Link Building Sucks – 3 Ways To Find New Link Partners #SEO

May 22, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

Howdy ho, all you SEO heroes out there! Search Engine Academy is busy keeping up with new link strategies that will keep you sites on Google’s good side, what with Penguin being rolled out last year, and a new update coming any day now. Search engine optimization changes all the time – particularly link building, so I’m always telling every “Semper Gumby” – Always Flexible.

Basically, submitting pages to directories is gone, gone, gone. Stick a fork in it, it’s done like a dinner. So how else can you find links? The funnel is getting very narrow, no doubt about that. Automated link building strategies no longer work.

Try these 3 ways to build links post-penguinThe bad news is, you have to roll up your sleeves and do it the old-fashioned way – one link at a time. Sorry, I’m stuck with it as well, and I like it just as much as you do. Ugh.

Anyways, whining about it doesn’t get the job done, so I want to offer up a few things you can try to get some links for you and your clients. Ready? Here goes!

Your Local Business Organizations

If you belong to any specialized Chamber of Commerce organizations, business networking groups, the Rotary, what have you, then you’ve got a relationship going with those business members. Depending upon your business vertical and theirs, these business groups offer good linking partnerships. Take advantage of the friendships you have, and ask to put links on each other’s web pages, but remember – only link with businesses whose businesses compliment yours.

For example, it does me no good to put a link on the local heating, plumbing, air conditioning and electrical repair guy’s website because his business and mine don’t compliment each other.

The nice thing about doing link building this way is that these are easy to ask for and justify. You can educate other business owners about the importance of proper link building as you ask for one yourself.

Linked In

Did you know Linked In now has company pages, as well as individual profiles? They do, and you should totally, definitely set yours up and optimize it for more chances of getting found on Linked In, umkay? But that’s a post for another day.

That being said…

Cruise on over to your LinkedIn profile page. Eyeball the upper right hand corner and click on the drop down menu that’s available to you.

Search LinkedIn for companies to send link requests

Let’s say you have a client who provides home health care aides to seniors who still want to live at home, but need some daily assistance. Your client should have already given you a list of keywords to research. Use this list to find companies that compliment your client. So, use Linked In’s new company web pages by KWP, and start reviewing the list.

You may need to narrow down the locations, if your client (or you) depend upon local customers and prospects. If so, use the search box function on the left to get specific geographic results:

LinkedIn geographical search filter

You can also continue to define your search with more filters on the left hand side for industries, relationship, company size and more.

Now it’s a process of reviewing the company pages, clicking on their website and reviewing it as a potential link partner. Do they have a links or resources page? How does the site look? Has it been kept up to date? You can also use various SEO tools to analyze the domain and link authority of the site. You will need to craft a highly personalized link request. Point out something specific and unique about their site that will boost your chances of getting a link to your web site.

Yahoo! Directory

Finally, you can use the Yahoo! directory to search for websites. It’s still very handy, but remember, type in the local area if that’s important for your link building efforts.

You can also use the Yellow Pages, Super Pages and other business directories. As always, your mileage and experience may vary.

Do you use any other resources for link building? If so, share them with us in the comments!

As I like to say…keep it between the ditches!

Best to you,

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Link Building Campaign Woes – SEO Rant

May 8, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

Good day, my SEO heroes! Link building campaign strategies are just one of the many things we teach at Search Engine Academy.

I also do client work, and I want to share something with you about trying to find link partners for my clients that just leaves my mouth hanging to the floor.

First off, we know that Google Penguin has drastically changed the way we build links. It’s slower than ever, and each link won is like fighting an epic and legendary battle with everything we’ve got in our arsenal.

Doing a careful link analysis and tailoring a very individual request for a link takes more time than ever, and yet, this is the way it’s got to be done in the brave new post-Penguin world. So be it.

Well, when I do all the above, and given everything else I have to do on any given day, if I crank out five requests per day, I feel good about myself and think that I will have a nice shot of single malt during happy hour at my own hacienda, thank you very much.

So I start getting back some replies (most webmasters just ignore my emails, par for the course), and let me tell you, there is something going on out there with web owners who do not thoroughly read or keep up with Google’s SEO recommended best practices and guidelines. Let me share with you a theme that’s developing, one that I find quite disturbing.

I’m getting back replies along the lines of “yeah, no, I don’t want to trade links with you. I heard Google no longer wants anyone to exchange links or ask for them, so I don’t do that anymore.”

When I got this back, you could have knocked me to the floor. Where in the sweet love of almighty Google did THAT come from? I had to read it multiple times to make sure my eyeballs and glasses weren’t showing me something out of a nightmare. After several readings, some of them out loud to my cats, I realized I was seeing some massive, massive mis-interpretation and/or misinformation.

I mulled over what to do. Should I take time that I really don’t have, expend energy that could be used in a more positive manner (like finding more link partners), attempt to educate someone about the truth (I wasn’t feeling it, really), and tell them what Google Penguin is all about?

No. Not my responsibility.

If these folks choose to follow half-baked information sources, or if they develop this theory in their own fevered brain, who am I to disabuse them?

You may think otherwise of me, but I decided to use my precious time, energy and resources to move on and continue searching for complimentary websites, but I just wanted to share this little nugget of intelligence with you, dear gentle SEO reader.

I hope these folks wake up someday and realize they are hurting their own sites by sitting on the sidelines and avoid building links. Granted, link building is hard, hard, HARD, but you gotta try at least every once in awhile, don’t you think?

Until next time, keep it between the ditches comrades!

All the best,

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Are You Starting Your Own New Internet Marketing Business – Where Can You Get Started

December 11, 2012 By + 1 Comment

More and more people are turning to the internet for all
their needs, and businesses are following suit. We live
in a society where, if your business does not have a
presence on the internet you are going to be losing out
on a lot of potential fresh, new, business opportunities.

This opens up a great avenue for those looking to start
their own internet marketing business.

Owning your own online business has a lot of advantages,
and very few drawbacks, if you do it in the right order.
Unlike a conventional businesses, starting an online one
can be done fairly easily and without much overhead.
One of the best businesses you can start up is an internet
marketing company.

Where are the best places to get started?

Training For A Internet Marketing Business is not as
difficult as you might think. When people hear the word
“marketing” they assume it is some elaborate process which
requires a great deal of knowledge, and while that is not
totally inaccurate, that does not mean it is impossible
either.

Marketing on the internet shares some  of the qualities
with conventional marketing, but it also uses a lot of
unique methods. If you want to be successful you need to
learn these methods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While it can be somewhat time consuming, if you approach
it in the wrong order, they are pretty straight forward
so all you need is the dedication to continue (and maybe
some money depending on what resources you use).

If you want to start Training For A Internet Marketing
Business then the first thing you need to do is find a
place to start. There are a lot of guides and training
courses out there that give you the ins and outs of
internet marketing, but to properly use that you need
to build a solid foundation.

I like to say that the sooner you build your SEO and
Social Media skills “comfort level,” the better.

There are a lot of beginner courses out there that can
help you do this. With so many courses out there it can
be difficult knowing which to use. Some are fantastic
and will get you going on your business right quick,
but others are not quite up to par and you might find
yourself wasting excess time. What you want to look for
in determining the quality of the training course is
how easily you understand it.

Many places will give samples of their course for you
to read over. You should look into it and see whether
or not it makes sense to you. Sometimes these courses
can be too complicated or tend to skip over critical
steps leaving you confused. You want a training course
that will walk you through, step by step.

Here at the Search Engine Academy, we have found one
of the very fastest ways to ramp up a students skills,
is with a personalized, hands-on workshop where you
can work one on one with an experienced professional
and you learn “by doing.”

Beyond that you will want a training that is fairly
comprehensive and is made by someone who knows what
they are talking about. The best way to find this out
is simply by looking at consumer reviews.

See what your peers thought, did they understand it
and more importantly did what they learn really help
them?

Lastly, when looking for Training For A Internet
Marketing Business, you need to worry about money. The
benefit of an online business is that it can be started
for next to nothing, so if money is tight you need to
look for a quality training course that you can afford.

On the other hand, you want training that will also fully
equip you with the right skills to make an impact on those
early client Web sites.

  • One thing that you can consider exploring is how long the
    training company has been teaching.
  • What kind of track record do their graduates have?
  • When was their most recent updates to their course material?
    (Everything on the Internet changes often)
  • Do they include any ongoing support after class such as a
    Mentoring program.Ideally any ongoing mentoring should be included in the cost of tuition rather than some huge expensive upsell.

For a complete list of hands-on Workshops being conducted globally around the world, please see our dates and locations pages.

 

 

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If You Need Web Traffic – Internet Marketing Provides A Realm Of Endless Possibilites

November 27, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

The internet itself is a realm of endless possibility, anyone can go out and start up their
own web based business and be successful. Thousands upon thousands of people have
already done this, and there is nothing stopping you from experiencing that same success.

The only thing that can often stop you is, well, you.

The single greatest pitfall potential business owners face is they simply give up.  They do
not see any returns and think it does not work, so they lose hope and abandon it. But if
you stick it out, you can join the statistics of successful internet business owners.

But to do that you Need Web Traffic to easily to your site.

Learning how to drive traffic is the most important aspect of owning an online business.
The more traffic you get, the better odds you have of selling your product and making money.

It’s like they always say, even if you make the best business in the world, if nobody knows it
exists then you still will not make any money.

Internet Marketing provides a realm with no limits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are some methods you can use to get people to visit your website that I
will share with you.

1. Take time to learn SEO first, not later.

2: If you don’t want to use SEO then you can pay for ads. But this method requires
money, and so if you are working under a tight budget this may not be an option.
But if you can afford it, then purchasing ads with search engines like Google or
Yahoo! are a great ways to increase awareness of your site’s existence.
Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, after all.

3: Strategically disperse links. If you Need Web Traffic, then back linking is something
you are going to have to do, and likely will have to do a lot. Back linking is where
you have another website carry a link to your site. More often than not this is done
by submitting to search directories that will carry your link. Another good way is by
Blogging. But whatever you do, be sure to find topic specific pages that fit with
your type of business.

3: Viral marketing. I am sure you have heard of this before, viral marketing is where you
get other people to market for you in a natural way. For example, if you have a youtube
video that involves your business and it gets a ton of hits because it is popular, that
is all marketing for your website. It can be difficult to pull off, but when it works
you will have very noticeable results and there is no telling how great an impact it
will have.

4: The importance of Keywords. Like back linking, keywords are of prime importance for
internet marketing. Keywords are the words or phrases people type into google to find
what they are looking for. You want to make sure your website is using keywords properly
so that the search engines can find your website and put it into the results when people
search for that specific keyword. If you are found for a topic that is unrelated to your
audience’s needs, you won’t see any organic traffic. Performing good Keyword research
must not be neglected.

If you Need Web Traffic then following these tips can help you get it. These are by no means
all there is when it comes to internet marketing and there are a lot of finer points you can
learn and master in order to maximize your search visibility as well as your profits.

But once you get the hang of it and get your business going, it is an easy and secure source
of income.

If you need to speed up the learning process, one of the easiest and fastest ways to grow
very competent in your skills, is to “learn by doing.” You can attend attend a hands-on
Workshop where you bring your laptop and actually work one-on-one with a certified
Master Instructor. You’ll get a very thorough training with great attention to detail. And
if  you attend any one of Search Engine Academy schools, you’ll also get a free 6 month
Mentoring Program at no extra charge.

For a listing of 2 Day Basic SEO class, or a 3 Day Advanced SEO class or a 5 Day Complete
SEO Mastery workshop in many communities around the globe, see workshop dates and locations
here.

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Disavow Links Tool from Google – Power and Responsiblity

October 23, 2012 By + 2 Comments

“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.” We know that’s Spiderman’s motto but now we can easily apply that to the new Google Webmaster Disavow Links Tool.

Disavow Links? What does that mean? Well if you know a little about Search Engine Optimization you know that the number of links to your website is one of 100s of factors that affect how your website ranks for certain keywords.

In the past, even as late as 2008, it was standard practice in the SEO world to purchase links for your website. To be fair, it was never a great strategy – creating good, solid content was always a better choice and what has always been emphasized here at the Search Engine Academy.

Google was aware of this trick for a long time, and in April 2012 it introduced “Penguin” an update to its search algorithm that targeted spammy links that it identified as not being authentic and most likely purchased links.

Many, many websites were hurt by that update, and some perhaps unfairly because they did in other ways earn the right to rank well for their selected keywords. As a result, Google just this week introduced a special way to “disavow” links to your website that might negatively affect your rankings.

At first glance this seems great – “Gee thanks Google for helping us out so we can rank better!” However all is not as it seems – and this is where Spiderman’s motto comes in.

I recently read a couple of terrific blog posts on this subject. Dr. Peter J. Meyers’ blog post on SEOMoz.com discusses who should use the Disavow Tool and focuses mainly on those who were affected by the Penguin update. He also mentions that this tool will help the few websites that have been victims of negative SEO (but stresses that those are quite rare and only in very, very competitive markets).

The big takeaway from Dr. Peter’s article was not to overreact and that truly identifying bad links is extremely difficult.

Another blog post by Eugene Ware of Noble Samurai goes into much more dangerous territory. Ware mentions that by “helping” us with a great new tool, what Google has actually done is crowdsource the detection of link-spam. Since many people will now be telling Google “don’t pay attention to that link – it’s spammy” that will in reality help Google when identifying other websites that are using link-spam.

To give Google some credit, the Disavow Links tool does come with a strong warning that it’s an advanced feature to be used with caution. See the screenshot below.

All of this discussion comes back to the same conclusion and the foundation of the Search Engine Academy: Google and the other search engines want authentic content and authentic (human-generated) links that show the true relevance of your website. That’s the best way to get real, long lasting results.

See below for a quick discussion on the topic from my YouTube video for the Dallas Search Engine Academy.

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Considerations for Hiring A Professional Internet Marketing Company

September 7, 2012 By + 1 Comment

When it comes to promoting your company online, you might have considered hiring
an Internet marketing and advertising company.  Because of the importance of
marketing and time and effort it takes, hiring someone to do it for you can be a
good idea. Not only will it allow you more time to work on your business instead of
worrying about marketing, you’ll also benefit from having an Internet marketing
and advertising company working on your campaign.

Unless a person spends a great deal of time keeping up with Internet marketing
techniques, it’s very difficult to stay abreast of new ideas and methods of marketing.
An Internet marketing and advertising company however, makes this their business,
so they always have the latest and best information when it comes to marketing a
business online.

A long-term campaign with a professional internet marketing  company will probably
be a considerable expense.  But before you discount it based on cost, consider the value
of what you’ll receive rather than the dollar amount you’re putting out initially.

What you should look for in a professional Internet marketing firm?

Ask for a list of the staff’s training certification to find out if they have ever been
trained in SEO, Social Media or in writing for the Web?

Do you see evidence that the staff are attending training on a yearly basis or at least
every other year.

Remember, much of Internet marketing relies on precision skills and experience.
Don’t ever assume because someone has studied and trained in traditional marketing,
that they will automatically understand online marketing because there are quite a few
differences.

When dealing with search engine optimizers, you should ask for a list of clients that you
could possibly speak with to discuss the results of the firms efforts in terms of increase
in business (perhaps by percentage.)

A professional SEO is not usually overly secretive about their work if they alway engage
in above board Internet marketing practices.

You may purposely not want to call anyone in a business competing in your specific niche,
because if you are retailing coffee (for example) someone else retailing coffee may not
wish you to compete. But be sure to get some examples of clients that have a competitive
landscape.

A good internet marketing campaign can offer returns far and beyond what you spend of
course, it wouldn’t be worth it otherwise.  But the returns you’ll receive from expert advice
and promotion from an internet marketing company won’t start and then stop, but they
should continue consistantly for some time. The reason why, is that it takes new work each
month to compete in a marketplace that is loaded with competition. Everyone is working
hard to improve, so if you decide to take a break 6 months, you can be sure your
competition won’t be snoozing.

If you’re already in an established business and your numbers need a boost, hiring experts
shouldn’t be too much of a hardship.  You already know that the money you put into
advertising and promotion flows back to you many times over, and you probably have more
capital available to enter into such an agreement.

However if you’re just starting out in business, consider the money you spend on good
promotion and advertising now a very vital expense. If you can get started out on the right
foot getting your brand recognized in with top exposure to the most correct searching
audience and do it in the right way, you’ll have overcome one of the hurdles everyone
starting an online business has to face.

Working with an internet marketing company doesn’t take you out of the promotion
equation.  Usually it’s more of a partnership than a simple delegation of promotional
tasks.  Once you together decide which direction to move in, then the company may
handle many of the day-to-day promotional activities like blog posts, social networking
and social bookmarking, for instance. But not before you have decided which aspects
of your business to focus on, and which market to target.

Working with the experts, especially in the beginning, can also be a learning tool should
you ever want to get more involved with your business’ internet marketing and promotional
efforts.

Or another option is you can have your staff professionally trained with the skills and work
with them closely and learn the many techniques that they use to best market your company.

Another thing to keep in mind with in-house Internet marketing skills is that your people
will be handling everything under the control of yourself and regardless of how great some
Internet marketing firms are, there is never anyone out there, who will handle things with
the same carrying attention to detail that you will (as you will as the business owner.)

Are you interested in a hands-on Internet Marketing Workshop being done
in-house with certifuication of skills and a 6 Month Mentoring program?

Click here to get a Quote from any one of these Master Trainers for the Complete Course conducted In-house at your facility.

 

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Collaborative Blogging Software Platforms – Why They’re Great for SEO

May 9, 2012 By + 4 Comments

Here at the Search Engine Academy, we teach people how use proper techniques to search engine optimize their content and get listed on the search engines like Google. None of this is theoretical, it’s what we use in our own work too. Many of us who are instructors also have SEO and web consulting businesses, so we have to “eat our own dogfood” as it were.

Last year, we started using a collaborative bloogging platform from a company called Innogage. Tom Williams is the founder of Innogage, and his philosophy around SEO and blogging meshed so well with what we teach in our classes, that we decided to use his tool for our own work.

What Is Collaborative Blogging?

First of all, though, what is “collaborative blogging”? Many of us started using blogs as a way to post information about our industry or company, and typically it came from one person. This is great. However, it’s so easy to be enthused at the beginning, only to falter and lose steam after a period of time. You run out of ideas, out of time, or just “don’t get around to it”.

Instead, by having a collaborative blogging platform, you may have multiple people from the company or organization that are each providing content. Perhaps each person only posts once per month. That’s not such a big deal, right? So if you have ten people, each writing once per month, that’s approximately 2-1/2 posts per week. Great!

Each person will have a different take on things, a different idea or even different passions. Each of the contributors will start to develop their own followers and readers can subscribe the content that engages them the most.

SEO Your Blog Posts

The next step is to SEO the content for the search engines. How do you get lots of people to properly create well-optimized content without having to send everyone to training and become experts at SEO?

Enter the Innogage tool, called Innoblogs. They have built into their system (which is based on the WordPress platform – something familiar to many of us) a Search Engine Optimizer that automatically scores each post as the person is writing it. It’s on a scale of 0-100, and turns from red to yellow to green when it’s fully optimized. If the writer is stuck and doesn’t know what to do to raise the score, the system tells them exactly how they need to fix it.

Furthermore, the tool builds automated, targeted keyword links within the content that the writer doesn’t even think about. It just happens, helping the entire blog to function as a link building tool.

Today, along with my fellow Master SEO instructor from Washington DC, Nancy Wigal, we’re interviewing Tom Williams to find out more about how this all works. You can register for the free SEO webinar online or watch the recorded webinar after we get it posted on the Search Engine Academy website. I hope you’ll join us!

Let us know in the comments if you have ever collaborated on a blog system and how that worked for you.

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Creating a Business Facebook Page To Boost Your Online Presence #SEO

May 4, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

If you thought Facebook was not that big of a deal for your business – think again. If you have a business, it should also be on Facebook. Facebook has over 700 million accounts and is still growing every second. Why not leverage an opportunity to get in front of more of your target audience?

What is a Business Facebook Page? How is it different from a Personal Page?

So how is a business page different from that of a personal page? This is what Facebook has to say. “Profiles (timelines) represent individuals and must be held under an individual name, while Pages allow an organization, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook.”

You may only create Facebook Pages to represent real organizations of which you are an authorized representative.

In addition, Facebook Pages are managed by admins who have personal Facebook profiles (timelines). Pages are not separate Facebook accounts, and do not have separate login information from a profile (timeline). They are merely different entities on your site, similar to how Groups and Events function.

Once you have set up a Page within your profile (timeline), you may add other admins to help you manage this Page. People who choose to connect to your Page won’t be able to see that you are the Page admin or have any access to your personal account.

Now with that said, follow the steps below to create your business Facebook page.

 1. Go To https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to begin setting up your business page. You will see six options; most businesses will select the second option titled “Company, Organization or Institution.”

Facebook for Business

 2. Now follow the instructions, and Facebook will walk you through the rest of your setups to create your business or company Facebook page.

If you need help or have any questions click on the link below to get answers from Facebook personnel. http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=12320#!/help/?page=175

Don’t forget that business Facebook pages will help your website rankings when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, link building and your internet marketing.

Search Engine Academy teaches you more social media, along with keyword research, writing content for the web, advanced search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and other subjects to make you the best SEO specialist you can be. Take a look at our SEO training schedule or locations to see how convenient it is for you to get SEO trained and certified through Search Engine Academy.

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SEO, Google and Unnatural Linking: Part 2

April 17, 2012 By + 19 Comments

In my previous post on the topic of search engine optimization (SEO),  Google and unnatural linking, I covered

  1. In-bound link PageRank Distribution and
  2. In-bound link Page Quality

Next, I want to cover some other aspects of link building to keep in mind when we think of as a natural backlink profile.  We’re going to cover link velocity and link text diversity.

Link Velocity

The first gut reaction most people have when thinking of this term is Speed.  But it is more than that and looking at the term “velocity” itself and unpacking it will help reveal some important details.

 

Velocity  – from (Free Dictionary)

  1. Rapidity or speed of motion; swiftness.
  2. Physics A vector quantity whose magnitude is a body’s speed and whose direction is the body’s direction of motion.
    1. The rate of speed of action or occurrence.
    2. The rate at which money changes hands in an economy.
Let’s look at 1) “magnitude” and 2) “direction”.  We’ll take these in an analogous fashion to represent the 1) speed vis-à-vis authority and 2) relevance of a link respectively.  Speed vis-à-vis authority refers to how quickly links are acquired in relation to the authority of the link source.  An obvious example would be that it is more typical (and natural) to get dozens of links from low PageRank pages than dozens of links from very high PageRank pages in the same period of time.  Relevance is of course how much the content of the linking page, the link text, and the content of the target page are semantically similar.  So if you receive an offer to get a large number of “high PR” links in a short span of time, think twice about taking up an offer like that, especially if the relevance of those link sources is not known.

You need to have an idea of what is typical for the history of your site with regard to increases in new in-bound links.  If you have a high volume, high quality backlink profile (lots of links, lots of sources, diverse authority levels, high frequency), then you can withstand lots of new links in a short span of time.  This is the kind of profile that would be typical of a high quality, very popular blog.  This is one good reason why having a blog and posting on a regular basis can be an effective way of attracting links.  If you have a low volume, low quality backlink profile, then you need to move slowly UNLESS a high authority, trusted website leads the way in your surge of backlinks.  Develop relationships as much as possible with leaders in your space, especially A-list bloggers and write content they find interesting.  If they link to you, their followers and fans will too.

Link Text Diversity

What is natural when considering link text?  One thing for sure is that it is not natural for all your link text to look the same.  You need many ways to say the same thing, many ways to describe what you’re linking to.  That makes for better copy as well.  One interesting exercise to see how boring or exciting the collection of link text is in links pointing to a certain page is to do the following:

  1. Survey the link text in links pointing to a certain page
  2. Take the link text variations and the number of links for each or the number of domains for each
  3. (You can go a little further and add weighting to those counts based on the authority of the linking pages or domains)
  4. Generate a word cloud with the different link text phrases and the corresponding count for each (you could use Wordle for that)

That would give you a nice picture of what you’re saying about what those links are pointing to.  There are several beneficial types of text variations I discuss in my sessions with students.  A couple I’ll share here are to be sure you make use of 1) synonyms and 2) alternatives based on related search queries (similar to Google’s old wonder wheel).  It wouldn’t sound natural if everyone described a product using the exact same 5 word phrase, if you polled a dozen people chosen at random.  It doesn’t look normal when everybody links to you using the same link text UNLESS that link text is your company name, personal name, website URL, branded term, etc.  (I think you get the idea).  So be creative!

Of course there’s lots more that can be said about both of these topics.  I invite you to add any thoughts or burning questions you have in the comment thread or even come join me or another academy instructor in one of our workshops to learn lots more on the topic.

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SEO and Google’s notice for Unnatural Linking

April 6, 2012 By + 23 Comments

“Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to . . .“

Roughly 700,000 webmasters received this notice in their GWT account this past January and February according to Tiffany Oberoi of Google!

Were you one of them?

GWT Messages

So what’s going on here?

Some in the SEO community thought this was a lure or phishing attempt on the part of Google to get webmasters to unwittingly rat themselves out. Cause enough of a scare with an ominous warning providing little or no specificity and see who scrambles to bear all in the hopes of getting back on Google’s good side. According to this line of reasoning, you might say Google’s purpose behind the message was akin to a massage (as their original name “BackRub” connotes) with the goal of releasing toxins, unwanted sites and networks of sites polluting their system.

Google is going after certain kinds of sites and networks of sites created for the sole purpose of link building. The Build My Rank link network was de-indexed by Google and as a result, all the links received from that network were affected. If you had all your eggs in that basket, your traffic and the visibility you enjoyed in the search results would have suffered greatly. Other link networks have also experienced partial or complete de-indexing, affecting the sites and pages receiving links from them. Some of these were public blog networks similar to BMR. Sites using certain autoblogging plug-ins were also negatively affected.  This has had a huge impact on some forms of article marketing.  It’s another episode in the long story of alluring tactics with the promise of quick gains.

“The dark side of the Force
is a pathway to many abilities
some consider to be unnatural”
- Supreme Chancellor [Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi]

What does “(un)natural” mean?

This is one of Google’s criteria for determining which links pass muster and which ones don’t.

“Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.” – Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Whatever works: Applying Sheridan’s quote to the current topic might result in view that reduces to pragmatism; if it works, do it.  Is that good enough?

Obviously not.  I’m sure Build My Rank worked for quite a while before it was de-indexed.  You can’t just look at whether something got results to discern whether you’ve met Google’s criteria for naturalness.  You need to actually understand what is meant by it.

“The unnatural, that too is natural.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

No real difference: How about another often heard sentiment. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s all the same. White hat, black hat, grey hat; who cares? If you define black/grey hat as intentionally trying to manipulate the search results, then many tactics that often are labelled white hat would fall into that category – even something as simple as optimizing your Title tag.”

This comes across as a plausible argument to some.  However, it is disastrously flawed and depends on either a loosely or ambiguously defined notion of the critical term “manipulate”.  If “manipulate” simply means intentionally influencing, then having a website at all fits the bill.  If “manipulate” requires deception to be at work, then optimizing a Title tag or simply having a website at all doesn’t deserve that label, but making it appear as though there are more separate individuals linking to you than there actually are does deserve that label.

What you need to know about natural links

There are many things which make a link natural.  Some can be quantified while others are qualitative.  In this post I’m going to talk about one example of each.

LINK DISTRIBUTION: This is one of the many quantitative components of link naturalness.  One of the things I actually go over with students is exactly how to quantify this which would be too much for a blog post, but I will cover how to understand this properly.  There is actually a serious debate in some circles over what the distribution of your in-bound links should look like in order for it to be considered a healthy profile or natural.  As an example, let’s discuss the distribution with respect to PageRank.

One camp believes the distribution should resemble a bell curve.  This would mean you should have:

- a small number of high PageRank pages linking to you (say 6 and above)

- a small number of low PageRank pages linking to you (say 0 to 2)

- and a high number of medium PageRank pages link to you (say 3 to 5)

If that’s what your distribution looks like, then you’re sitting pretty.

While another camp insists that the distribution should resemble a power law.  This would mean that you would have a small number of high PageRank pages linking to you, a larger number of medium PageRank pages linking to you and a much larger number of low PageRank pages linking to you.

So which do you think is correct?

Well, some interesting research in the area of link spam detection makes it pretty clear that the correct, or natural, distribution of in-bound links with respect to PageRank is one that resembles the power law.  The study actually says most web pages have in-bound and out-bound links that follow a power law distribution.  It also claims that a major deviation in PageRank distribution is an indicator of link spamming.  It even offers a mathematical formula by which it can calculate the degree of “spamminess” for a distribution of in-bound links to a site.

This is just one quantifiable component of link naturalness, one that deals with link distribution with respect to PageRank.  There are many others and it really does make a difference how you understand this.

QUALITY OF THE LINK SOURCE: There are many important components of quality.  A very straightforward one is taking a look at the page giving you the link and asking yourself whether you would find the content useful or interesting if you had a genuine interest in the subject area covered by the content.  Then ask whether the site itself is one you would bother to come back to and visit; or if it was a blog, would you even consider subscribing to its RSS feed after scanning through a couple of its posts.  You also need to keep in mind that it’s not enough merely for the page with your link to be of high quality.  If too many of the other pages on the site are of low quality, then your link will be devalued too.  You can thank Panda for that.

What you need to do

Realize that the rules are changing and you need to adapt. You need to learn as much as you can about what “natural” links are so that you do not fall prey to tactics that will be detrimental to your visibility in the search results, your traffic, and your business. It’s not enough to use trendy tricks or tools. Choose your link partners wisely. Go for the right diversity and distribution with your links and look for quality in the page linking to you and in the site the page is on. Refer to Google’s Panda quality guidelines if you need to.  Learn how to use a tool like Majestic SEO to keep tabs on bad links coming in from scraper sites and so on and to watch out for an unnatural looking distribution of in-bound links.

“Many years ago, a mentor told me that understanding “why” something is done, is far more important than knowing “how” it is done. Knowing “why” gives people the ability to be innovative and the creativity to improve how something is done to get even greater results. Those only knowing “how” are doomed to repeating what they’ve always done.

- NEIL SALERNO

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