miercuri, 13 aprilie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog


How to Build Links Without Fancy Tools

Posted: 12 Apr 2011 01:44 PM PDT

Posted by Paddy_Moogan

A question that I get asked quite a bit is something along the lines of "what link building tools do you use?". The honest truth is that I don't use that many on client sites every day. I've certainly paid for and used quite a few over the last few years, but when I first started in SEO, I didn't have the cash to buy tools or subscribe to them. This forced me to do things manually for quite a long time, but it helped me learn how link building really works from the ground up.

I'm still a bit of an old school SEO in some senses. I still believe that anyone learning SEO should not be allowed to use tools straight away and should learn manual processes first. Here are a few things I believe every SEO should do before being allowed anywhere near tools -

  • Build a website using only Notepad and an FTP program
  • Manually submit your website to paid and free directories
  • Write an article which targets a specific keyword
  • Write a press release in four paragraphs
  • Hand write META data for an entire site based on a keyword list

I could go on...!  But I'm sure you get the idea.

The point is, I believe that its vital to know the manual process so that you learn how these things really work.

In the interests of giving away some actionable tips, I'm going to focus on the link building process and explain how I believe an SEO should start the learning process.

The Tools You can Use

  1. An email program
  2. A spreadsheet
  3. Google

See - I'm not totally mean, you can use some tools!

Below is the step by step process for getting links using only the three tools above. If you follow this process and learn to link build manually, it will help you much more in the long term and force you not to be reliant upon SEO tools. Whilst SEO tools can help you a lot, when it comes to link building, they should only assist your efforts - not do the link building for you.

1. Use Google to Find your Link Targets

I'm not going to talk too much about this, but the key thing here is to learn how to search. Sounds simple, but its something which is often taken for granted. You should start with the basics which I talk about in this post. The key thing here is to start with basic search queries, then learn how to refine those queries to save time and weed out results which you are not interested in. You can do this using some advanced search queries. However before you go off and use those outlined in the SEOmoz guide, try to come up with your own which are tailored to the site you are trying to get links for. 

After working on this for a while, you should feel pretty comfortable with finding link targets manually and quickly filtering out the ones that you are not interested in. All by using your own advanced search queries - don't use any tools for this!  Trust me, it will help you in the long run.

2. Before ANYTHING find contact details and record in your spreadsheet

Find contact details!  So many people spend ages figuring out if the site is a good one and looking for a page where they may get a link from. Then can’t find contact details!  Which means you’re a bit screwed – find contact details first.

At this point you will probably have had a quick look through the site and will have a feeling whether or not this site is relevant to you. If you feel it is, then add it to your spreadsheet. Do NOT use any tools to record these sites yet, there are tools out there that allow you to manage link targets in a CRM type system. However you need to learn manually what data you should be capturing about each link target. Some CRM tools allow you to capture tons of data, but do you really need it all?  Maybe, maybe not. But the key is to decide for yourself what data you need in order to contact the website about getting a link.

Once you have decided what data you want to capture, put it into your spreadsheet and make it easily sortable in columns.

3. Email the link target straight away

It seems to be the norm to collect link targets into a big spreadsheet, then email them all in one go. Sure this can work, but this isn’t the best way to develop link building skills. I’d advise you to send the outreach email straight away whilst the site is fresh in your mind. This also means you have to write an email that isn’t templated and is totally personal to them – this is fine. This will help you develop a sense of how to personalise emails to give yourself as much chance as possible of getting a link.

It is very important to learn how to craft an outreach email from scratch. At this point, do not write a template. It isn't the best way to learn. Make each and every email personal to the link target, this will teach you the value of personalising an email and exactly how you can do so.

4. Track your progress in a spreadsheet

As mentioned above, forget any fancy CRM or tracking systems, you’re still learning the ropes. Do it the basic way and use a spreadsheet. This will teach you to keep things simple and to only collect the data which is truly valuable, it will force you not to collect tons of metrics and details that you don’t really need.

As you email each target, put a note in the spreadsheet so you know whats going on and can sort by who you have already contacted.

5. The response or follow up

If you haven’t had a response after a few days, send a short, friendly follow up to them. If you still don’t get a reply, I’d leave them be. If you have a response, obviously make sure you respond promptly!  If the response you get isn’t positive, still reply to them in a friendly way. Perhaps ask them if its ok to contact them in the future if there is other stuff you have which may be of interest to them.

Keep track of the responses in your spreadsheet. You can mark each response with traffic lights to make it easy to see at a glance what the responses have been like -

  • Green - good response, probably going to get a link
  • Amber - warm response, will need some more work
  • Red - no way am I getting a link!

6. Record links secured

Make a note of the links that you have secured in your spreadsheet. Think about what metrics you should record about each one. Do you need the following?

  • URL
  • Anchor text
  • Page being linked to
  • Cache date
  • Domain Authority
  • PageRank

I'm not saying you need all of these, you should decide for yourself what is important and how you are going to measure the value of a link.

Whats next?

Well once you have mastered the process manually, you'll find that there are many tools that can speed up certain parts of this process. Using these tools is fine, but be aware that I'm yet to come across the perfect link building tool that does all of this to a high level of quality without human intervention. So knowing where you can automate and where you can't, is vitally important.

Doing this process manually will also help you choose your link building tools better as you'll know what attributes really matter to the whole process.

That's it for this post, I hope you found it useful and please feel free to leave any feedback in the comments.


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Watch Live: President Obama’s Speech on Fiscal Policy

The White House Wednesday, April 13, 2011
 


Today at 1:35 p.m. EDT, President Obama will give a speech at George Washington University where he will lay out his vision for long-term deficit reduction to put our nation on a more sustainable path.

You can watch the speech live at WhiteHouse.gov/live starting at 1:30 p.m. EDT.

Immediately following the speech Brian Deese of the National Economic Council will be taking your questions in a special Open for Questions event. Watch the live stream and submit your questions.

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Watch Live: President Obama's Speech on Fiscal Policy

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
 

Watch Live: President Obama's Speech on Fiscal Policy

Today at 1:35 p.m. EDT, President Obama will deliver a speech on fiscal policy at the George Washington University. Immediately afterward, Brian Deese of the National Economic Council will be answering your questions on the President’s speech.

Watch and engage at WhiteHouse.gov/live.

Photo of the Day

First Lady Michelle Obama greets CPT. Chris Bradke and his son Aydn in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, April 12, 2011. The First Lady and Dr. Jill Biden greeted an overflow crowd gathered for the launch of Joining Forces, a national initiative to support and honor America's service members and their families. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton) 

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog.

Another Example of How Regulatory Reform Eliminates Unnecessary Costs for Americans
The Environmental Protection Agency takes steps towards eliminating unnecessary costs on the American public and American businesses, announcing that it has updated a rule will save the milk and dairy industries as much as $140 million per year.

Welcome to JoiningForces.gov
President Obama, Vice President Biden, First Lady Obama and Dr. Biden launch Joining Forces, a national initiative to support and honor America’s service members and their families and a new website, JoiningForces.gov.

Why Young Americans Should Care About Equal Pay Day
Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Adviser and the Director of the Domestic Policy Council, discusses the impacts of unequal pay for women, and President Obama's actions to get equal pay for women under the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

10:10 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:40 AM: The President and the Vice President meet with bipartisan House and Senate leadership to discuss fiscal policy

1:35 PM: The President delivers a speech on fiscal policy WhiteHouse.gov/live

2:00 PM: Open for Questions: Speech on Fiscal Policy WhiteHouse.gov/live

3:30 PM: The Vice President meets with the Amir of Qatar, His Highness Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani

WhiteHouse.gov/live Indicates events that will be live streamed on White House.com/Live

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Andrew Wise of LinkWheelers Talks About the Panda Update Graywolf's SEO Blog

Andrew Wise of LinkWheelers Talks About the Panda Update Graywolf's SEO Blog


Andrew Wise of LinkWheelers Talks About the Panda Update

Posted: 12 Apr 2011 08:09 AM PDT

Post image for Andrew Wise of LinkWheelers Talks About the Panda Update

The following is a sponsored post.

For today’s post we’re going to be talking with Andrew Wise of SEOLinkWheelers.com you may remember I spoke with Andrew back in January (see Interview with Andrew Wise of SEOLinkWheelers.com). Today we’re going to be talking about the Panda update, can you tell us what you think where the most important changes from this update?

Panda was designed to go after so-called “content farms” that aggregate low-quality content based on the most searched keywords on Google, sites like eHow.com, About.com, etc. This update did a lot to remove the spam farms from the first page of the search results, which is great for quality publishers. Splogs were removed from the index and the majority of spinned content sites lost their rankings which brought (our clients) and other sites higher up in the rankings.

What art some strategy changes you think website owners and publishers need to make in a post Panda world?

What we found from Panda is sites with duplicate content got killed, but sites with original, editorial or opinion-content did well. Domain age plays a bigger role than ever in rankings, and for the sites that are doing really well, they have unique video content embedded on their pages, Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn, and pretty much any major social networking built into the site that signal to Google these are sites with “good” content.

What are some recommendations you make to clients to get the most out of Panda?

For site owners out there looking to capitalize on Panda, definitely take a look at definitely installing a daily/weekly blog for your site. Fresh, new content is more important than ever, and start to work-in Facebook and Twitter feeds into your site. The more links you’re getting from Facebook and Twitter, the better.

If you have duplicate content on your site, look to get those pages no-indexed in order to avoid your entire site appearing as a splog (spam blog).

For people who where adversely affected and had a rankings/traffic drop, do you think they can come back and what would you recommend?

For site owners that took a big hit, the good news is they probably didn’t see a drop in Bing or Yahoo, which gives you a foundation to build. To get your rankings back online, be sure to setup a Google Webmaster Tools account and dig through each segment of your site. Do you have a robots.txt file? If not create one, if you do, use it to no-index parts of your site that may be considered low-quality or duplicate content. Add new content to your site, create your social media profiles and integrate them into the site.

Once you’re done, try going to Google and contacting the spam team. Tell them you’ve fixed up your site and want them to reconsider it.

Let’s talk about your company and the packages you offer have you made any changes since this update?

Panda is arguably the largest algorithm change in the past 10 years. It affected more than 16% of all search queries, so it was essential for us to evaluate and modify our link wheels. What we found is the articles post-Panda needed more length, we previously were writing 200 word unique articles, and after tons of testing we found that 300 word articles got us a best index rate and passed more “link juice”. We experimented with 400 word articles as well but found that by increasing the word count 100, it wasn’t worth the added cost to our clients since 300 words got the same result. Additionally, link wheel Web 2.0 sites have been continually abused by automated software so we reduced the amount of Web 2.0 sites to only those with more strict editorial standards and to those sites which we constantly saw great indexing rates.

After introducing our new packages, we are seeing great results for our clients and are continuing to experiment with variations that can continue to improve our service. The new packages are the same price as our old packages, we’ve just increased the quality and reduced the total link count of each package.

Lets change gears, when we talked last time about Google looking for other signals and we talked about social services. Since that time Google has launched plus one and Larry Page recently said Google employees bonuses are directly tied to their success on social platforms. Do you think people can still avoid social media and be successful, and what do you recommend to those people who are still on the social sidelines?

Social media is here to stay, that’s for sure. I’m not a very social person, so I’m not big on Twitter or Facebook chatting away with folks, but I’ve found a great way to promote our brand as a non-social person. I love to go on Quora.com to answer questions. I’m always looking for intriguing questions about SEO and providing a poignant answer, and for those of you out there who aren’t that social or don’t know how to to Twitter/Facebook, jump on Quora. I guarantee your industry is represented on there and it gives you a chance to promote your company, and increase your knowledge at the same time.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me today Andrew, since you have shared your insight with us today, why don’t you take this opportunity to tell my readers why they should look at your companies services …

Michael, thanks again for the opportunity to speak with you on your blog, we saw a HUGE response last time I spoke to you and we offered a 10% discount and we want to offer the same discount for your readers who didn’t have a chance to try our services.

Use the coupon code “graywolf2″ to get 10% off your first order from SEOLinkWheelers.com.

The preceding has been a sponsored post. Find out more information about sponsored posts.

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  2. Traffic Down From Panda Update – Diversify Your Traffic Sources Recently Google had an update and some webmasters were significantly...
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Andrew Wise of LinkWheelers Talks About the Panda Update

Seth's Blog : In search of a biz monkey (why bother?)

In search of a biz monkey (why bother?)

Andrew Chen coins a great term. A biz monkey is a replaceable, Powerpoint toting, suit wearing, acronym-spewing middle manager business dude drone. They are quick to comment and sneer, slow to actually ship.

When something is scarce, it's valuable. MBA's with buzzwords and the ability to raise a million dollars around some web idea are not scarce. They are fungible.

People who understand technology and are willing to bend it to their will, on the other hand, are scarce. They can't be found with a classified ad on Craigslist or in a blind project ad on eLance.

The job of the smart business person isn't to fish in waters where coders are cheap. It's to have enough initiative and vision that the best coders in the world will realize that they'll do better with you than without you.

Business people add value when they make things happen, not when they seek to hire cheap.

 
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marți, 12 aprilie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Things You’ll Only See In America

Posted: 12 Apr 2011 05:33 PM PDT

Things you'll only see in america.








































































































World's Most Expensive Shotgun

Posted: 12 Apr 2011 05:25 PM PDT

The Swedish company VO Vapen, which manufactures an exclusive weapon. Today, the company produces the most luxurious hunting rifles that are made ​​entirely by hand. All products are very limited edition: the year is only a few guns. The price of this unique weapon is 820,000 dollars, making it the most expensive gun in the world. It is more expensive than a good home.
























Retro Cosplay

Posted: 12 Apr 2011 04:15 PM PDT

These are retro Cosplays that range from Worldcon to WonderCon from the 1970' to the 1980's. Cosplays have been around as long as there have been fans. It appears that people have been dressing themselves up in science fiction and fantasy costumes for a long time.



A Star Trek convention in the 70s. Yes, that's George Takei judging.


Dark Phoenix looking particularly sullen. WorldCon, 80s.


Orion slave girl with some nerd at a Star Trek con in the 70s.


More 70s Star Trek. Lots of Vulcans!


Red Sonja! This particular Sonja is Wendy Pini, who would go on to illustrate the classic ElfQuest.


Elric of Melnibone and his consort Cymoril. WorldCon, 70s.


Rollerball cosplayers, late 70s.


Ming the Merciless and Maleficent. WorldCon, 70s.


Comic book and movie characters weren't the only cosplay subjects — here you can see a woman dressed as National Lampoon's comic strip character "Danger Rangerette". 70s.


Several Red Sonjas and a lucky wizard. WorldCon, 70s.


Lastly, a classic — Doctor Who, K-9, and Leela. WorldCon, 70s.

Source: fanboy


Animal Whisperers

Posted: 12 Apr 2011 11:59 AM PDT

These are some very funny photos of cats and dogs whispering into each other ears. Makes you wonder if they are really communicating with each other. Maybe not, but you sure couldn't tell it by looking.






























Ridiculous Bacon Bazooka

Posted: 12 Apr 2011 11:29 AM PDT

This weird bazooka was created for this year's Bacon Day. A three-foot long, battery-operated weapon encased in 15 pounds of piggy goodness.

If you're not terribly impressed with the force of the Bacon Bazooka, please do keep in mind that it's firing a summer sausage here—a model rocket would yield much better results. And for those concerned about the waste of precious sizzlin strips, rest assured that all of the meat was donated and well past its expiration date.




















Source: tifr.us


Funniest Japanese Girls Prank

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 09:50 PM PDT

Two young Japanese girls turn into two old Japanese men and there's a photo to prove it! A presentation of the Just For Laughs Gags. The funny hidden camera pranks show for the whole family.


A Girl and Her Room

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 09:46 PM PDT

A girl and her room, Photographer Rania Matar has taken dozens of pictures of teenage girls in their bedrooms, in both the US and the Middle East. More images.