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Link Building 101 - The Almost Complete Link Guide Posted: 14 Sep 2010 05:45 AM PDT Posted by scott.mclay This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. A lot has changed since I got into link building a few years ago - link exchange is dead, ad banners are no longer all about gaining referral traffic, and buying links is more dangerous than ever before. Because of the changes mentioned and a whole load of others the majority of link builders don’t like to give away their secrets to sourcing links, even though it’s all pretty much the same at most agencies. Most of the advice I will be giving throughout this post is most likely available from a large number of sources including SEOmoz but I felt it would be great to bring everything together under one simple guide. Creating your link building strategy Before building any links to a website it is important to ask yourself a few questions like: What kind of links do you need? Do you need nofollow and branded links? Do you have a wide enough range of anchor text and landing pages? Sadly every strategy is different and people can’t answer these questions for you but hopefully you can use the following information to help answer the questions. Link Placement In recent times Google has started placing value in link placement, in-content links passing the most value and footer links passing the least, although a good link profile should make good use of every link type as going out and sourcing only in-content links would be a very big sign of an unnatural link profile. Nofollow & Dofollow A lot of people go out and source dofollow links, but in doing this they do more harm to their link profile. Every website should have a good balance of nofollow links - there have been cases where sites with a very low number of nofollow links have not ranked as highly as others who keep a good balance. Branded Links I believe Domain Authority and Domain Trust make up a fairly large chunk of the ranking algorithm. Even though there are loads of factors in measuring these attributes, one good sign of both is having a good number of brand based anchor text pointing to your website. Some people make the mistake of only building branded terms to the homepage, when in fact there is more value in building links using these terms to landing pages throughout your website. Anchor Text & Landing Page Distribution When working on a link building campaign, it is important to work on a wide range of landing pages, using a variety of anchor text for each. Working on a small keyword / landing page set can upset the balance of a website and can have a very negative impact long term. Content Relevancy Since the Google May Day update this year, relevancy seems to play a larger role in the ranking factors. Even though the days of keyword stuffing are over, there is still a need to reference your keywords within your content, header tags, URI structure and title tags. Content may not be king but it is one of the keys to a successful link building campaign. Sourcing Links Once you have your link building strategy done and dusted the next step is to find suitable websites to source links from. There are many techniques that can be used for this job, some of which rely on tools and others that use manual search queries. Link Building Tools If you plan to use link building tools then chances are you will be looking at links going to competitors’ websites. This is one of the best ways to start a link building campaign and can lead to positive results, some of the best tools for this job are: Open Site Explorer (Free / SEOmoz Pro Members) OSE How to Use OSE Competitive Link Research Tool (SEOmoz Pro Members only) Competitive Link Research Tool Majestic SEO (Paid) Majestic SEO Website Yahoo Site Explorer + SEO Quake Plugin (Free) Yahoo Site Explorer How to use SEO Quake Manual Search Queries It is said that it’s not the links your competitors have that will give you the edge but the links the competitors don’t have. To find these you will need to find link opportunities using manual search queries - the best way to do this is by using advanced search operators. Advanced search operators are not as complicated as they sound but if used correctly they can provide a very nice set of search results. An introduction to advanced search operators can be found here and a short introduction can also be found on my personal blog under the post finding the links that matter. One search string I would recommend when looking for suitable blogs for most niches is: [search term] -site:Wikipedia.org -site:blogspot.com -site:telegraph.co.uk -site:wordpress.com -site:about.com -site:nationalgeographic.com -site:guardian.co.uk -"directory" -"add link" -"advertising" Depending on your niche other domains can also be stripped from the results. Directory Submissions Directory submission is the most boring and repetitive job, but sadly it is an important task in any link building campaign. These links make up the numbers when it comes to branded links. Submit to the right directories and they will improve your overall domain authority. Blog and Forum Commenting Blog and forum commenting for links is seen as spam due to many people taking advantage of unprotected blogs and forums. If blog and forum commenting is part of your outlined strategy then some effort should be put into them. The best way to act on this kind of link building is by using Google’s blog search to find the most recent articles published within your niche then make a genuine comment based on the content of the article, using the Name field for branded anchor text. This type of link building is best for increasing the number of nofollow links to your website. Guest Blogging Communities Guest blogging is a great place to find blogs within your niche, but instead of offering to do a guest post why not offer to write a few pages (I say pages as they are linked to via the top navigation) of content for them? After all these people want content and being able to source multiple pages not only saves time but can also lead to Google seeing the links as trustworthy, just remember to link out to authority sites within your niche as well. Widgets & Theme Designs There has been a lot of talk about creating widgets to increase the number of natural user generated links, which does work, but the widget you create does have to be unique and worth having so there isn’t a gap for this in every niche. Another way to increase the number of user generated links is by creating a WordPress theme, a lot of people have said there is low value in this but if the theme is good enough it can generate 40k+ links (from previous experience). If you wish to go down this route the best way to market it is via your monthly newsletters, just put in a small section about it and wait for results, but remember to also submit it to theme hubs around the web for additional exposure. Link to Us Pages Link to us pages are not only great for increasing the number of user generated links but great for masking other link building activities. I would suggest having a link to us page displaying all the branded terms used within your campaign and have different types of links for each (Banner Ad, Contextual Ad, Text Link). Competitions If you client is running competitions contact bloggers in your niche and ask politely if they would blog about it. Although getting targeted anchor text through this tactic is harder it can help build the number of generic keywords linking to your domain. Contacting Webmasters Making contact with webmasters is one of the most difficult jobs - just about every email sent out needs to be personalised and in some cases contact is needed via social media before an email has been sent. When sending an email to a webmaster, remember they are a real person just like you, so ask yourself a few simple questions before drafting: If you were the webmaster what would persuade you to link out? Would you rather a relationship was formed before receiving a link request? Should the email be from an SEO’s point of view or would it be better keeping it simple and to the point?  Tracking Progress Tracking the progress of your link building campaign is something that needs to be done. This can be done in a variety of ways but the best solutions I have found is using Raven Tools for overall tracking of performance and using an Excel document to keep a list of links built containing metrics such as Page Rank, mozRank and Domain Authority. Having a list of metrics for each link enables you to display a variety of information relating to your link building campaign which helps when generating reports for your clients. Conclusion Although link building is a tough task in itself if you plan your strategy properly, build the correct links and track the progress of your strategy the job will become easier over time and you will begin to see what works and what doesn’t for your client. Just remember every link building campaign is different, even if you deal with clients within the same niche as each website has a different infrastructure and domain history. If you enjoyed this post then why not visit my Blog or follow me on Twitter. Do you like this post? Yes No

What is Mobile Search Engine Transcoding? Posted: 13 Sep 2010 11:21 PM PDT Posted by Suzzicks Ok, in the mobile world, it is important to understand that Google sometimes lies (Uhhh! Say it ain’t so!) Actually, all of the major search engines do it with mobile results - It is called 'transcoding.' In some cases, the search engines will want to rank a particular page in mobile results, but they know they shouldn’t because they can tell that it will be a bad mobile user experience. (Usually because the file size is too big, or the page has lots of mobile-unfriendly code like Flash or loads of JavaScript). When this happens, the search engine will show the full search engine listing for the mobile-unfriendly page (like normal), but when you click on it, they will automatically take you to a temporary url that represents a ‘transcoded’ version of the page you requested, (rather than delivering you to the actual page listed in the search results). This temporary transcoded page actually lives on a subdomain hosted by the search engine, and shows a scraped version of the page you requested. The scrape usually just shows the text and small images of the page, but omits anything that might cause problems for a mobile browser; sometimes this can include background images, big images, animations, videos, iFrames, and heavy/complex code. You Might Want Transcoding, but Probably Not If you have totally ignored the mobile web, transcoding can be a good thing, because it allows you to rank in mobile results when you otherwise might be omitted. (Ranking with transcoding is better than not ranking at all). Unfortunately, none of the search engines do a stellar job with their transcoding. In Google, pages that are transcoded usually closely resemble the ‘text-only’ version of the page that Google keeps in its cache. In some cases though, the transcoding can really mess up a page, missing core navigation, breaking long pages into multiple pages at odd places, or cutting out important sections. Remember that the search engine use of transcoded pages differs from phone to phone, so just because pages are not being automatically transcoded from search results on your phone does not mean that they are never being transcoded by the mobile search engines. The less sophisticated a mobile browser is, the more likely the search engine is to transcode a page; based on my experience, this is happening mostly on BlackBerry's and WindowsMobile devices. To see what a page looks like when Google transcodes it, there are two options: 1.) You can perform a search on a mobile phone, then click the ‘options’ button to the right of one of your results in the SERP, and then select ‘Mobile formatted.’ (Illustrated below) 2.) You can also put your url into Google’s tool, here: http://www.google.com/gwt/n? from your computer or your mobile phone.     The image below shows what Realtor.com looks like when it is transcoded by Google, and it is obviously not a great experience. You can see, in this instance, that two header images are missing, including the logo. It also turns the JavaScript navigation into text links that are a bit squished together, and hard to understand (Find a Home Home Finance Home & Garden). Last, since the transcoding software can't render JavaScript, it has been served an error message, telling it to turn on JavaScript.   Preventing Transcoding If you are pretty confident in your mobile site rendering, you can include the ‘no-transform’ cache control in the headers of your template, and that will usually prevent your pages from being transcoded by the search engines, but it is not 100%. The good news is that with faster network connections and better mobile browsers, transcoding by the search engines is becoming much less common. The important take-away here, is to at least test to see what your pages look like when they are being transcoded (even if you have a no-transform cache control in place). In many cases, minor on-page code tweaks can make the transcoded experience much more user-friendly and palatable, improving your ability to reach the widest range of mobile customers, regardless of the phone they are searching from.     Do you like this post? Yes No

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Book Review: The Shallows by Nicholas Carr Posted: 14 Sep 2010 07:49 AM PDT The Shallows by Nicholas Carr proposes the following: that the Internet and all of the its shallow content is actually rewiring our brains and how we process information. the problem also lies with a lot of authors, especially the wordy ones… I’ll be completely honest–of all the books I read this summer, this was the one I least looked forward to reading and the one I most disagreed with. That said, it’s also the book I learned the most from. The premise of this book is that the Internet is actually changing our brains. One of the things I learned is that our brains have the ability to “rewire” themselves. Based on what we do with our brains on a daily basis, they function in different ways. An example from the book shows that taxi drivers in London have higher development in the areas relating to spatial relations because those parts of the brain are used more often as they navigate London’s complex streets. A second thing I learned from this book is that this rewiring continues throughout our lives. It doesn’t stop once we reach adulthood, and there’s a lot of scientific evidence in the book to back that up … a lot … which brings me to my problem with this book. One of the author’s main complaints is that the Internet is changing how we think by removing our ability to deeply concentrate and think. Instead, we always remain on the surface with any type of reading. This is where the author and I disagree. While I will concede that some people are losing the ability (and desire) to focus deeply, the problem also lies with a lot of authors, especially the wordy ones. Back when I was in high school, we were assigned to read Moby Dick. At the time I thought it was awful, it was boring, and I never made it through the whole book. Later in life, I decided to try and re-read Moby Dick, and it was still bloody boring and wordy and in need of an editor. If the book was half the size, it might have some value. Compare that with the Old Man and the Sea. Now there’s a story I can recommend. It’s not just that I have a short attention span: after reading Moby Dick, I read Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson, which I loved. It had none of the slow moving wordiness of Moby Dick. There are some authors (and bloggers) who love the sound of their voices and seeing their words on the printed page or screen. They spend time lovingly crafting each sentence so that the reader can slowly meander through the content at a leisurely pace. Then there are authors like Michael Crichton who cut right to the chase. Most readers prefer one type and, to them, the other will be either boring and wordy or superficial and without any complexity. Its not that I can’t read long books: I reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy when the movies came out a few years ago and read all of the Harry Potter books. I just prefer books that move at a faster pace. It’s interesting that I read this book right after Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus and Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget .The books served as a nice contrast to one another. Is there some truth to the argument that the internet is rewiring our brains?I’ll have to concede yes, but I disagree that it destroys our ability to concentrate long term unless we let it. Speaking from personal experience, I’m reading now more than ever thanks to my iPad. And I’m reading lots of different types of books–see my kindle page as proof. If you are a reader who likes in-depth prose that has lots of examples and backup information, you’ll love this book. If you are someone who prefers reading books that are direct and to the point, skip this book because you’ll probably hate it. photo credit: Jon Olav This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review. Book Review: The Shallows by Nicholas Carr Related posts: Book Review – You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier I recently came across an article in paper magazine by... Linked Book Review Earlier last year Greg dropped me a note about two... Book Review – Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus Clay Shirky has a new book out called “Cognitive Surplus”... Web Analytics – An Hour a Day: Book Review One of the books I looked forward to reading this... The Pirate Hunter: Book Review Avast ther’ ya scallywags, ther’ be non search related information... Advertisers: Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed! Page1Hosting - Class C IP Hosting starting at $2.99. Directory Journal - List your website in our growing web directory today. Content Customs - Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week Majestic SEO - Competitive back link intellegence for SEO Analysis Glass Whiteboards - For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services KnowEm - Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites. Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts. TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

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Daily Snapshot: Back to School

Your Daily Snapshot for Tuesday, September 14, 2010   Photo of the Day President Barack Obama meets with John Nicholas, Nicole Armstrong, and their twins Trevor and Olivia, at their home in Fairfax, Virginia, Sept. 13, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy) View more photos. Today's Schedule Today, the President will travel to Pennsylvania to deliver his second annual Back-to-School Speech at Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School in Philadelphia, PA, a 2010 National Blue Ribbon School. The President’s Back-to-School Speech is an opportunity to speak directly to students across the country.  Last year, President Obama encouraged students to study hard, stay in school, and take responsibility for their education. All times are Eastern Daylight Time 9:30 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing 10:00 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Economic Daily Briefing 10:30 AM: The President meets with senior advisors 11:30 AM: The President departs the White House en route Andrews Air Force Base 11:45 AM: The President departs Andrews Air Force Base en route Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 12:00 PM: The Vice President attends a lunch meeting with Cabinet Chiefs of Staff 12:30 PM: The President arrives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1:00 PM: The President delivers his second annual Back-to-School Speech 2:00 PM: The President departs Philadelphia, Pennsylvania en route Andrews Air Force Base 2:40 PM: The President arrives at Andrews Air Force Base 2:55 PM: The President arrives at the White House 3:30 PM: The Vice President hosts a conference call with Governors from across the country to discuss implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act   Indicates Events that will be livestreamed on WhiteHouse.gov/live. In Case You Missed It Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog.  President Obama in a Fairfax Backyard John Nicholas and Nicole Armstrong graciously host the President for a discussion on the economy at their home in Fairfax, Virginia with some of their neighbors. Revitalizing American Manufacturing Secretary of Energy Steven Chu visits A123 Systems in Michigan as they open largest lithium-ion automotive battery production facility in North America thanks to the Recovery Act. Boehner vs. His Party: Republicans Still Holding Middle Class Tax Cuts Hostage Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer discusses the pledge by Republicans in Congress to block middle class tax cuts unless additional cuts for the wealthiest Americans are also passed. President Obama to Historically Black Colleges and Universities: “You’ve Got a Partner in Me” President Obama speaks at a reception in honor of National Historically Black College and University Week. Get Updates Sign up for the Daily Snapshot   Stay Connected     Facebook Twitter YouTube Flickr iTunes         This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com Manage Subscriptions for e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com Sign Up for Updates from the White House Unsubscribe e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com | Privacy Policy Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

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My Thoughts On Google Instant Posted: 14 Sep 2010 04:13 AM PDT Everyone is talking about Google Instant; the new way for Google to display results. Image from Zenera on Flickr The basics are covered in many places: The Google Analytics Blog Official Announcement Google Instant and PPC SEMantiks also talks about the effect on PPC Rishil’s opinion is concise, insightful and to the point I want to talk a bit less about the implementation and a bit more about the implications. It is too early to say anything for sure but here are my thoughts on how the new Google UI will alter the PPC landscape. 1. There will be more impressions Impressions on Google Instant are counted differently to normal. Even thought Google are not recording impressions willy nilly (the user must interact with the page or wait 3 seconds) the total number of AdWords adverts served will increase. The interesting aspect is how these extra impressions will be distributed rather than if there will be extra impressions or not (they have to go somewhere). 2. The number of clicks will increase This one is much more of a guess than point 1. I can’t see the number of AdWords clicks dropping so it will either stay the same or increase. I’m going to go with “increase” for two reasons: I can’t imagine Google making a change that hits their bottom line Organic results are pushed even further down the page. 3. CTR will blah, blah, blah Who cares? Aside from quality score implications (discussed below) who gives a shit about CTR? Joking aside, I think this one will go both ways. On the one hand, there will be more impressions so CTR may go down. On the other hand the page interaction criteria for an impression to count introduces a sampling bias in what is counted as an impression. 4. Quality Score Make up some quality score numbers and perform the quality score calculation as it is described by Google. Now reduce the score for you and the you-1 ranked ad by 10% and repeat the calculation. Your CPC has not changed! The point I am trying to make it that I believe it is your quality score relative to other advertisers that matters. If the new interface penalises everyone equally then there is nothing to worry about. Of course, any advertiser who can find away to avoid a drop in quality score when everyone else is failing … ;-) 5. Redefining the “Head” A lot of people are talking about bidding on “stem” queries in order to capture searchers earlier in their query. For example an advertiser selling widgets may bid on “wikipedia” or “widnes” because these searches are triggered before the user has finished typing “widgets”. I don’t see this as being a massive game changer; it is no different to an advertiser selling black nike football boots bidding on “football boots”. The top of the head has been made bigger (the head now has a “hat”) but that is all. The game is still the same, but the pitch is larger. 6. The shorter, fatter tail I expect to see the number of different queries drop as people are steered down well defined search paths. However, it is important to remember that the suggestions aren’t set in stone so that discarding a keyword because it doesn’t appear in the suggestion box may mean that opportunities are missed later on. 7. CPCs CPCs may increase on head keywords that are stem phrases for valuable queries. Morrissons may start paying more for their brand terms in order to stay ahead of people trying to target people looking for mortgages. For keywords in the tail CPCs should fall; aggregating traffic from a larger number of search queries into one query will result in a small amount of inefficiancy that wasn’t there before; this should cause CPCs to fall (use the comments to correct me if I’m wrong). What I think will actually happen is that a larger number of advertisers bidding on a smaller number of keywords will cause CPCs to increase. © SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!