Internet Marketing in 10 Minutes

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, Susan Moskwa informed us in the Q & A section of last weeks phone conference that even if a page is blocked by Robots.txt that it still can have PageRank passed to it from pages that are linking to it unless you use nofollow within the link.

Let’s say that you don’t care rather or not your Policy & Procedures page is indexed by Google or not so you decide to add the page to your Robots.txt file. This will effectively tell search engines that abide by the rules set fourth within Robots.txt to not index that particular page.

Let’s say that you have a footer link to your Policy & Procedures page as well as a link to this page immediately below your order form or other forms found through out your website. If these links are not property created with the nofollow tag then you are going to be passing PageRank to your Policy & Procedures page that doesn’t even have the privilege of being indexed by Google.

This goes to show us that taking the time to make sure something is done right is going to be far better then having to go back and fix things later. If your website is leaking PageRank then that can affect how well certain pages of your site performs within Google SERPs.

John Jones

- 10 minutes of SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing

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There are undoubtedly dozens if not a few hundred methods of obtaining links to your website or blog.

Last night I came across Stephen Dean’s Copywriting blog while doing a Google blog search for additional content writing advice that might help me with my own writing and to give additional advice from a sales pitch point of view.

I revisited his blog this morning and read another post that I skipped over last night. Stephen mentioned that some guy named James Brausch is offering a free copy of his newsletter to review.

I figure it couldn’t hurt since it was free so I hopped over to his website and the first thing that caught my eye was the criteria required to get the newsletter. This is part of what James wrote:

“1. Post your request on your blog with a link to this post on my blog. I’ll see the link or the trackback.”

James made that offer on February 29th and he has already had 10 trackbacks… 10 people linking to his blog and now 11.

James - please send me a copy to info@ this domain. Thank you sir!

John Jones

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Throughout my day on the job I find myself constantly explaining to my client’s things like writing content and even link building is one of a kind. They both are vital parts of on site optimization efforts. Giving advice on these two topics is probably one of the things I spend most of my time doing each and every day.

The conversation usually focus’s on what parts of content the website owner is using for linking purposes to internal or external pages. It is simple enough to say, “Click Here”, “Here”, “E-Mail Me” and so on.

When writing content it is a fairly decent idea to include the desired target keyword within your content. When that doesn”t seem possible with how you wrote it out then you should consider rewriting the content. If THAT doesn’t work for you then at least try to use parts of your keywords within the content.

What looks better from these two sentences?

• Click here for an example of keyword parts
• I’ve written a blog post on keyword parts if you are interested

From a visitor point of view, “Click Here” is a straight forward invitation to do something. From a search engine spider point of view you’ll get them to follow the link but when they record what the anchor text link was all they will see is, “Click Here”

From a visitor point of view, “Keyword Parts” explains what they are getting when they click on the link. Since most people surfing the web can identify a link and what you are supposed to do (Click It), you really don’t need to instruct them on what to do. From a search engine spider point of view you’ll get them to follow the link and they will record a potential keyword for the anchor text link.

Through this example I hope that my advice has given you some idea’s to look at when you are writing content. I also hope that you’ll pay attention to what you are using as the anchor text link.

John Jones

- 10 minutes of SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing

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Post Contributed by Jeremy Rivera

Quality links are becoming more and more important in the search engines. Almost every blog I read is talking about the importance of links and the anchor text being used on those links.

I own a website in a specific “vertical” and I was struggling to find ways to creatively get One Way In Bound Links. The difficulty is that most local people that I might get a link from that have a website want to make it a reciprocal link and I don’t have the budget to pay for directory links.

So, after some bumping around, I stumbled on a previous post on how social networking is becoming more important than search engines in terms of traffic.

I decided that I would create a profile for each of the Social Networks I could find and then link to every one of my pages with great anchor text and descriptions.

A few weeks later I checked my Google SiteMap for this site and saw that those links were listed as In Bound Links, and the anchor text also showed up in my “How other sites are linking to you” section.

I believe that it gave me a good boost in my reach for relevancy. But I can’t help but feel conflicted. I mean, as the owner of the site, it seems somewhat fraudulent to go to these social media sites, and create profiles just to promote my site. It seems like it might be something sneaky and underhanded that might even be considered “Gray Hat”.

I brought this up with a friend who was well versed in many different tactics in the search engines and he gave me some advice. He said:

If you think about it in those terms then most techniques used by SEO experts are “Gray Hat”.

I’m still not 100% convinced that it isn’t all on the up and up, but I can’t deny the benefits… What are your thoughts? Is it unethical to create your own social media profiles on social bookmark sites just to boost your quality links?

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This is the first of the link articles that will actually get into some of the strategies and tools that I use to find potential link partners.

One great thing about competitors is that there will always be someone ranking above your website with one term or another. They also come and go in most cases which give you an ample supply of reviewing to do of your competitors in bound one way links.

There are many tools at your disposal to check who is linking to your competitor websites. After you’ve determined who your competitors are by doing a Google search for a term you desire to rank for simply use one or more of these tools to check out who is possibly helping your competition out rank you on the search engines.

1. http://www.MarketLeap.com

This website has a fairly straight forward link popularity tool. It allows you to type in your own domain if you’d like along with three competing websites. Since you are looking for good In Bound Links I’d suggest putting four competing web address’s here instead.

Once the report runs it will show a sampling of other website numbers but you should see all four of your inputted websites with a star next to them. You’ll also find numbers on the same row to the right. The first number will be the total of the other numbers to the right. The second number is Google, third is MSN and fourth is Yahoo as indicated towards the top.

The numbers represent total links shown by the search engines. Later on I’ll write a blog on “Link Popularity Differences between Search Engines”. I want to verify something before I post that article.

If you click on the number in the Google column for one of your competitor’s websites you will have a new page open up and then you’ll be staring at some of the sites that Google has identified as linking to your competitors websites.

You can repeat this for MSN and Yahoo.

2. http://www.webconfs.com

This tool will show you some websites that are linking to a competitor’s website as well as the Anchor Text used.

Note: Anchor Text is simply the text used to link to your site. Typically it is a good idea to use a relevant and descriptive word combination… anything except, “Click Here“

Since having a descriptive Anchor Text is better then just using a domain or some term like, “Click Here“… this tool will help you identify what sites might freely allow for some flexibility with what they use to link to your site.

3. Google - Yahoo - MSN

Tools are nice but sometimes the easiest and best way to check out what Google and other search engines are showing for your competitors In Bound Links is to simply go straight to the source. The following is the operator you’d include in your search for all of the big three search engines.

Google:
link:www.10minutes.org

Yahoo:
link:www.10minutes.org

(MSN is currently not showing these results.)

These are just three tools that allow you to review your competitor’s In Bound Links. There are many pay for use tools that may or may not be more detailed but I’ve always found that the free tools are good enough for my needs.

I’ll be taking the next few days off from these posts but I do have a guest blogger filling in for me while i’m busy working on expanding this series. The post title will be, “Social Media linking: Unethical or just good business.” I will have this posted on Sunday but in the meantime feel free to read through the previous articles in this series which include:

In Bound One Way Links
Out Bound One Way Links
Reciprocal Link
Not All Links Are Considered Equal
Is The Link Worth It?
Finding Links - Competition Review
…

John Jones

- 10 minutes of SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing

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In my previous post titled, “Not All Links Are Considered Equal” I said that I would write about things I look for when checking out potential link partners. In my opinion if you are going to exchange links with another website or try to talk another website owner out of a One Way In Bound Link to your website then you should make sure the link is going to be worth your time and possibly money if any is exchanged.

The first thing I look at is rather or not the site I’m trying to acquire a link from will drive relevant traffic to my website. It would also be a good idea that if you are going to pay for this link that you find out how much traffic the over all site receives on a monthly basis. If possible I’d also ask about the traffic on the specific page(s) you will be advertising on.

The second thing I look at is rather or not the pages are indexed by Google, Yahoo and MSN. Search engines drive a lot of the webs traffic so if an individual page is indexed then that page may get search traffic for many different keywords.

Then I look at the cosmetics of the site I’m reviewing. I want to know where exactly my advertisement will be found. Are there 20 - 30 - 100 or 500 other links on the page? In my opinion the less the better because it increases the chances that a visitor will click on my advertisement instead of other ones.

I like to check the cache of a site with each desired search engine to get a rough idea how often a page on a website is cached. It is my belief that the more frequent caching equates out to popularity.

Lastly I like to do a quick review of the site’s own In Bound Links. If the site that I want to get a link from has a bunch of irrelevant or spammy links then it might be a good idea to skip the link but only if other factors mentioned above are also poor. The one advantage of checking out this potential link partners In Bound Links is that you might find additional related links to review.

Post five in my link building series. Try these other posts as well in this
series:

In Bound One Way Links
Out Bound One Way Links
Reciprocal Link
Not All Links Are Considered Equal
Is The Link Worth It?
Finding Links - Competition Review

…

John Jones

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In a recent post titled, “Reciprocal Link” I mentioned that not all links are considered equal. Consider the following:

If my wife and I both had a $100.00 bill each and I exchange my $100.00 bill with hers then we have not really gained or lost any value in that exchange. However if I had a $100.00 and she had a $10.00 then I’d be a little less interested in exchanging money with her because I’d be losing out. However my wife will more then likely be interested in exchanging her $10.00 for my $100.00 because she would gain something out of the arrangement.

The same scenario applies to reciprocal links. Every website on the web has a different value with each individual search engine. Adding to that, every page of a website has a different value associated with it then other pages of a website.

Before you decide to exchange links with just anyone be sure to read my, “Is The Link Worth It?” post coming up in just a day or two. In this post I’ll look at some things to look at when evaluating rather or not a reciprocal link is worth while to you.

This is the fourth of many articles to come that I am still writing on. I’ve been posting every two days on link definitions, reviewing and techniques. Please feel free to look through any of the additional articles written in this series. They are:

In Bound One Way Links
Out Bound One Way Links
Reciprocal Link
Not All Links Are Considered Equal
Is The Link Worth It?
Finding Links - Competition Review
…

John Jones

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A Reciprocal Link is a combination of an Out Bound One Way Link and an In Bound One Way Link. This type of link is almost always done because of the following reasons and in no particular order:

1. You own both websites and want to promote both of them.
2. Both website owners understand that search engines follow links and agree to promote one another’s website.
3. Your website compliments the other website and their website compliments yours. You both either established a partnership of some sort not knowing about link values that are being exchanged or it may be a complete coincidence that you linked to them and they linked to you.
4. Insert Creative Link Building Strategy Here

As you can imagine when a Reciprocal Link is established it is essentially the same thing as you voting for another website and that same website voting for you. Many people believe that this is an even exchange and it ends up negating one another. This isn’t true and I’ll discuss why in my next post titled, “Not All Links Are Considered Equal”.

This type of link usually takes an extensive amount of time doing research and communicating with the other website owner. It also has a very poor conversion ratio and you might find yourself trying to establish links with 100 websites only to find out 1, 2 or ten other websites actually respond to you.

Over the past couple of years and more fiercely in 2007, search engines have been taking a fighting stance against reciprocal linking. These types of links are carrying less and less value when it comes to helping your websites rankings within search engines. I’d strongly advise against obsessive exchanges and stick to exchanges for purposes other than boosting your rankings.

This is the third article of many to come about links. I’m writing more each day so that I can try and cover as much link building topics as possible. My goal is to post one every two days so you can expect my next post on January 7th. In the meantime, feel free to check out past posts below or check out some of the topics I have lined up:

In Bound One Way Links
Out Bound One Way Links
Reciprocal Link
Not All Links Are Considered Equal
Is The Link Worth It?
Finding Links - Competition Review
…

John Jones

- 10 minutes of SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing

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An Out Bound One Way Link is when your website links to another website. The
Internet was built to easily share information from Point A to Point B to Point
C and so. Typically this is done because you want your visitors to have resources
that you yourself don’t exactly have on your website but should. Here are some
reasons why you’d link to other websites:

1. You found content on another website that you agree or disagree with and
   want to share with your visitors how right on the other website is or express
   how terribly off base the website owner is. Just as others will link to your
   website for this reason, so shall you.
2. You’ve found content that matches your niche. This might include daily
   tips, analysis of the industry you work in and so much more that you yourself
   haven’t had the time or creativity to write yourself.
3. Sometimes it isn’t within your budget or skill level to have useful tools
   built for your website. When that is the issue it is better to reference useful
   tools that compliment your website instead of leaving your visitors high and
   dry all together.
4. Your website has been deemed well enough by another webmaster to merit a
   cash bribe so that you’d link to them. If you’ve reached this status, good
   for you! Just be careful not to lose your value in Google’s eyes for a quick
   couple dollars every year.
5. Someone asked you for a link to their website and you did so with or without
   taking into consideration how helpful the link would be for your own visitors
   or perhaps your sites value within the different search engines.
6. You link to a website you happen to own and want to promote it more then
   the other website.
7. Insert Creative Link Building Strategy Here

When you link to a website you are passing some value to that website and saying
that you give your vote of confidence to that particular page of that website.
You should always pay attention to which website you choose to link to because
if that website is practicing bad habits to improve rankings then the search
engines may decide to associate you with a bad neighborhood.

I have a line up of link articles that will be published almost every other day until I run out of information to share. Here are the topics that will be posted on my blog:

In Bound One Way Links
Out Bound One Way Links
Reciprocal Link
Not All Links Are Considered Equal
Is The Link Worth It?
Finding Links – Competition Review
…

John Jones

- 10 minutes of SEO, SEM & Internet Marketing

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An In Bound One Way Link is when another website links to a page of your website. Typically this is done because the other website owner likes what you have to say or offer. These are just some reasons another website owner would want to link to your website:

1. Controversial content where the webmaster of that site either approves or disapproves and decides to share it with their visitors.
2. Humorous content or daily advice such as niche based horoscopes, comic strips, funny words of advice etc.
3. Useful tools such as free e-mail, stock checkers, weather checkers, latest news updates and so on.
4. You paid them cash to get them to link to your website for a specified period of time.
5. You asked for a link and they didn’t know any better when they said, “Yeah sure not a problem.”
6. The other site happens to be owned or controlled by you so you added a link to help promote your website.
7. Insert Creative Link Building Strategy Here

Being able to obtain an In Bound One Way Link is going to be the most helpful when promoting your website in comparison to the other types of links. I’ll discuss in different blog posts.

When someone links to your website it acts like a vote of confidence. That being said, the more In Bound One Way Links you can have to your website(s) the more valuable your website becomes to search engines.

I have a line up of link articles that will be published almost every other day until I run out of information to share. Here are the topics that will be posted on my blog:

In Bound One Way Links
Out Bound One Way Links
Reciprocal Link
Not All Links Are Considered Equal
Is The Link Worth It?
Finding Links – Competition Review

…

John Jones

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