happen for several months.

• Update your analytics and conversion definitions. Here's another item that often goes overlooked until the monthly reports come out. If your analytical conversions are based on views of certain pages, specific click paths, or hits on certain files from the old site, make sure to update your conversion definitions to account for the new site. You don't need the accounting mess created when the revenue and the analytics program disagree about conversions and ROI.

• Remember your outgoing links. When everything else is done and you have time for a bit of altruism, remember that your outgoing links are likely benefiting someone else - either another site you own or a site you have recommended. Any old articles or resource pages that link to those sites will no longer benefit them if they're deleted. So if you still think those sites are worthy of your link, make sure to recreate them somehow.
  

I hope this list brings up some issues you hadn't thought of. If you have other ideas, drop a note in the comments and I'll post them later on.

An SEO Checklist for Site Redesign
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November 11, 2005

Reciprocal Linking Horse: OK, OK, I’m Dead!

Hark! 2 in every 3 heralds are singing. In sooth, only time will tell if the backlash truly matches the ballyhoo, but white hatters deserve this moment of frivolity. We have, each one of us, experienced the frustration of battling competitors who perform well with not-so-admirable linking strategies.

So, what's the next focal point? Link extraction. The price for Google holding sites more accountable for their links is that Google will be holding you more accountable for your links. This is much more of a concern if you have employed unethical linking tactics in the past, but it is a concern for all sites, nonetheless. Google will penalize you if an overwhelming majority of your links are irrelevant and identical.

Review your links every time Google updates links. You want to make sure your link text varies and that your links are coming from reputable, relevant sites. Do not allow this defensive link strategy to keep you from the offensive, though. Look for opportunities to upgrade link text from good sites as you seek to remove links from bad sites.

Enjoy the moment, white hatters! Take pleasure in the fact that Jagger aftermath for you is just business as usual.

Reciprocal Linking Horse: OK, OK, I’m Dead!
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October 24, 2005

Google on Link Building

Normally, I post about something that I know about, something that I understand. There are some things however that are universally understood, and therefore easy to recognize the importance of.

Before I get tongue-tied, let me give you an example to set the stage. It doesn’t take an accountant to understand what Benjamin Franklin meant when he said “A penny saved is a penny earned�?.

With that in mind, it is fairly safe to assume that there are certain things that fall under the general classification known as “common sense�?.

That is what compels me today to write about Link Building. As I was perusing one of many different blogs with my usual morning coffee, I came across this in the Official Google Blog.

“…Google's search results are generated by computer programs that rank web pages in large part by examining the number and relative popularity of the sites that link to them…�? - Official Google Blog - Googlebombing

Now, at the risk of being redundant, it was a clear extrapolation to me (definitely no link building guru) that relevant links are very important to a comprehensive and well designed SEO campaign.

I am reminded of the old EF Hutton commercials that stated “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen�?. More than giving away my age, this phrase is definitely applicable to Google and search.

So when Google talks about link building, are you listening?

Google on Link Building
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October 20, 2005

Vertically (Un)Challenged Link Building

I agree with Jim Boykin that 99.9% of link requests are worthless. As I have discussed in the past, a link builder’s greatest challenge is proving that his or her request represents the supplement. If you can accomplish this Sisyphean task, you will find recipients more receptive than ever.

The greater issue these days is the disparity between worthless and worthwhile links. As it becomes harder to find these worthwhile links, their value becomes greater. It is not until Google dances with your vertical, unfortunately, that this value is calculable. It is becoming more and more apparent that it is not a laissez faire algorithm that devalues links. If it were, we would not be discussing specific verticals impacted by Google updates. It is very specific attention that leads to serp eruption. It will benefit you sooner or later.

This is little solace if your competitors are beating you with links from payday loan sites. You can still beat them with good links, but you are looking at a long, constant battle. Keep building good links. One day we will be discussing a shake up in your vertical.

Vertically (Un)Challenged Link Building
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October 13, 2005

Hey MLB, Don’t 302 My White Sox!

With more than 2 million pages on its domain, Major League Baseball can write its own ticket for link popularity. Lauded as one of the great internet successes, they can establish important pages with little or no effort. In fact, they can establish pages with what seems like the opposite of effort.

Let’s take a look at the MLB domain. Note the relevant urls displayed in the bottom left hand corner when you mouse over the navigational links such as “Scoreboard�? and “Standings.�? If you can see where the link takes you without having to click, it is most likely that the search engines can also see the link. Compare that to the “Team Sites�? box. A search engine spider cannot click on the box to display the links. And even then, note that the relevant urls do not show in the bottom left hand corner.

Now look at the first result when you search for [white sox], chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/ . This is also where you would expect the link at MLB.com to take you. Both links, however, use a 302 to redirect to http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/index.jsp?c_id=cws . A 302 is a temporary redirect that can be confusing to search engines when used in perpetuum. Because of its use here, google cannot figure out which page to index. These two pages combine to form the number one result for [white sox] which is cached, yet neither is actually indexed by google!

Huge sites have a much larger margin of error, so don’t try this at home. Your site would disappear from the rankings, and google does not seem to have such a lenient dropped 3rd strike rule to get you back in the game.

Hey MLB, Don’t 302 My White Sox!
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October 12, 2005

Diagnosing Crawling and Indexing Issues with Yahoo Site Explorer

Yahoo recently released the Yahoo Site Explorer, a very helpful way to diagnose issues that may be hampering your performance in Yahoo natural search.

Enter a URL in the Search box, and Yahoo returns two values: First, the number of indexed pages for a given site, and as a second option, the number of incoming links pointing at that site. The following image shows the location of the key data points.

Drilling down, you can select specific URLs from the results page, and "explore" those pages in depth - finding, for example, the number of pages from a specific section of your site that have been indexed, or the incoming links pointing to a specific page of your site. To find an index count for a specific site section, enter or click a URL such as http://www.site.com/press/. This returns indexing and linking results for this specific URL, as well as any pages in the /press/ directory.

Unlike Google, which purposely returns only a percentage of a site's incoming links, Yahoo Site Explorer claims to show all incoming links that it knows about. This can come in very handy when performing a competitive link analysis for sites in your industry.

One of Site Explorer's largest drawbacks is the ability to download only the first 50 results into TSV format, for import into programs like Excel. It would be wonderful to have an entire site's worth of data to sort and play with in a spreadsheet program, but it's unlikely that Yahoo is too eager to spend processing time creating TSV files with tens of thousands of rows. A resourceful programmer named John Mueller has used the Yahoo Search API to create a custom version of Yahoo Site Explorer that overcomes some of these common obstacles; it's worth a look.

If you find large blocks of URLs from your site that Yahoo has not indexed, it offers a submission system similar to that of Google Sitemaps. You can simply fill a text file (such as pages.txt) with the URLs you want Yahoo to index, separated by a hard return. Upload the text file to your web server, then submit the entire URL of the text file (such as http://www.site.com/pages.txt) to the Yahoo Free Submit page.

We don't yet have significant data on the crawl rate for URLs submitted via this method, but we'll be sure to publish any information we collect.

Diagnosing Crawling and Indexing Issues with Yahoo Site Explorer
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October 06, 2005

Link Text Leads to [Home] Field Advantage

Are these pages really about [home]? Was it their intention to tell the search engines that their sites are relevant to the search [home]? In most cases I doubt it, but that is exactly what they have done.

Realize that you send a message to search engines every time you link to a page using text. #7 Microsoft is not about home, but the site links to "home" in the header navigation on most of its pages (other than the homepage). Chances are, you are doing the same. You do not show on page one, however, because you do not have 22,000,000 pages indexed.

Realize your internal linking structure is essential to telling search engines what your site is about. Tell search engines on every page of your site that your main page is about your keywords. Do not waste this opportunity on words that do not drive relevant traffic.

Link Text Leads to [Home] Field Advantage
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September 29, 2005

Link Building Subject Line – Persuade or Perish

Three seconds and 40 characters.

According to Karon Thackston’s High Rankings article (soon to be archive here), it is within these parameters that your audience will decide to open or delete your e-mail. And be advised that the open rate will resemble the batting average of . . . let’s say . . . White Sox outfielder Aaron Rowand(.272). As in the bigs, get above .300 and you’re an All-Star.

Karon’s article applies more towards sales campaigns, so I wanted to push the idea towards Link building. How can your subject line persuade your audience to look at your link request? Think about your ideal candidate. This person actually posts links out of interest and to serve his or her readers (our results show that this person still exists and has many friends). The problem is that this person gets as much spam each day as the rest of us.

Two important guidelines here: honesty and relevance. Be honest. If you trick them into opening, you’ll evoke wrath. Do not hide the fact that it is a link request in anyway. Include the word suggestion, inquiry, addition, question, etc. Many people will delete based on these words, but that is OK. These people would not have posted your link anyway.

Realize that you are not selling your site to the individual. You are selling its relevance to the individual’s site. If the candidate buys into that relevance, he or she might visit your site and decide to add the link. Include the site name or the title of the links section to show you have been there. Then include your site name. If the connection does not seem obvious, add a relevant keyword to your name. If this makes no difference, do not send the link request.

Keep in mind that a relevant link request is not the enemy - spam is. Your open rate will improve if your audience has reason to believe your link request is relevant.

Three seconds and 40 characters. Good luck!

Link Building Subject Line – Persuade or Perish
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September 22, 2005

David Manning Link Building School Opens its Doors!

Famous movie critic David Manning has thrown his animated hand into the evolving world of Link Building. How can this rather abstract movie critic offer improvement to your link building campaign? I think there is plenty to learn from the similarities between Link Building and Movie Criticism, in addition to the storied existence of David Manning.

Link Building, in principle, is very similar to movie criticism. A link is a vote of recommendation. The more recommendations a site has, the better the site must be (perceptional value, anyway). I am more likely to go to a movie if somebody tells me it is a good movie, especially if the person is an authority on movies such as a movie critic. A link recommendation is also more meaningful when it comes from an authority on the subject, and as in movies, the more authorities making the recommendation the better.

The need for recommendations to generate traffic has affected the Web in the same manner it has affected the movies. Sites desperate for recommendations tend to forget the significance of authority level and subject relation. I will see any movie Roger Ebert recommends, but I would not buy lingerie for my wife based on his recommendation.

Enter David Manning. Better yet, enter the Sony Studio Executives. Faced with movies for which even 3rd class movie critics (authority levels vary – pay attention to superlative-saturated commercials for Summer Blockbusters) would not vote, Sony created David Manning, and the recommendations were outstanding!

The David Manning School of Link Building is now open, and students are evident across the Web in the form of sites created with the soul purpose of linking to a site. Now a site created to serve a subject or a geographical area is wonderful. Such link sites serve a useful purpose. However, a link from a site lacking useful and unique, subject-related content is as valuable as a David Manning recommendation.

Keep one thing in mind, whether you are promoting a movie or a Web site. The best way to get recommendations is to have a good product. Would you recommend the product if you were not already associated with it? Do not ask for recommendations until you can confidently answer in the positive.

David Manning Link Building School Opens its Doors!
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September 15, 2005

Google Backlinks vs. Google Indexed Pages

In a recent post, the Maestro illustrates the problem with focusing entirely on Google backlinks. He is discussing the noble “deconstruction of 2,690 links to George W. Bush,�? which shows an even split between legit links and google bombs.

The problem is, Google only reports a slice of whatever links point at a particular page.

Go over to MSN Search, and it has nearly 30,000 links point at that page. Google certainly knows of around this many and uses them as part of the ranking process. It simply doesn't report them all, as any experience search marketer knows. The analysis is skewed by not taking that into account. It operates using partial data.

Most link building campaigns try to win the partial data war. You must realize that Google knows about much more data than they show. If google indexes the page, they will see the text link. It’s reasonable to assume that most of the other 27,000 MSN backlinks are indexed by google, and are impacting the performance of the bio page for [miserable failure].

It is a simple distinction. Do not focus on Google backlinks. Focus on Google indexed pages and keyword-rich text links.

Google Backlinks vs. Google Indexed Pages
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September 08, 2005

Building Links with Google Search Operators and Google Alerts

You probably know that google search operators provide an excellent platform for building links to your site. You should look at any pages linking to your competitors [link:www.yourcompetitor.com/] in search of potential link candidates. You should also look at backlinks with the other search engines, but realize these are not nearly as filtered, which has both positives and negatives associated.

Google Alerts represent a good way to keep track of the new links to your site. Enter the backlink search operator [link:www.yoursite.com/] as your search term, and change the type to “web.�? You will be notified whenever google adds to your list of backlinks. Let this also serve as a reminder to check your competitor links for candidates, once again, as they also will have been updated.

Obviously, there is much more to link building, but the above is a good way to build links on a small scale when your clock and budget prohibit other means.

Building Links with Google Search Operators and Google Alerts
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September 06, 2005

Hurricane Katrina and Fast-Acting Search Results

When I added the Red Cross ad to the blog recently (please give to some type of rescue organization if you're able!), I was curious about the flurry of activity surrounding Katrina over the last week, and to what extent it had affected organic results pages. Unlike specific news engines (where I typically get my news), the organic algos are generally a little more sluggish (or stable, depending on your worldview). Still, when comparing results for [katrina] at large engines, I noticed several interesting results.

First, an analysis of the first page of Google results for the query [katrina]:

1. Red Cross root page (www.redcross.org). The #1 ranking for this site is due in large part their massive viral banner campaign (which we found out about thanks to Threadwatch). Also at play here, in my opinion, is the phrase "katrina" in close proximity to the link to redcross.org in blogs and news stories. For example, "To help victims of Hurricane Katrina, please give to the Red Cross." This "proximity credit" is an ages-old part of the algo that accounts for web coders who use "click here" as anchor text instead of the nearby money phrase.

2. National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center and Tropical Depression Predictor (nhc.noaa.gov). In case you're curious, the NOAA stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If you're familiar with American bureaucracy, it should be no surprise that the NOAA is part of the US Department of (wait for it...) Commerce. The NOAA site, an XML/RSS smorgasbord, is to serious weather chasers what Slashdot is to 30-year-old gadget freaks living in their parents' basements. Plenty of legacy link pop here, probably using link text like Hurricane Katrina, since weather enthusiasts are keen to note (and anchor) the difference between tropical storm, tropical depression, hurricane, and so on. Also note that this site ranks in the top spot for [hurricane katrina] and [tropical storm katrina], so it's been building momentum for a while.

3. Wikipedia entry for Hurricane Katrina (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina). Yahoo shows over 24,000 links to this page, and at least right now, Wiki can do very little wrong in Google's eyes.

4. Home page of an on-the-ball web developer whose name is actually Katrina (katrina.com). She's had the domain for the better part of a decade, and probably had the top rank until about a week or so ago. Kudos to her - she's taken advantage of her rank to show tons of missing persons and disaster relief information. (Question to self: What's the moral and semantic opposite of a scraper called?)

5. Weather.com homepage (weather.com). Certainly helped by current radar images, slide shows, and the accompanying incoming links to those features. And it doesn't hurt that a "synonym search" at Google for [~hurricane] shows "weather" as a bolded phrase - meaning that Google's algo considers them very similar terms. LSI, anyone?

6. A Red Cross credit card contribution page tied to a specific site. Hard to say why Google picked this specific iteration of the "Contribute" page without further investigation. The link redirects from www to give.redcross.org, so the second subdomain (or maybe the https protocol) is probably the reason it's not an indented entry under the first Red Cross result at #1.

7. Official site of Katrina and the Waves (katw.com), '80s pop group behind such hits as "Walking on Sunshine" and ... um ...

8. See #7, but this time (katrinasweb.com) it's the personal site of the band's lead singer. Entries 7 and 8 are like the Moe Green of [katrina] - making their bones when the Red Cross and National Weather Service were going out with cheerleaders.

9. FEMA (fema.gov), likely helped along by some linking discussing their handling of the hurricane aftermath.

10. Local New Orleans TV station (wwltv.com) offering a prolific blog about events in the city as they happen. Yahoo shows about 16,000 links directly to this page, and over 72,000 to the domain.

So what's the moral here? Google loves links - all shapes, sizes, and locations. Linking during national crises is a hyperbolized version of natural linking. It happens more quickly and in greater numbers. Still, there appears to be no temporary link devaluation (TLD) or backlink over-optimization devaluation (BLOOD) going on here. Is the onslaught of new links spread out over enough sites as to appear natural (which it is), even with the accelerated timeframe? Apparently so, assuming there's no manual intervention going on.

In my next post, I'll tear apart Yahoo's SERP for the same query.

Hurricane Katrina and Fast-Acting Search Results
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September 01, 2005

The Heart of Reciprocal Linking

We at the Wagon are susceptible to 80’s allusion. It is no secret that we totally long for days of boat shoes, pegged jeans (preferably stonewashed), and popped collars. Sometimes we might even make up 80’s stories just to prove a point. It’s the perfect platform because it was such an obvious time, best depicted by the music. If you wish you had Jessie’s girl, you just repeated that over and over in the chorus. If you wanted to make sure that people realized Billie Jean was not your lover, you repeated that in the chorus. I’m sure the SEO gods also look back in fondness – these songs definitely were about what they said they were about.

Doug’s SEOs Wang Chung Tonight reminded me of a reciprocal linking campaign I ran in the mid-80’s. We did not call it that, but I have always felt it was closer to reciprocal linking than payola. My client was a popular singer boasting a 50’s simplicity with which the 80’s audience easily identified. We developed a song which mentioned all major US markets. We then contacted stations in these major markets with the following request.

Hello **market** ,

We have already linked to your city, **market** , in our new song, **song** . If you have not already done so, please start playing this song on your station. If after a week’s time, we have not heard our song playing throughout the day and night, we will remove your city from the song.

It certainly worked. In fact, the only city we had to remove from the song was Stow, Ohio. The repetition of play created importance and popularity for the song, yet I feel like I wronged the SEO gods. I am not completely against reciprocal linking, but linking solely for the reciprocal link does not honor relevance. When search engines and humans pick up on this, your relevance and your credibility take a hit. Link only when it makes sense to link, and ask others to link only when it would make sense for them to link. Link building is much more than reciprocal linking.

They say the heart of reciprocal linking is still beating, but from what I’ve seen I don’t really believe them.

The Heart of Reciprocal Linking
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August 24, 2005

The Scraping of My Success

After hard work, your titles, tags, text, and hypertext agree your site is about your keywords. The search engines notice the agreement, and your performance begins to improve. As the site continues to climb, you start practicing your Rocky moment atop the stairs. You can even hear the music.

You begin to notice many more backward links than just the ones you have requested. Great, but far too many look exactly the same. You want links, but do you want or deserve them from this questionable benefactor? As you continue your ascent, your impending moment feels more like Rocky III. Now you only hear Burgess Meredith yelling at you.

You are getting a boost from scrapers who want relevance for your keywords. They display scraped meta content from sites performing well for the keywords, along with much more prominently placed PPC or other products. This formula is applied to many pages over many domains, each including a keyword-rich text link pointing to your site. You have done nothing wrong, but you are benefiting from the game.

We see this all the time, enough to know that the text links impact search engine relevance. The scrapers either do not realize they are giving this impact away or they do not care. What can they be getting in return? These pages are clearly speaking to search engines, but what response are they getting? How are they benefiting?

We have bold theories softly backed by our substantiation disclaimer. Keep watching the wagon.

The Scraping of My Success
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August 18, 2005

I’ll Look to Link, If Looking Linking Moves

Place linking information on your site. If somebody is pleased with your service or product, they very well might want to link to your site. Think of it as the tip jar in the local deli. It is an opportunity for your customers to show appreciation. No harm if they choose not to fill the jar, but at least you gave them the option.

Link Building is not just a campaign. Requests, arrangements, or payments do not have to occur in order to build links. You have resources available to you of which you should take advantage. You have colleagues, customers, and contacts – they have websites. Let them know how to link to your site.

Your site needs external links in order to perform well. This makes a more aggressive pursuit of links a necessity, but this should not stunt your natural progression of links. Do not overlook existing traffic to this end. Casual placement of the tip jar transforms any and all visitors into potential external links.

No harm if they choose not to fill the jar, but at least you gave them the option.

I’ll Look to Link, If Looking Linking Moves
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August 11, 2005

SEOs Wang Chung Tonight

Have you ever seen a web site that has a link to their SEO company's site in the navigation of each page? I was speaking with someone today about just this - SEO companies that require or as a trade off for discounted services, attempt to promote themselves and increase their own incoming links in this way.

It reminds me of a lame music advertising fad from the 80's.

Depending on your age, you may or may not remember this, but there was a brief pop music advertising fad in the 80's to mention your band's name somewhere during a potential hit song. The thinking seemed to be, if the song was a huge hit, then thousands of people every day would be singing the name of your band. Who could ask for more than that?

There's a very good chance that you were an active participant in this ad fad. Perhaps the most blatant 80's group to try this was Wang Chung, whose "Everybody Have Fun Tonight", near the end, adds vainly "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight!"

Soon after, the Swedish pop/rock band Roxette at the end of their hit "Joyride" boldy exclaim, "Roxette!" (Do you know of other examples? Click on the Comments link below.)

Creative? Perhaps.

Tacky? Indeed.

Short term fad? Absolutely. (Can you imagine U2's "With or Without You" ending with a smug "With or Without U2"?)

The good news for our industry is that most SEOs are growing up and, like this brief time in the 80's, are seeing in advance that what may work temporarily will not work in the long run.

Can you name Wang Chung's next big hit after "Everybody Have Fun Tonight?"

Exactly.

SEOs Wang Chung Tonight
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Link Request Rule # 2 – Absolutely, Positively Never Speak Appositively

We focus on poorly crafted link requests, only in part, to replenish our better than thou air. Our goal is, more importantly, to better shape our own requests. So thanks to our readers for forwarding such material, and also thanks to the sacrificial lamb who send their link exchange requests to Intrapromote .

Absolutely, Positively Never Speak Appositively

The exception to this rule is when you positively want to convince the recipient that you are not speaking directly to him or her. “I was visiting your site, X, and I thought you might want to link to my site, Y.�? Doesn’t that just feel formulaic? If you receive hundreds of link request a week, it definitely should.

If I saw you at the Sox game and wanted to tell you that I enjoyed eating at your restaurant, what would I say to you?

Hey, I ate at your restaurant, X, and have found it similar to my tastes, Y.

Or

Hey, I ate at X and thought it was great!

One of these statements is what I would say in the given situation. The other is what my robot proxy would hopefully say in that same situation. You see, I would leave the appositives in just to make sure that the recipient understands what I think I would have said in a similar situation. In the long run, I find it much easier and much more worthwhile to just go to the Sox game myself.

Link Request Rule # 2 – Absolutely, Positively Never Speak Appositively
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July 20, 2005

Link Request Rule #1 - Link Building is Not a Booty Call

We spend a good deal of time focusing on what’s wrong with link requests. Our intention is only slightly to nourish our better than thou air. Our goal is, more importantly, to better shape our own requests. So thanks to our readers and clients for forwarding such material, and also thanks to the sacrificial lamb who send their link exchange requests to Intrapromote.

Link Building is Not a Booty Call!

“I have found your website, **insert URL here** by searching Google for **insert search term here**.�? Any time I see an “I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d stop by�? -type request I picture Larry Dallas working his magic at the Regal Beagle.

Jack Tripper: Larry, haven't you ever thought of telling a girl the truth?
Larry: Well, I figure, anyone who puts on eyeliner, fake eyelashes, and plastic nails isn't someone who wants to hear the truth.

Larry, listen to your buddy. Skip the BS. Just get to the request!

Link Request Rule #1 - Link Building is Not a Booty Call
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