Building links is one of the best ways to achieve rankings on the search engines and increase traffic to your site; more importantly, it tells Google how relevant your site is. However, people often make bad decisions when it comes to link building; here are the 25 don’t s of link building. Please feel free to comment with your own additions.
Don’t:
1. Hide links off a page.
This is a sneaky CSS trick Google doesn’t like.
If you’re a business looking to promote yourself through social media, one of the key sites you’ll want to look at is Facebook. Facebook is one of the largest social media networking sites on the web and is great for people of all ages. MySpace is good too, but Facebook caters to a larger, more diverse audience.
After you’ve created a profile on Facebook, your next step as a business should be to create a fan page. A fan page is a GREAT way to add contacts, post gimmicks like contests and talk about your company. If you come up with a clever enough plan, you can easily gain many “fans.”
Here are the top 4 reasons to make a Facebook fan page for your website now:
I was catching up with Brent Csutora’s blog the other day and found this great video of the “poetic prophet” AKA Rapper Chuck. His gimmick is very clever and his rap neatly encompasses the key points anyone should look for when they’re trying to promote their website online.
Here’s his video; check it out if you have a chance:
Identifying link farm spam pages
From the Abstract:
In this paper, we present algorithms for detecting these link farms automatically by first generating a seed set based on the common link set between incoming and outgoing links of Web pages and then expanding it. Links between identified pages are reweighted, providing a modified web graph to use in ranking page importance.
To summarize:
They have developed an algorithm that performs three steps:
1. Generate a seed set from the whole data set.
2. The expansion step to propagate the initial badness
value to additional pages.
3. The ranking step which will combine the badness value
together with normal link-based ranking algorithm,
such as ranking by popularity, HITS, or PageRank.
To create the initial seed set, they simply look for pages that link to each other at the DOMAIN level, so even if a subpage of one site links to the home page of the other, they’re still considered to be interlinking. So if A links to B, and B links to A, both A and B are added to the seed set. Google can perform this evaluation when they are spidering and computing PageRank.
For the expansion step, they determine a threshold, for example, 2. If site C has 2 or more links to sites in the seed set, it’s added to the list of “bad sites”. So, if C links to BOTH A and B, then it is also considered bad, but if it only links to A, it isn’t brought into the set.
Once the sets of bad sites are identified, then they suggest simply not using these links to each other in the equation when measuring the number of incoming links. So when performing a backlink check for site A, the links pointing to site A coming from B and C would NOT be taken into account. So those links would simply be ignored or downgraded in value.
What does this mean for SEO’s?
This seems like an obvious, simple check for all engines to make, plus it seems to be scalable. Therefore it is a pretty safe assumption to think that most engines are already implementing this.
Therefore, if you are interlinking your own sites, or exchanging direct links with other sites, they have a simple algorithm that can detect this, and ignore the links. Additionally, if you LINK TO more than 1 site that is already in the seed set, your site will be considered as part of the same spam alliance and your links won’t count.
For example, if you have a site about cars, and you link to a site about Toyota and a site about Hondas. If the sites about Toyota and Honda link to each other, and you link to both of the sites, your site will be seen as associated with these 2 sites and you’ll be brought into the “penalty” set.
So it’s also important to be careful who you link to, and to make sure that you’re not linking to sites that are engaging in extensive reciprocal links campaigns. If you are linking out to them, and you do receive links from some sites that are part of that reciprocal links scheme, then all the sites will most likely be pulled into the penalty set, and none of those links will count for you.
So what can you do about this?
1. Try to get one way links in any way possible
2. Be careful who you link to – try to make sure you’re not linking to sites that are engaging in reciprocal links campaign, and that contain links to your site. If you do link to sites that have reciprocal links campaign, you could be pulling your site into the penalty set and other links coming to you from a few degress of separation that are part of that same set will result in invalid links
Instead, follow the standard SEO advice of creating valuable, unique content to generate legitimate one way, inbound links.
Over the last few months, Yahoo has been upgrading their ranking algorithm and making it so it’s more difficult to rank with sheer spam.
Here are a few things we’ve been observing:
1. Many of the top ranking sites have many links from directories.
2. Number of links from unique domains seems to be more important now than before. For example, you may have 10,000 backlinks, but if 8,000 of those links are from the same domain, you really only have 2000 unique domains. They are collapsing multiple links from one site and counting them as just one link.
3. They seem to be favoring sites that have Yahoo directory listings.
4. Anchor density is lower than before. We saw sites ranking with averange anchor density of between 5% and 30%. Rarely did we see sites ranking with high anchor density.
5. On-page SEO seems to be a more important factor than with Google. In some cases, we saw sites ranking where the only advantage they had was better on-page SEO.
6. Title density is as important as ever.
7. Yahoo seems to be favoring sites that have many pages indexed, especially if they are well optimized.
8. They don’t seem to be applying an obvious ageing filter – some sites ranking are pretty new, while some are old.
9. Sites that have old backlinks seem to be getting an advantage. For example, if they have a few links from sites that were registered before 2000, they require fewer links to rank.
10. A couple of links from high page rank sites seem to work magic..with a few of these, you can then have a large quantity of bulk, relevant links, and that pushes a site above others that don’t have the high PR links.
11. Most of the links should be relevant to your site.
These are just a few observations based on research in the Yahoo SERP’s. Feel free to add your own views and observations.
Striking Keyword Gold – How to Grab Keywords by the Tail
Anyone can pick out related keywords to rank their websites for. However, it’s the crafty webmaster who knows how to find multiple keyword goldmines among the thousands of possibilities available.
One popular approach is called the “long tail”. In this approach you go after three word + phrases in hopes of having less competition. The main problem with this approach is that there is a second aspect of it that most people neglect. The second and most important part of the “long tail†approach is that with longer, more targeted phrases you are more apt to directly meet the needs of the user. While that may seem obvious, many people ignore or poorly execute it. That’s because they don’t understand the importance of their client’s purchase cycle as it relates to search engines.
The Purchase Cycle
The very first thing you need to understand before starting keyword research is the “Purchase Cycle”. Its main steps are:
Attention > Interest > Desire > and Action.
Finding tons of low competing yet high converting keywords is as simple as understanding your customer’s buying habits. When they are in the action stage you will want to be there with them.
Let me give you some examples. Let’s imagine you are a new Real Estate Agent in the crowded but profitable Los Angeles Real estate market. You have had a site up for almost 6 months, have done a little SEO but have gotten almost no traffic and not a single lead from your site. The problem is more than likely the phrases you are going after. Everyone will be competing in the SERP’s for obvious terms like “Los Angeles Real Estate”. Now there is nothing wrong with competing for the best phrases, however this guide is all about training you to look at the areas your competition has ignored, and are at the end of the buying cycle. Trust me, great opportunities are available in every single market.
Think Like Your Customer
Imagine yourself as a customer who is using Google to find or sell real estate in Los Angeles. A typical search may go something like this.
Search Term: 1 “Real estate” (hmm too broad what was I thinking?)
Search Term: 2 “Los Angeles real estate”(Lots of options maybe I need a local agent?)
Search Term: 3 “Real estate agent in Los Angeles” BINGO!!! If you are a real estate agent in Los Angeles this should be one of your many keyword goldmines.
Now let me show you how the competition for rankings in Google has diminished as the customer got more and more refined with their search. I want you to see just how ripe the opportunity is when you understand the process your customers go through.
To get a good feel for the level of competition for a phrase one simple but highly important SEO factor is the Title tag. Using Google we can easily see how many sites have the exact search phrase we are using, as the title tag to their website. This is a great initial gauge of the competition you will face.
The command I use in Google is intitle:”real estate” (returns results with the exact phrase “real estate” in the title tag).
Diminished Competition
intitle:”real estate” Over 59 Million Pages Retuned
intitle:”Los Angeles real estate” Down to 25,000 Pages Returned
intitle:”Real estate agent in Los Angeles” 57 Results and only 7 Domains listed!!!
This high conversion keyword is just sitting there waiting for you “our new real estate agent†to rank for it. If you do the proper SEO work and point a few quality links to the page then you should begin to see highly qualified traffic.
Let me give you one more example and then we will move on. Let’s say you sell high-end condos right on the beach in Hawaii, which by the way is where I call home (Its OK to feel sorry for me). The competition for the condo market in Hawaii is very stiff and any little edge you can get is extremely helpful. Again all you have to do is understand how a potential customer searches and know your own product to find those keyword gems.
Results
Search 1: “Hawaii Condos” intitle – 11,100 pages
Search 2: “Hawaii Condo Rental” intitle – 147 pages (Great action phrase)
Search 3: “Hawaii beach front condo” intitle – 0 pages!!!
I could literally go on and on finding great marketing opportunities for these two markets. I promise you if you spend the time you will find these all-too-easy keyword treasures in your market as well. Now let’s take what we have learned to the next level with action phrases.
Make Use Of Action Words
Ok let’s say you sell the latest PC video cards at great prices. You have done your homework and realize that many consumers do extensive research on specific video cards to find the one that’s perfect for them. They then lookup the specific model of the video card they want when they are in “purchase mode”.
A popular video card series right now is Nvidia’s Geforce 6800. However, when you do an intitle: search on Google you get over 40,000 results for “Nvidia Geforce 6800″. This is where Action words come in handy. Some great action words are Buy, Lowest price, Purchase, Free shipping etc. All of these words are used when the customer is in the purchasing phase, which is exactly when you need them to find you.
intitle:”Buy nvidia geforce 6800″ 3 sites!!!
intitle:”Purchase nvidia geforce 6800″ 0 sites!!!
intitle:”Lowest price nvidia geforce 6800″ 0 sites!!!
You get the idea. Now that you understand the concept I can suggest a few keyword research tools.
Now let’s put you on a path to find 20 to 40 money keywords you are not currently using
Keyword Research Steps:
Step 1 - Logs: One great asset that you may not be utilizing is your weblogs. You should always mine your weblogs for niche keyword phrases and use them as a basis for what type of searches your users are typing into search engines. If you have not done this before it can be highly informative. You will not only understand your audience better – you will also get a great variety of keyword “goldmines” that you can then use for your organice SEO campaign. I suggest doing this once a month or every two weeks if you can find the time.
Step 2 - Competition: Your competition can be a great source of keyword research. Check the keywords in their Title, meta tags, and body text to see if you find anything you might have missed.
Step 3 -Keyword Tools: Three free tools that you should check out are SEO Books online keyword tool http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/ and http://www.goodkeywords.com/ which is a free desktop download that runs off of Yahoo data and http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ which queries both Yahoo and http://www.wordtracker.com/ (A top tool if your paying) . All three of these tools are very handy and for the price…who can complain?
A word to the wise, these tools should only be used as guides. They are heavily biased to PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising and are subject to distortion due to automated queries.
The main thing to look out for with any tool that uses Yahoo is that it does not separate plurals. It shows Condo and Condos as the same results. So when you are doing your research be sure to check out the Word Tracker tool over at digital point because the MSN version will show you how a phrase does for singular versus a plural version. While search engines are still ironing out how they handle plural searches its highly important that you select the right one. Sometimes you may choose to go after a less used plural or singular version of a keyword because it has less competition.
Bonus 1: Don’t forget about hyphenated or potentially hyphenated words.
If you are looking at a term like “increase online traffic” don’t forget hyphenated versions of the same phrase. According to Word Tracker “increase on-line traffic” is searched for 186 times a day on MSN alone. The non hyphenated version has over 1,000 pages listed for an intitle: search on Google. While the hyphenated version only has 21 sites listed.
Bonus 2: Use slang or insider terminology when and where it makes sense. One great example of that is locally here in Hawaii. Locals call the main island of Hawaii the “Big Island” A term like “big island real estate” is typed in a few thousand times per month. But according to Google only one site has the phrase in their title!!!
Bonus 3: People often type keyword phrases as one word. So instead of typing in “Hawaii Condos”, they’ll type in “hawaiicondos”. Then engines serve different results for these 2 phrases, and guess what – the kwkw version is usually a LOT less competitive!
I must mention that just because you find great keywords that others are not using in their title tags does not mean you can simply put in a new title and rank. In some cases that will actually happen but in most you will need to do a good job with your on-page SEO and acquire a few relevant links. In any case you will be putting yourself in a great position to be successful with minimal competition and maximum return on investment.
I hope that I have helped to get your mind churning about the endless possibilities in your own local market. If you follow these steps you should be able to quickly generate a wonderful new list of keywords for your site to dominate the “Action” phase of the purchase cycle. Once you place your site at the end of the purchase cycle and away from the hordes of competition it is quite easy to strike Keyword Gold.
This is the first time I see this.
I wonder if they’re using that algorithm that they purchased from the Israeli student?
Here’s what happens when I click on one of the links:
ABSTRACT
“Link Analysis has shown great potential in improving the performance
of web search. PageRank and HITS are two of the most
popular algorithms. Most of the existing link analysis algorithms
treat a web page as a single node in the web graph. However, in
most cases, a web page contains multiple semantics and hence the
web page might not be considered as the atomic node. In this
paper, the web page is partitioned into blocks using the visionbased
page segmentation algorithm. By extracting the page-toblock,
block-to-page relationships from link structure and page
layout analysis, we can construct a semantic graph over the
WWW such that each node exactly represents a single semantic
topic. This graph can better describe the semantic structure of the
web. Based on block-level link analysis, we proposed two new
algorithms, Block Level PageRank and Block Level HITS, whose
performances we study extensively using web data.”
Introduction
Many engines use link based algorithms, like PageRank and HITS, to evaluate websites and rank them in the search results pages. Link based algorithms are used because links are seen to convey human endorsement, and because it is assumed that co-citations are related (so a site about dogs would be likely to link to other sites about dogs).
The problem, however, is that in many cases these assumptions are not valid. Many websites, like news sites, link to non-related content, plus they contain many navigational and advertisement links.
These problems are caused because web pages contain multiple semantics, and are broken down into units, some more important than others. So the problem is that if a web page is considered the smallest unit, you have to treat all semantics as having the same level of importance, which is often not the case.
In this paper, the authors propose two link analysis algorithms called Block Level PageRank and Block Level HITS, which treat the semantic blocks as information units. This is accomplished by using the Vision-Based Page Segmentation algorithm to extract page-to-block and block-to-page relationships. These algorithms can improve the relevance of search as it eliminates the problems mentioned above.
Vision Based Page Segmenation
The VIsion-based Page Segmentation (VIPS) algorithm aims to extract the semantic structure of a web page based on its visual presentation. It works by:
1. extracting all the blocks from the html code
2. finding the separators between these blocks
Based on these separators, the semantic tree of the web page is constructed. Thus, a web page can be represented as a set of blocks.
This segmentation allows information such as advertisements, navigation, and decoration to be identified and removed from the quality semantic blocks. Content with different topics can be seen as separate blocks and treated separately.
Block level PageRank
This algorithm is similar to the original PageRank algorithm, but the key difference is that BLPR models web structure in the block level.
The key difference is that web pages that are linked by many advertisement links may not be assigned a high value since the ad links would come from less important blocks, so they would receive fewer points. Thus, ad links would not significantly impact Block Level Page Rank.
Block Level HITS
HITS assigns two values to each page (authority value and hub value). Hubs and authorities thus exhibit a mutually reinforcing relationship, where hubs are identified based on links from authorities, and vice versa.
As has been established, there are always multiple semantic regions in one page. Some hyperlinks such as banners, navigation panels, and advertisements in a page do not convey human endorsement. Thus equally mutually reinforcing all the links in a page might not be suitable.
In BLHITS, the authority hub reinforcing idea is the same as the original HITS. The main difference is that in BLHITS, a page will have only authority score and a block will have only hub score. By assigning hub scores to blocks, it allows authority scores to be modified based on the importance of the blocks of links where they are contained.
In Block-Level HITS, the importance values of different parts of the page are treated differently. Thus, the links in these hubs are treated differently, which can affect the authority-hub reinforcing process.
Conclusion
Based on web page segmentation (VIPS) techniques, web pages are treated as a set of blocks and the links
are from blocks to pages rather than from pages to pages. From the page to block relationship (page layout analysis) and block to page relationship (link analysis), a new page to page graph and block to block graph can be constructed. Based on these new graphs, Block Level PageRank and Block Level HITS algorithms can be implemented.
Experiments show that Block Level PageRank outperforms PageRank and Block Level HITS outperforms HITS.
What this means for SEO’s
These algorithms give the search engines the ability to break up the pages into individual blocks, and to assign different levels of importance to each block. Thus, inbound link scores are modified based on the placement of the links on the page.
Obviously, this has tremendous impact on your link building campaign. It proves that the search engines have the computational strategy and power to identify placement of links on a page, and then give more value to certain links based on where they’re placed.
Additionally, it allows the engines to assign a semantic topic to each block, and to use this when weighing semantic relatedness. So if your link about dogs is placed in a “block” that is about houses, the relevance weight would be diminished, as they are not semantically relevant.
It is simple to infer that the blocks that would receive the most importance are the areas where the actual text of the page is placed, or the main body of the page. This is where the most content can be identified. The first paragraphs would have the most importance, then diminishing in importance, so advertising and navigational units would receive the least importance points.
How this should modify your SEO campaign
1. Your links should be in the main body of the page
2. Your links should NOT be within navigational or advertisement blocks
3. Your links should be in areas that are contextually relevant
4. Make sure people use descriptions with your links (instead of just a few words in anchor text) so that the description makes the block contextually relevant
5. Avoid having your links in footers, or other areas that do not content important content
Remember, links will still count if they are within undesirable areas, but they will receive fewer points and will be considered less important.
To get the most out of your link or ad campaigns, try to make sure you are receiving links from contextually relevant sites, and in prominent placements.
http://www.google.com/relatedlinks/
We have added an example here: AuthorityDomains.com Google Related Links
Google recently launched a new program of “related” links, where you add a javascript code to your site, and they will serve a list of relevant links to other websites.
When webmasters set the links up, they can select whether they want to display related searches, related web pages, or related news stories.
What is the source of this data?
Google doesn’t mention how they compile this information. From a brief look, it loos like they use their standard contextual algorithms to find other related sites and queries. The related sites seem to come from people paying for Google Adwords, although it is tough to confirm as they have to decide what the keywords are (which may not be on the page).
So basically, based on the page where the code is, Google determines a few keyowrds that are relevant, then searches for related sites and related queries.
Is it beneficial to add this code to your site?
We don’t see any real benefit in adding this code, as all it’ll do is give people many ways OUT of your site.
One way in which it is useful, is to see how Google categorizes your site, what kind of keywords it believes your site is about in order to present these as relevant.
Other than that, all it’s doing is giving Google free advertising.
3 Ways to Promote your Site in 2006
Promoting your site is not a “static” business. The web changes and renews itself about every 6 months, with new services, algorithms, and technologies coming out all the time.
For you to “stay on top” or to “get on top” you need to be up-to-date with the industry. It is easy to continue using old-school internet marketing techniques, and then wonder why your site isn’t performing better.
What’s the answer? Bring your internet marketing techniques up-to-date. This may include tuning in to new internet trends, or simply revisiting old concepts with a fresh view.
How? Read below and you will get 3 ideas to add to your internet marketing campaign for 2006.
Media Buys
SEO is still highly reliant on link popularity – for your site to rank you must have relevant, powerful links pointing to it. This is a no-brainer, right? But, the catch-22 is, if you are selling a product or service, how can you naturally gain these links?
If you are an already established brand, if you are a large corporation, or if you have a product that is “newsworthy”, this article is not for you. If you have a small website / product that you are trying to promote, and don’t have all the benefits of a large, branded corporation behind you, read on.
Let’s use the example of traditional advertising. When people want to promote a product “offline” they have to rely on magazine, newspaper, tv ads, and other forms of advertisment, to gain exposure for their site.
The difference on the web is, it’s difficult to identify the best places to buy links. Are the sites penalized? Will they bring you buyers? Will the links improve your rankings?
Knowing where to buy advertising from is very important. Here are some of the things you should consider:
* The site MUST be relevant. This will ensure that you will get buyers from people who see your links. Additionally, Google and Yahoo (and soon MSN) look for links that are relevant to your site and boost your rankings for those. Non-relevant links may even be DETRIMENTAIL to your SEO efforts .
* Where is the site ranking for popular keywords? Look at the meta title of the site, type a few of the words from the title in the major engines – is the site ranking in the top 20? How competitive are those keywords? If it is ranking well for your target keywords, it is a good chance that site has a good reputation in the engines and would be well worth paying for links.
* Will the links be identified as paid ads? If so, they are worthless in terms of boosting your search engine placement. The engines can easily identify these links and will NOT give you credit for them. Make sure your links are not identified as “paid” or “sponsored”.
Buying links from relevant, high ranking sites will have many benefits. Make sure you do it correctly and it will help to bring you customers, both from other sites and from the engines.
Social Bookmarking
As the web has grown and become more commercialized, new tools / services have appeared to allow people to have more participation in their web surfing experience.
Social Bookmarking allows people to “vote” for the sites that they like and keep records of them for themselves and others. This is a form of referrals that doesn’t require meeting people face to face.
For example, if you wish to find an SEO, you may ask your friends who they’ve worked with before, and what their experiences were. Then, you are more likely to go with someone that others recommended instead of someone totally new about whom you don’t know anything.
Social tagging allows you to receive virtual referrals from others, so if you don’t know anyone that’s used an SEO, you can see what other people have picked and who they recommend.
There are many objectives for social bookmarking; we’ve only given you one example of how it may be used.
So to stay on top, you need to learn about how social tagging works and how you can integrate it’s principles into your site promotion campaign. Feel free to read our Social Bookmarking and SEO article for more information on how this works.
Offering unique content
What differentiates you from everyone else? Why should someone buy from you, when they can buy from any other site?
One way is to offer something no one else offers in your industry. Unique content doesn’t just have to be information. For example, you could be offering video tutorials, industry news, or even web tools that your users would find helpful.
If you were looking to buy a video conferencing solution, would you buy from a site that offers little information, nothing unique – a “packaged” standard site? Or would you prefer to buy from a site that has many pages of information about video conferencing, how it’s used, tutorials, benefits of their services..perhaps they even offer a free tool as part of their services?
Unique content will also improve your link popularity. People will be more likely to link to you if you are constantly publishing new articles, or if you are offering a free tool that they can download or link to.
If you do a search in Google for “link popularity tool”, www.marketleap.com is # 1. Why? They offer a free tool that anybody can use – and it automatically links back to their site. This has given them over 30,000 links in Yahoo.
Why not identify a tool or service for your industry that no one else offers? It is KEY for you to offer something unique – regardless of the format.
Why waste more time?
Go to delicious and digg.com to create accounts, start brainstorming a new tool or writing new articles. The more you engage in these techniques, the more visitors your site will have from the search engines and from other sites.
