Central Perk

marți, 3 aprilie 2012

Using Passive Link Building to Build Links with No Budget

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 01:40 PM PDT

Not everyone has massive budgets or time to invest in link building so this post is for all the people out there that need to find creative ways to get the highest ROI from any time they do invest in link building. I want to show you a process I use to get links without spending all day sending outreach emails or building expensive infographics; I call this passive link building. This won’t suit everyone but it’s designed to help those that have just launched their website or one-man-bands. Not only do you get easy links but you also get tons of great content for your site.

The process is built around two key points:

1. It’s better to give than to receive.

2. If you help someone out, they find it much harder to say no when you ask something from them.

Passive link building is about positioning you and your blog in a way that gets as many people as possible applying to guest post on your site. You can then be picky and pick the cream of the crop. The image below shows the process.

passive link building process

Even if you have a big budget you can still use this process to passively build relationships and get more links. The process is outlined below and at the end I’ve got an extra tip that anyone who’s doing outreach should be doing right now.

Filling the funnel

In order for this to work, you need to be willing to accept guest posts. Don’t be afraid to accept guest posts. Apart from being an excellent way of keeping your blog updated with fresh content, this is the foundation of the passive link building process.

Be prepared to get a lot of email but just because someone asks or even sends you content doesn’t mean you are obliged to post it. Keep the quality and standards of the guest posts you publish very high. Not only does this mean you get better content on your site, it also sets the standard for other people wanting to guest post. Below are the four methods I use to fill the funnel.

Have a Guest blogger page

People search the web all the time using advanced search queries such as:

keyword phrase intitle:guest post

keyword phrase inurl:guest post

You want to be found for searches like this so create a page that satisfies both these queries for your industry and you’ll get a bunch of people contacting you. When they get in touch ask to see other examples of articles they have written and have a look through their site to see if this is a site you would be happy to link to. If all looks good, give them a brief with some guidelines on what you expect in order to publish the post. This would include things like minimum word count, if you expect images, possible titles and any other requirements you may have. If you want to see an example of this, John Doherty has a page on his personal blog for SEOs looking to guest post.

Sign up for Blogger Link Up

If you’ve not heard of Blogger link up it’s a free email service from Cathy Stucker (@CathyStucker) that’s usually delivered three times a week. There are 5 main sections to the email:

1. Request Guest Posts

2. Offer Guest Posts

3. Request Sources for Interviews

4. Offer Products for Review/Giveaway

5. Announce Contests and Giveaways

They are pretty self-explanatory but most people who sign up for this are pretty selfish and only use it to find sites to guest post on; DON’T! Sign up for both sides of the service. Do some basic keyword research, find a bunch of long tail searches you want to rank for, make them into titles and ask people to write them for you. Not only do you get free content that you would need to write anyway, you also build relationships for life. Remember you don’t need to post a guest post exactly how they send it, if you don’t think the style suits your site, work with the writer to edit it and come to an agreement that you are both happy with. Sign up for Blogger Link Up Here.

Sign up for My Blog Guest

If you haven’t heard of MBG, it’s a service that’s run by Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) that allows people to request or provide guest posts, sign up for both as per my recommendation for Blogger Link up. You can sign up for the service here http://myblogguest.com/

Turn the Spammers into Prospects

Everyone hates spam and if you have a website or a blog I’m sure you get this type of email all the time

Dear Webmaster,

We are running a campaign to increase the Link Popularity of our website. We are looking for some good potential sites like yours.

I have reviewed your website and found that it holds value in my case. I request you to consider listing my URL under your resources section…….

Don’t just hit the trash button, remember not everyone is an SEO, some people just don’t know any better and have heard from a friend of a friend that exchanging links helps your website rank well in the search engines; give them a chance, I keep a spreadsheet with the domains of the people that contact me to exchange links then import them to a tool like Buzzstream. It will go off and gather key metrics like DA and PageRank which you can then use to filter the junk and email the good sites back with something like this:

Dear “Name”,

Thanks for getting in touch regarding exchanging links but it’s not our policy to exchange links with other sites. We do however accept quality guest posts from other webmasters, if you would like to write a piece of content on our blog you can link back to your site in the author’s bio area. Here are some suggested topics…………..

Sure you’ll never hear from the majority of those sites again, but it takes two seconds to do, and if they do accept your offer you can use them in the next stage of the plan; getting links to your site.

Action - Get Some Links!

At this stage in the process you still don’t have any links to your site. All you’ve been doing up until now is building out a list of webmasters that now owe you a favour. Now you need to convince those people to let you post on their site. Social media makes this easy. When they post on your site, make sure you promote the post on social media, follow them on Twitter and Google plus. From now on you’re being their biggest fan, reply to a couple of their tweets comment on their blog and generally just be nice to them, you want to become a familiar name to them and build a real relationship.

Finally hit them up on email and ask to guest post, something like this usually works really well.

Hey “name”,

Since your post on my site I’ve been reading a lot of your content and it’s really good. Any chance I could repay the favour and write a guest post for your site?

That’s it, don’t make it too long, keep it casual and finish with a question. I swear the success rate on this process is insane. Of course you’ll get the odd person that will say no or just ignore you but you haven’t lost anything and you got a good piece of content for your site out of it.

People don’t like to say no (hence ending the email with a question), especially when you’ve done them a favour by letting them post on your site.

Ok to round off I want to leave you with a #protip, here it goes….

Use Real Names and get Rel=Author on Guest Posts

How many people (rightly or wrongly) have at some point done low quality article marketing, spun content, or written an article promoting things like forex one week fat loss the next …?

Did you put your real name next to it?

Of course you didn’t!

Why? Because it was bad content and you would be judged by your peers.

Google knows this and that’s why Rel=author is going to be one of the biggest trust signals in the coming years. If you are consistently writing quality content within the same industry (not poker one week, weight loss the next) that gets social shares, attracts links and is on well-respected blogs (owned by another well respected author) Google knows you’re not some shady internet marketer that’s promoting the latest e-book on Clickbank. This is awesome and everyone that’s trying to build a legitimate business should be using it.

Anyway here’s the important part, how do you use this?

Lots of people know about Rel=author, even more know about guest posting but very few combine both. Use Rel=author in your author bio at the end of guest posts. Even if the site owner doesn’t use it and you don’t have an author page on the site you can still do it.

Just add a link to your G+ profile with Rel=author attached in the bio then link back to the site from your “contributor to” section of your G+ profile. That’s it! Google will even show you how to do it here: You write an article for a website, and you have no author page on that domain. I’ve been doing this recently for a client and it’s working like a charm. SEOmoz is also set up similar, the image below shows my rel=author showing up in the SERPS for my previous post.

Craig Bradford rel=author

Follow the above process and you get free content, links and exposure for a tiny investment of time or money.

Extra tip – Don’t just put rel=author on your news or blog posts, if you only have one author on your site, add it site-wide to get even more exposure in the SERPS. This is completely white hat and is exactly what Matt Cutts does on his site. Check out this site search SERP. Doing this means not only do your content pages get rel=author but category pages for products, about pages and any other page on your site also gets it too.

Leave comments and get me on Twitter or Google plus

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Show Keyword Position Using Filters And Advanced Segments

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 03:13 AM PDT

Posted by Bryan Casson

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.

There are many ways to filter your Google Anlaytics results, but how many of the methods out there can actually give us data that we can present to our clients in a way that they understand? After reading various posts on filtering organic traffic in Google Analytics I decided to convert the results we got from the filter into readable, valuable content that the client could understand. The end product was a easy to understand graph showing the position of your searched keywords as a percentage of total visits:

I really believe that this is valuable from a reporting point of view. How many of your clients have asked if their keywords are rank in the top five positions or better yet, in the 1st position. Well now you can tell them that 33% of their total visits are from keywords ranked in the top five positions in Google. If Google displays a not provided result due to their new privacy policy, we can at least assign a position to the result and get an indication of where that mystery keyword is located. For my results I decided to define my target down to organic visits including universal results, however you can rewrite the filter to suit your needs.

So how do we get results like this?

You can start of by reading Danny Ng post on "Track SEO Organic Rankings with Google Analytics", where he walks us through a simple set of filters that allow us to put "Universal" + "Organic" search data into Google Analytics. In summary, the filters we are going to need are as follows:

Step 1 (Creating the Filters):

We need to create a set of filters under a new profile to pull only organic Google traffic and allocate a keyword position to the keywords in Google Analytics. It is suggested that you create a new profile for these filters as it will rewrite your Analytics data.

Step 1: Filter 1 (Extracting the data):

We need to create a set of filters to extract the ranking data from the (cd) parameter and hold it for us in custom field 1.

Advanced Analytics Filter Extract Ranking Data

Step 1: Filter 2 (Displaying the data):

We will then need a filter to grab the information from custom field 1 and show the results under the "Traffic Sources > Search > Organic" section of your Google Analytics.

Advanced Analytics Filter to Rewrite Campaign Data

Note: Be sure that the filter order is correct, Filter 1 must be above filter 2 in the order.

Assign Filter Order In Google Analytics

After a few hours you will start to see the results. Numbers will start to appear next to your keywords showing their organic positions (including universal results).

Results Of Organic Keyword Filter

Step 2 (Segmenting the Data):

Step 2: Segment 1 (Position Top 1 Segment): Create a new segment under Advanced Segments > +New Custom Segment and call the number position you wish to segment:

Segment Your Organic Keyword Positions

Step 2: Segment 2 (Position Top 5 Segment): Create a new segment under Advanced Segments > +New Custom Segment and use the "or" statement to add numbers 1-5:

Repeat Your Segmenting For Organic Positions

Step 2: Segment3 (Position Top 10 Segment): Create a new segment under Advanced Segments > +New Custom Segment and use the "or" statement to add numbers 1-10

You can repeat this to get Top 50 or Top 100 if you really have the time. Wait a couple days so that you can get some good data in and then turn on your advanced segments options "Position Top 1" , "Position Top 5" and "Position Top 10" along with the segment "All Visits" to get some very valuable results.

Activate Your Advanced Segments

That is it, let me know what you think. I have shown this position segmentation to a few of my clients and they are loving it. I know that there are many filters out there but from a client point of view, this method is very easy to understand.

A New Way to Tour the White House

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, April 3, 2012

A New Way to Tour the White House

Since their first days in the White House, the Obamas have been very focused on truly opening the doors of the "People's House" and making 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue more accessible to all Americans. We're excited to roll out a new phase in this ongoing effort: an online 360 degree tour of the public rooms of the White House.

Find out more and tour the White House online:

Seth's Blog : If your happiness is based on always getting a little more than you've got...

If your happiness is based on always getting a little more than you've got...

then you've handed control over your happiness to the gatekeepers, built a system that doesn't scale and prevented yourself from the brave work that leads to a quantum leap.

The industrial system (and the marketing regime) adore the mindset of 'a little bit more, please', because it furthers their power. A slightly higher paycheck, a slightly more famous college, an incrementally better car--it's easy to be seduced by this safe, stepwise progress, and if marketers and bosses can make you feel dissatisfied at every step along the way, even better for them.

Their rules, their increments, and you are always on a treadmill, unhappy today, imagining that the answer lies just over the next hill...

All the data shows us that the people on that hill are just as frustrated as the people on your hill. It demonstrates that the people at that college are just as envious as the people at this college. The never ending cycle (no surprise) never ends.

An alternative is to be happy wherever you are, with whatever you've got, but alway hungry for the thrill of creating art, of being missed if you're gone and most of all, doing important work.

• Email to a friend •

luni, 2 aprilie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

My Wife Joanne Has ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease
Eurozone Unemployment Hits 15-Year High (and About to Get Much Worse); "Official Denial" In Spain
German Manufacturing PMI Back in Contraction, New Orders Plunge, Price Inflation Up

My Wife Joanne Has ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:13 PM PDT

Today I'm going to share a personal struggle with you. This is news I've largely kept to a small circle of close friends over the past few years and is difficult to talk about. The time has now come to enlist the support of a wider community, and perhaps together, we can make a difference.

Running this site and publishing commentary as frequently as I do demands a tremendous amount of my attention. However, my blog is not the #1 focus of my life. That would be my wife, Joanne.

Joanne has ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. More specifically, she has Progressive Bulbar Palsy a particularly aggressive form of the disease.

Joanne's father and grandfather both died of ALS, although the general claim is ALS is not hereditary.

ALS is painless, non-contagious, and extremely cruel. The cause of ALS is unknown, but motor functions of the central nervous system cease to function although the mind remains fully aware to the end.

The symptoms in the above link are what we are going through now. For a year she has been on a feeding tube, unable to eat or drink anything, including water. She now struggles walking.

Joanne is the love of my life. We have been married 27 years. In the past two years ALS has taken away most of the things Joanne loves including golf, kayaking, walking, biking, and dining out.

Joanne has lots of support from her friends. One of her best friends, Kathy, stays with us 4 days a week to help take care of Joanne.

There is another love in Joanne's life and that is our dog Raleigh, a MiKi. He is tiny, weighing in at about 8 pounds. We got Raleigh shortly before Joanne's diagnosis. However, we both already knew the score.

I found Raleigh online, from a breeder located in Virginia. The breeder's kids were studying state capitals and Raleigh was named after the State Capital of North Carolina.

The one thing ALS can never take away from Joanne is her spirit and sense of humor.

Joanne's laughter is not quite the same now as she cannot manage to say even a single word. Sounds like laughing, crying, and pain are primarily recognizable by pitch. Nonetheless, when Joanne laughs, she still lights up a room, and that will never change.

Communication

For now, Joanne communicates on a Boogie Board Writing Tablet and also with "Proloquo2Go" a very nice text-to-voice application on her IPad.

Her writing ability is on the downside and we are now investigating eye communication devices that can detect words she is looking at.

Raffle in Support of ALS

I am sponsoring a raffle for the benefit of ALS research. 50% of the proceeds of the raffle will go to the Les Turner Foundation, with the money specifically earmarked for ALS research.

The other 50% will go to raffle winners.

My goal is to sell 30,000 tickets at $200 each. If we can sell that number of tickets, $3 million will go to ALS research and $3 million to raffle winners in the following breakdown (assuming all the tickets are sold, otherwise on a similar percentage basis).

1st Prize $1 Million
2nd Prize $600,000
3rd Prize $300,000
4th Prize $300,000
5th Prize $300,000
6th Prize $100,000
7th Prize $100,000
8th Prize $100,000
9th Prize $100,000
10th Prize $100,000

If all tickets are sold, 1 in 3,000 will win a minimum of $100,000, and the lottery winner will receive $1.0 million.

You cannot beat these odds in any lottery anywhere.

Buy Lottery Tickets Today!

Please Support ALS Research.
Click here to Buy Lottery Tickets today!

Note: In addition to buying lottery tickets, you can also click on the above link to make a donation of any size. Every bit helps!

Corporate Sponsors Needed

We also seek corporate sponsorship for $10,000 a link, with 100% of the money going to the Les Turner Foundation. Corporate sponsors will receive a permanent link (for the 6 month life of the raffle), from the ALS raffle page to a website page of their choosing. Ads must be tasteful.

Please Email Mike "Mish" Shedlock to discuss corporate sponsorship.

This is a good opportunity for sponsors to reach new audiences for minimal advertising dollars, while helping a very worthy cause.

Thanks for your help and understanding.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Eurozone Unemployment Hits 15-Year High (and About to Get Much Worse); "Official Denial" In Spain

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 10:35 AM PDT

Reuters reports Eurozone Unemployment Reaches Near 15-Year High

Unemployment in the euro zone reached its highest level in almost 15 years in February, with more than 17 million people out of work, and economists said they expected job office queues to grow even longer later this year.

Joblessness in the 17-nation currency zone rose to 10.8 percent - in line with a Reuters poll of economists - and 0.1 points worse than in January, Eurostat said on Monday.

February's unemployment level - last hit in June 1997 - marked the 10th straight monthly rise and contrasts sharply with the United States where the economy has been adding jobs since late last year.

"We expect it to go higher, to reach 11 percent by the end of the year," said Raphael Brun-Aguerre, an economist at JP Morgan in London. "You have public sector job cuts, income going down, weak consumption. The economic growth outlook is negative and is going to worsen unemployment."

"With inflation remaining stubbornly high throughout the euro zone, there is very little hope of a consumer recovery," said Jennifer McKeown, an economist at Capital Markets.

"Official Denial" In Spain

I am amused by the official denial by the Spanish Finance Minister last week. Please consider Spain reveals deep cuts to meet deficit goal

Spain announced deep cuts to its central government budget on Friday as it battles to convince European partners and debt markets it can rein in its budget deficit in the face of growing complaints from the public.

The government said it would make savings of 27 billion euros ($36 billion) for the rest of 2012 from the central government budget, equivalent to around 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. The figure includes tax rises and spending cuts of around 15 billion euros announced in December.

The cuts come despite popular resistance - a general strike on Thursday disrupted transport, halted industry and saw some minor violence - and against a grim economic backdrop; Spain is thought to have fallen back into recession in the first quarter and has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union.

Speaking in Copenhagen after an EU ministerial meeting, Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said the measures would be implemented as soon as possible, adding that any suggestions that Madrid needed emergency international funds was "absurd".

Ding, ding, ding, the official denial bells are sounding loudly.

For more on the official denial theory, please see Eurozone Breakup Logistics (Never Believe Anything Until It's Officially Denied)

Here is a far more realistic comment from IHS Global Insight economist Raj Badiani.

"I suspect that the government could be forced to implement further austerity measures later this year, with lingering economic downturn set to place additional strains on an already perilous budget deficit reduction plan. The main risk is that the government's tax revenue projections for 2012 look too optimistic."

That Spain will come up short on its budget targets and GDP estimates is not a risk; it's a certainty.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

German Manufacturing PMI Back in Contraction, New Orders Plunge, Price Inflation Up

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:14 AM PDT

As expected (by me anyway), the Markit/BME Germany Manufacturing PMI® shows Germany is back in contraction.

Weaker new order intakes lead to deteriorating manufacturing business conditions in March.

Key Points:

Output growth slows to only marginal pace

Sharpest fall in new work for three months

Cost inflation highest since July 2011

Historical Overview:

Summary:

The seasonally adjusted Markit/BME Germany Purchasing Managers' Index® (PMI®) dipped back below the neutral 50.0 mark in March, thereby ending two months of marginal improvement. At 48.4, down from 50.2 in February, the index pointed to a moderate deterioration in overall operating conditions, and was the lowest since December 2011. Moreover, March's PMI reading was six index points lower than the average for 2011 (54.8). The output and new orders components of the headline index have both moderated substantially since their highs at the beginning of last year. By sector, investment goods producers have seen the biggest slowdown compared with the rates of growth registered in early 2011.

March data pointed to a marked reduction in new export orders, extending the current period of decline to nine months. Survey respondents mainly cited softer global trade flows, with weaker trends in exports to China and across the euro area largely offsetting a recent upturn in demand from the USA.

A marked drop in purchasing activity at manufacturers contributed to reduced supply chain pressure and the fastest improvement in vendor performance since July 2009. Average cost burdens nonetheless continued to rise at a robust pace in March, with the rate of inflation reaching its highest in eight months.

Given the complete collapse in the periphery, German manufacturing will eventually plunge hard.

It is illogical to expect Germany can hold up Europe by itself, especially with a simultaneous slowdown in China. For details, please see China Manufacturing PMI™ Decreases at Second-Fastest Rate in Three Years.

US manufacturing appears to be chugging along nicely, at least on a relative basis, but the warmest weather in history and robust car sales led the way. Don't expect that to last. Headwinds are enormous.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

marți, 3 aprilie 2012

Using Passive Link Building to Build Links with No Budget

Using Passive Link Building to Build Links with No Budget