Big Oak SEO Blog

Link Buying Becomes Comical

Our latest Ranked Hard, SEO Comic, is up for viewing. It deals with the concept of link buying and Google’s sporadic approach at curtailing the purchase of link. Take a look at Crazy Eddie’s Link Emporium.

Here is an excerpt from my post under the comic. Please visit and read the entire rant on link buying.

If you would listen to Google, and why wouldn’t you, you would be led to believe that they are against link buying and don’t reward sites who do buy links. In fact, they will penalize sites that do buy links. Don’t believe me? Read Google’s engineer Matt Cutt’s own words on buying and selling links. They even provide a handy dandy form to report paid links. Find a site selling links? Report them. Find a competitor buying links? Report them. Then, your site, which is honestly gathering links, should rise to the top of the rankings. Right?

Wrong. Oh, so very wrong.

Google has been caught selling links more than once. So they understand the temptation and financial rewards of selling a link. But the rewards can be much greater when buying a link: higher search rankings, more customers, more sales and more profits. But if link buying is really being stamped out by the big G, then why, oh why, are so many people doing it and dominating the search rankings?

Read the rest of rant.

Posted in Link Building, Out on a Limb, Ranked Hard - SEO Comic | 7 Comments »

Link Building & Comics

I am reposting this content. I originally wrote it as commentary for our SEO comic, Link Building 500, at RankedHard.com. Please visit and get your funny bone tickled.

As any quality SEO company will tell you, link building is crucial to any successful SEO campaign. Of course your on-site optimization needs to be done right – keyword density, the right titles and so forth, but without links you are left with a site no one will ever find via the search engines.

At Big Oak SEO link building is part of the monthly work we do for our client and it is mandatory. Often I will talk with unhappy clients coming to us from other SEO companies, and they will complain, rightly so, the fact that they spent thousands of dollars with little to show for it. My first question is what type of link building did they do? A moment of silence usually follows and then the response, “I’m not sure.” or “None.” Well, besides the fact that every client should know exactly what their SEO company is doing, I am shocked that any true company who claims to be providing SEO services is not heavily involved in link building.

And a few minutes of sleuthing it is easy to see that little to no link building was done and the client was basically paying for a ranking report to be run every month. Too many suspect “SEO companies” rely on an initial optimization and then cross their fingers and hope for the best. Or more likely they just don’t care and look for the next desperate site owner to come along. A churn and burn mentality is prevalent in the SEO industry.

Why is this? I think it is this way because link building, or more precisely, link finding is hard work and takes a lot of time and time is money. A successful SEO campaign needs to include link building which increases time and money. Money the client doesn’t want to pay, so the SEO company gives a low price to win the work and then does site optimization and then runs reports for 3 or 6 months until the site owner fires them. Meanwhile, 6 more unknowing clients sign up and the scam repeats itself.

Before you hire a search engine optimization firm, be sure they are doing the hard work – securing quality links to your site on a consistent basis. The focus of this post does not allow me to get into the types of links, but quality counts, so be sure they are building links that will help your rankings. I wrote a post on the perfect link if you are interested.

We joke in this month’s SEO comic Link Building 500 that this process can take on a race-like mentality and can be grueling, much like a NASCAR race, but that comparison doesn’t lie far from the truth. Usually the site with the best links and the most links wins the race to the top of the search results. But getting to the winner’s circle can take a lot of laps and that means larger budgets.

If you are an SEO company don’t insult or set up your clients for bad results, be up front and let them know that links will need to be created and it will increase the costs. If you are looking for and SEO company, I would say give us a call at 804.741.6776, but whoever you choose, be sure a link building plan is in place. Your site’s success will depend on it.

Posted in Link Building | 6 Comments »

Outside of the Box with Web 2.0

The power to make or break any website or blog is the amount of traffic and ROI (return on investment) that can be generated from month to month. When your livelihood depends upon your on site internet presence, it pays to think outside of the box and explore opportunities as they present themselves.  Last week I introduced you to the Apple iPhones App for getting your blog iPhone ready and a quality back link from the Apple.com site.

Since it’s Friday and a gorgeous hello “Global Warning” day here in Richmond Virginia, I thought I would take the time to show you just another cool little thing I discovered in my mad labs here at Big Oak SEO – Richmond SEO Company.

I love the power of social media and Web 2.0 style sites, and one of my favorites has been Twitter.  Yes that little tool that makes you get your point across in only 140 characters.  However if you know how to use those 140 characters wisely it can pay off into huge dividends.

On election day, Nov 4th I was cruising around and saw that Yahoo had jumped into the Twitter arena. More importantly the folks that run the elusive Yahoo Directory. With a quick double check I confirmed it was the good folks at Yahoo and not some cyber loser and huge practical joke.

So I had nothing to lose and put my best 140 characters together and sent a Tweet to the folks at Yahoo – Directory.

a simple tweet:  @yahoo_directory So you joined twitter, Check out http://www.parentinghelpme.com
11:53 AM Nov 4th from web in reply to yahoo_directory

Well the power of twitter and a decent website got the attention of the good folks at the Yahoo Directory and guess what…

Yup Today I got into Yahoo Directory from a single tweet. I didn’t even have to use all of the 140 characters twitter allows and I made it in with less than 80 characters and 3 days.  Not Bad for an Election Day Result and Global Warming hitting Richmond Virginia this Friday November 7, 2008.

PS: You can Follow this site @BigOakSEO or me  @bigebiz on twitter

Posted in Blogging, Link Building | 11 Comments »

Bunk Beds & Dinosaurs: Great Linkbait

While site stumbling today I came across a web page that offered fun 30 second diversion, that is what StumbleUpon is for, by the way.

The page was titled: How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor? Silly? Yes. Smart? Even more so. After I took the test (I could survive 60 seconds, btw), and I looked at the URL, I could see it was a site promoting bunk beds and is selling advertising for kids’ furniture.

To my point, I was very impressed with the creativity of the page and applaud BunkBeds.net for a great linkbait idea. Imaginative, fun, viral and themed well for the target audience of children. So, take a visit and see how you would do against a Raptor and even more important let this be a good example in creative link building.

Posted in Link Building, SEO Strategies | 16 Comments »

Get Your Name on Google – It Only Takes 5 Minutes

Ever Googled your name and wished you where in the top search results? Ever wondered what people see when they Google you? Considering the fact that the second most popular search criterion on the web is searching for a person’s professional background (Pew Internet American Life Project) – it may get some people thinking that it’s time to create a web presence for themselves.

It doesn’t take long to conclude that creating a web presence for yourself is something of necessity to ensure your professional growth, your business success, and taking action to represent yourself accurately on the web. The challenge is to find something unique and innovative the tackles all of the following issues:

• You want people to find you when they search your name on the web
• You want to manage the information people see about you
• You want to create a strong and professional online presence for your name

The people at LookupPage came out with the idea of developing an easy-to-use tool for people to create, enhance and manage their online presence. LookupPage is not a social network like LinkedIn, and focuses on getting your name on Google. Using the following simple rules, they are usually able to present better results than others for your name search:

(more…)

Posted in Link Building, SEO Strategies, Social Media Optimization | 14 Comments »

Use LinkedIn for Link Building

Many of you may know about LinkedIn. If you don’t, then let me enlighten. Linkedin is a social networking site that targets business professionals. It is helpful in setting up relationships for business opportunities and partnerships. It also has a more social aspect that is gaining in popularity. You can read more about LinkedIn here: What is LinkedIn?

And while the business networking aspect is great, I’m writing to tell you it can be useful for your SEO efforts too, specifically link building. You may not know this, but LinkedIn does not employ the nofollow attribute on its links, like most other social networking sites. So that means we can use LinkedIn responsibly to build some nice one-way links to our sites and blogs. Even better your employees can use this to build some SEO-friendly links to your company site.

(more…)

Posted in Link Building, SEO Tools, Social Media Optimization | 31 Comments »

Using Logic to Prove that Directory Links are NOT Worthless

It’s faddish these days to walk around saying, “Directory links are worthless,” or “Directory links aren’t that effective for SEO anymore.”  I don’t know where the people who seeded this myth (or the parrots who repeat it in lockstep) came from, but I know how to make them flip their opinion straight away.  By using logic.

Recently a colleague of mine was looking at a client’s backlinks in Google webmaster tools and noticed that about 20 of them were coming from a single directory submission to directory name removed to preserve its effectiveness*.  I had included about 20 tags when I did the directory submission, and Google had indexed and cached each page that was created in the directory via tagging.  The fact that Google spiders this directory often and felt it was important enough to show as 20 backlinks to a site in webmaster tools would indicate to a rational person that Google trusts this directory a great deal.

Yet there are still people who like to make the generalization that directory link building is dead. Why?  Well, the generalization seemed to begin after it became clear that Google was on a crusade to torture directories that sold links.  When Google feels like it, it will go to a random directory that sells links, knock down its PageRank, decache half its pages, and make sure it doesn’t rank for its own name.

(more…)

Posted in Link Building, Search Engine Optimization | 16 Comments »

The Best Blog Directories

Okay, I fully admit I got this from Search Engine Journal. It was written by Loren Baker, Editor. So be sure to read the original list there with full content. Thank you, Loren.

I put the list I here so I would always know where to find it, since it is our company blog. I did abbreviate the content and I plan on adding more. I hope if any readers find better blog directories, that are particularly excellent,  they will  add them by commenting below. If they are really good I’ll add them to this list officially.

1. Best of the Web Blog Search La Crem de la Crem, Best of the Web’s Blog Directory is very selective and only lists aged and valuable blogs.
2. EatonWeb Blog Directory is a real jewel with many aged inbound links and a blog rating system.
3. Blog Hub offers a drop down category and member blog list.
4. Upon visiting Bloggernity, you find a crisp, clean, and easy to navigate site.
5. Blogarama has an impressive listing of over 65,000 blogs.
6. Blog Search Engine is owned by Performancing’s parent company and serves search results powered by IceRocket.
7. Blog Catalog features a vast directory of categories, from academic to writing, while offering the ability to search by country, language, or user.
8. Globe of Blogs has too many features to list. In order to be listed on the site, the blog must not be commercial.
9. Blog Universe is the perfect place to promote your video or podcast themed blog.
10. Bigger Blogs is a relatively new blog directory with only a few blogs registered. The blog is intertwined with a business directory.
11. Bloggeries has the best categories and subcategories home page on the internet
12. Bloggapedia has an interesting and eye catching homepage.
13. Spillbean is a well-designed blog directory site with categories such as health, society, internet, and personal.
14. Blogging Fusion is a blog with over sixty categories.
15. Blogflux is not only a tool for bloggers, but a directory that has the listings in alphabetic order.
16. Bloglisting are fun, colourful, and catch the attention of the reader.
17. Blogio may be a small blog directory with few listings, but it worthy of a submission.
18. Blog Explosion claims to be the largest blog promoter on the internet.
19. Super Blog Directory is a great site that offers tools to posters that others do not.

Posted in Blogging, Link Building, SEO Tools | 9 Comments »

Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Link to Other Sites

We’ve all met that person (or, maybe, we’re secretly guilty of being this person). You know the person — the one who won’t share.

Yup, there, I said it, I’m on to all of you people. Didn’t you learn anything in kindergarten? Seriously, share and share alike. How do you expect to make friends when you never share anything?

By this point, you’re probably wondering, “That’s fine and all, but what does this have to do with linking out to other people’s websites?”

Let me put it very simply — do it. Don’t be afraid to share, put that link out there.

Linking Out Excuse 1: If I Link Out, People Won’t Stay on My Site

Here’s the thing about the Internet, it’s designed (on purpose, mind you) as a way of sharing knowledge. If you’re writing about something and happen to know a reputable resource on the subject, link to it!

This will have various added benefits for you. Your users will think, “Wow, this person is providing a great resource, I’ll come back to them in the future because they’ve really helped me out.” Honestly, do you remember the Boston Tea Party because of the book you read it in, or do you remember it because of your 7th grade teacher who pointed you to the book?

Linking out also tells Google the neighborhood where your site lives. When you’re connected to a bunch of authority sites on fishing through outbound links, and you’re a fishing site, it’ll make sense for Google to rank you higher for fishing. Why? Easy, you’re all in the same neighborhood of fishing authority sites! When you link to other authority sites, it makes Google and the other search engines perceive you as an authority site.

And, seriously now, if you never put an outbound link on your site because you think it’ll keep people on your site, do you really think they don’t know how to work the back button? Or, know how to look for a more authoritative site than yours?

Linking Out Excuse 2: Linking Out Will Lose Link Juice

Alright, let’s ignore the whole neighborhood and authority site status (really, that should be enough to stop you from being scared to link out). Now you’re worried about your link juice. Rightly so, I mean, if PageRank flows from page to page via links, when you link out, it’ll spill onto someone else’s page right?

Here’s the deal: yeah, some of your link juice will flow over there, but that’s not the whole story. When a website gets a link to it, the webmaster will notice. This person will then come over to your site and check you out. If you get a link from a site, you check out the site linking to you, right?

This is the point of SEO, getting people to your site because you have great information. By linking out you have successfully had one more person check out your site! However, the story doesn’t stop there. The webmaster comes to your site, sees that you have a lot of great information and then they might just link over to you themselves, from a post they wrote about a great site they found! Now you’re an authority for them!

Link Out and Reap the Rewards

Remember this when you’re linking out — who you link out to matters! Link out to high quality sites that are relevant to yours. Since you control the outbound links, if you link to trash, your users won’t like it and the search engines won’t like it. Though, when you know of a great site, and have found a great resource, link to it and get ready for the benefits!

Don’t want to take my word for it? Well then, check out what the experts are saying on linking out for yourself!

Posted in Link Building, SEO Mistakes, SEO Strategies | 9 Comments »

Should I Build My Own Linking Network?

This SEO question is from Joel Cohen, RestaurantMarketing.com

SEO Question:
If I have a furniture store website in a first page position on Google for “home furniture Houston” and I decide to do a separate website for my “kids furniture division” and it gets a top position for “kids furniture Houston” and I do two more separate sites for (example) outdoor furniture and recreation room furniture and they all get top positions on Google, AND they all link to each other, does Google discourage this? It’s like building my own linking network.

SEO Answer:
This sounds like a sound business practice. Too often in the Internet world we base on decisions on what Google would want. Google, in fact, says to market your site as if the search engines weren’t involved. Straight from Google’s Guidelines, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?” I personally would say this is a solid idea and focusing on product lines on each website can be a seen as a clever business decision. Interlinkng between them is would also be encouraged. Why would it be considered bad to link to your similar themed sites? If you owned more than one brick and mortar store you would certainly point visitors to it, so why should the web be any different.

You should make sure you don’t have duplicate content on your sites. If you are going to break out your outdoor furniture from your “main” furniture site, be sure you aren’t showing the same products with the same descriptions. Interlinking should be done strategically and with an eye towards marketing. Just don’t place a link in the footer, create a page that talks about the other site and its line of products and place multiple links to the other site. You want to drive targeted traffic that is well-informed of its link destination.

In summary, creating topically focused product sites isn’t a bad thing, it is a business decision that should be thought out. There will be more work and stores to admin, of course and cross-site linking won’t encourage visitors to view other related products as much as everything being on the same site. Pros and cons to each, as with most things in life. Just don’t let Google control your business decisions, after all, controlling the search results is enough power, don’t you agree?

If you have a question you would like us to answer, please send to contact[at]bigoakinc.com.
Due to time constraints and the fact we run an SEO business we may not answer all questions.

Posted in Google, Link Building, SEO Questions & Answers | 17 Comments »

Outsourcing Reservations

This month’s Ranked Hard, SEO Comic deals with the touchy subject of overseas outsourcing in the SEO industry with a humorous twist of course. Take a look at Outsourcing Reservations, leave some feedback and laugh a little.

Posted in Link Building, Ranked Hard - SEO Comic | 2 Comments »