The Optimizer - Weekly SEO News

Matt Cutts has some good advice over at his blog on paid links and PageRank, and why the two do not blend.

Where monetized linking is permitted, the basic things to have in mind for any reciprocal or monetized relationship with a web site or contributor are:

• Legitimate, honest and ethical
• Professional in their presentation
• Knowledgeable in your industry as well as their own

The problem, as Google tends to see it, seems to be that maintaining these standards is problematic, when an effort to do so is even put forth. Matt gives an example involving a search for clean and unbiased information on a serious medical issue, then goes on to show how paid links corrupt the results with advertising litter. He sums it all up rather nicely with the following, "If you put your user hat back on, I hope you'll agree that you wouldn't want a serious medical search for brain tumor treatments to be affected by inaccurate or uninformed posts. In fact, if you stumbled across these entries on the web, you might not know whether someone got paid for writing these posts. In the same way that a regular surfer would want disclosure to know if a post were paid, all the major search engines also want to make sure that paid posts are adequately disclosed to search engines as well. Google's documentation for webmasters gives examples of how to do that. I believe the vast majority of our users don't want our organic search results for something as serious as brain tumors to be affected by links in paid posts."

I agree wholeheartedly. There's nothing more irritating for the end-user than to be dragged off course during serious research by advertising copy - not to mention poorly constructed and thinly-veiled advertising copy - or worse, half-formed opinion posing as educated scholarly review.

Keeping your links clean and ethical means not only keeping your PageRank but keeping your readers' trust.

Labels: advertising, google, links, matt cutts, pagerank

I'm sure most of you know, backlinks from .gov and .edu sites have a higher value in the major search engines than .com, .org or other toplevel domains. Finding backlinks from these coveted domains can be difficult if you don't know where to look.

Question: How do I get backlinks from .edu and .gov domains?
Answer: Search for them using Google!

Use following Google searches (without the quotes):


1. "blog site:.gov"
2. "blog site:.edu"
3. "suggest url site:.gov"
4. "add url site:.gov"
5. "add site site:.edu"
6. Get specific; if your site is about real estate, try searching for "real estate blog site:.edu"

Please don't go spamming all the .gov and .edu sites with your URL. If you are submitting to government or educational blogs, keep your comments about the subject matter or they probably won't get posted at all (Most comment systems are moderated).

Happy Googling.

Labels: links, seo tips

Google apparently has been updating their count of backlinks in the last couple days.

To check your site's backlink list in Google, go to http://www.google.com and type link:www.yoursite.com in the search box.

Keep in mind, Google only shows a sample of the backlinks that they have indexed. Noone knows for sure just what percentage the sampling is. If I were to guess, I would say it shows about 5-10%.

Labels: google, links

A reciprocal link is when a web site links to you and you link back to them.

If you own a website, I'm sure you've received emails asking for link exchanges. This article's purpose is to help you decide who you should be linking to and why.

Look before you link!

Indiscriminate linking can be harmful to your search engine rankings and your reputation. When considering another website for a link exchange, always check out the potential link partner's web site and the page that your link is going to be placed on.

Five essential rules to follow when choosing a link partner.


1. Make sure that the website is related to yours. For example, if you're a real estate agent, don't exchange links with pages about diet pills or casinos. Link to other real estate related web sites, like mortgages or real estate agents in other areas.

2. Don't link to link farms. You can tell a page is a link farm by the fact that there's usually no company logo, hundreds of links and no real content.

3. Think of your outbound link as a recommendation for that site. If the web site or link page is of poor quality, don't link to it. Ask yourself, "Would I recommend this page to my visitors?"

4. Ensure your link will be found by search engines. Just paste the URL of the web page you'll be linked on into Google, Yahoo, or MSN. If the page comes up in the results, it's indexed.

5. Examine the links on the potential link exchange partner's web page. Make sure the links point straight to other sites and are not redirected or use JavaScript linking code. Look at the HTML source code and check the the links for the following text: "rel=nofollow". This code tells major search engines not to count this link in ranking algorithms.

If done correctly, reciprocal linking can be a great way to increase your online traffic. So, don't forget! Always look before you link!

Labels: links

Exchanging links can be a great way to build relations with other sites and boost your ranking at the same time. You never know how many friends you can make and what you can learn from them. So let's get started.

First, you need to create a links page. This links page needs to look and feel the same as the rest of your site and should include instructions on how to link to your site and an example of the description you want. If you use buttons for links, make sure you include a text link somewhere so search engines can find your links page easily.

Now that you have your links page ready, it's time to start looking for link partners. When searching for link partners, start by searching for your keywords in Google and choose 10 to 20 sites that have content that is related to or can compliment your site. Then, add a text link with a brief description of thier site on your links page.

Now it's time to send off an email to each site and ask if they will exchange links with you. I have a basic form letter I use for this (form letter at end of article). However, I add something personal about their site, a compliment about something I liked. This lets them know that I'm not a bot sending spam, but a real person interested in exchanging links that has actually took the time to review their site.

If you have not heard from them in 5 to 7 days, go ahead and send another request but not the same one, change this one. You might mention that you have not heard back from them and that you feel your visitors could benefit from their content. You may also want to see if they have a phone number listed and give them a call. I know, as a seasoned webmaster, I enjoy the phone calls I get. Don't be afraid to make several contact attempts. Following up on your link requests is essential. However, don't bombard their email with requests. Always send one last email letting them know you're removing their link and that maybe you can exchange links another time. Always end on a positive note. The idea is to build business relationships, not upset people.

When you get a response that your request has been accepted, go and verify your link is accurate and that the description is to your liking. Don't be afraid to ask for an edit if you're unhappy with the link.

Having a link on a site with a high page rank in Google is better than a page with no or low page rank. Although, until you gain page rank of your own, you may have to settle for links that have low rank. This does not mean you can't request links from high ranking sites. Just be prepared that they may not accept you until you have high page rank. Save these contacts for a latter campaign.

Next week, we will look into some software that can help you with your reciprocal linking campaign and review some websites designed to help you exchange links.

Sample Form letter example for approaching link exchange partners.
******************
Dear John Doe,

My name is Your Name, I am the webmaster for yoursite.com. I have visited your site, sitename.com, and I think that the content could be of interest to our web site visitors.

I have already placed a link to your site along with a description at www.yourstie.com/link.html If you want anything modified or if you have any other cross-promotion ideas, let me know.

I would appreciate if you placed a link back to our site. As soon as I am aware that you have done so, I will move your link to the top of the list in your category. If you put our link on your main page, I will also do the same for you. If you have a banner you'd rather use, let me know.

You can find our linking code at: www.yoursite.com/suggest-link.html.

Sincerely,
Sign Here
******************
Author: Mark Hochhaus

How to Approach Potential Link Exchange Partners presented by: Technet - Your affordable search engine optimization and online marketing company. Call today at 360.503.8878 or visit us online at http://www.increased-online-traffic.com

Labels: links

You've spent many hours trying to increase your online traffic with your linking campaign. You've sent out 200 e-mails pleading with other web sites to trade links with your site. Many of your e-mails bounce back.

The requests that find thier targets get rejected for numerous reasons. For example, your Google pagerank is too low or your links pages are dynamic and not static, etc., blah, blah, etc., ad nauseum. Out of those 200 requests, you wind up getting 25 reciprocal links, if you are lucky.

So, you say to yourself, "Great, now i have 25 more links!". But are these links really worth it? Do they generate any traffic?

There are many reasons why your links won't even get counted or indexed by the search engines. If your link is on a page among 100 other links, or the page is irrelevant to your subject matter, the page probably won't hold much weight with most search engines. It's also rumored that Google is changing it's algorithm to discount reciprocal links altogether.

So, what can you do to get your links indexed and noticed? Write your own content, distribute it to article directories or trade it with other related websites!

Here are 8 tips on increasing your online traffic with distributed content.

1. Try to write about popular content. The more popular it is, the more people will download it and want to include it on their websites and the more links you'll have pointing back to your site.
2. Try not to use any promotional jargon or sales pitches in your articles. If you do, many webmasters will not want to include your article on thier site.
3. Use plain English. Don't try to get too technical. Read it back to yourself and make sure you don't get tongue-tied when reading it.
4. If possible, work in your site's main keyword phrases into your articles. If your site is about online marketing, write articles about online marketing.
5. Make sure you include an "About the Author" section at the bottom. Make it somewhat short and always include a link back to your site in an anchor tag. And once again, include your keywords in the link text.
6. Proofread your article carefully. I see so many articles out there with misspellings. It just makes you look bad. After you spell check, have a friend or co-worker read it to double check for errors.
7. When you're finished with your article, submit it to popular article directories like goarticles.com, articlefactory.com, amazines.com and imparticles.com. For a fee, there are even services out there that will submit your articles to the top directories for you.
8. Make sure you publish your articles on your own website too, more content equals more traffic. Don't worry about getting penalized by search engines for having duplicate content. You only get penalized if the content is duplicated on your own domain, not if it's duplicated on other websites.

So there you have it. Distributed content allows you to make every link count, by creating targeted links that directly contribute to your search engine rankings, and by delivering targeted traffic on it's own. And besides, it might even make you famous!

Labels: links