Link Building Articles by SEO Speedwagon

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.

--and also exists on its own, as a blog, and thus merits a listing apart from one tied to Rosie's site, ergo the Value Meal Result.

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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