Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
I’ve been reading about the tactics and benefits of creating linkbait for a while now. I’ve come to the conclusion that linkbait is good, for the most part. Linkbait is good because you want to write something that other people feel is interesting enough to link to. Linkbait is also good because it supports the very backbone of the internet…linking. I think if you want to create something for the sole purpose of having people link to it, then go right ahead, nothing wrong with that. If it motivates you to write or build or create, then so much the better.
But here is where the line blurs, where the light moves to the dark, where angles fear to tread, so to speak. I don’t support the idea of creating poorly thought-out, duplicated information or junky linkbait. If you are going to create something for the sole purpose of increasing your link popularity then be sure it is worth linking to. This usually means it is something that you have put some time and thought into. It should be an investment of both. It isn’t natural to create a new linkbait page everyday. This is bordering on spam. One of my favorite blogs comes from the mind of Steve Pavlina and is chock full of great linkbait, but he writes what he does for the sake of creating interesting and creative ideas. The linkbait part is just a natural extension of his excellent writing.
Topical linkbaiting is falling out of favor recently, with users and search engines. Topical linkbaiting is the tactic of writing about something that is topical and hoping the buzz around it will have people linking to you. This is good marketing and shouldn’t be abandoned, but I wouldn’t rely on this for my search engine marketing strategy. Usually this type of linkbaiting looks like a series of peaks and valleys in your site’s analytics, which Google views as temporary popularity and not sustained popularity, thereby devaluing the links and the content. By all means, ride the current waves, but be sure you have a good stable of linkbait that provides a solid base of constant viewers and steady link building. Look to create helpful information that doesn’t have a shelf life – how-to articles and tips are good way to do this.
I suppose linkbaiting has been more on my mind as my SEO Company, Big Oak, creates a monster linkbait initiative. I hope it will be longstanding and provide increased readership and link popularity. I think you will find it follows my rules. It isn’t topical and I don’t believe it will only provide a one-time spike. It is a monthly comic, and probably too much thought and too much time has been put towards it, but I think you will agree that the quality of the product is there because of our care. So while you mull over your linkbait strategy, and you should have one, take a moment to read Ranked Hard, our SEO Comic. Oh, and if you want to link to it, who am I to stop you.
Posted in Link Building, SEO Mistakes, SEO Strategies | 6 Comments »
Friday, December 28th, 2007
Update 6/18/08 - We created a human resources directory for a client and provided links to their main site. So it was a external directory site, but if you notice in the screen shot the directory is the #1 result for the term “hr directory” and has Google sitelinks. This site is a great one-way link for our client.
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If you have been playing the SEO game for long you know that using directories are one way to build links. How effective this is to your SEO campaign is debatable nowadays. But I’m not talking about submitting your site to other directories, I’m recommending you start your own directory. I can practically hear the moans and protests through the Internet now. Let me explain my modest proposal. Here are some ideas for creating your own wonderful super awesome resource directory.
Build the directory on your current site. Do not start a site just for the sake of being a directory. There are thousands of unsuccessful directories and we shouldn’t be adding to the overcrowded market. You can see an example of a resource (vendor) directory we have created for F. Curtis Barry & Company. The directory was created as a subsection of their business site so it resides in their main domain.
Be selective. This directory isn’t supposed to be all-inclusive, it is being created to be a resource for your customers. It should have perceived value so only include vendors that are recommended by you or your company.
Be opinionated. This is YOUR directory, right? Well, say what you want but back up what you say. Give your opinion. Why was this vendor or company selected for placement in this directory? Let your audience know.
Be verbose. Make the directory worthy of being read. After all, you aren’t including many companies. Remember, it is a privilege and only the best get included so you won’t have to write about a large number of companies or products, but you should write enough to be helpful about each one. Each listing should have its own detail page – often the company selected will give you all the text you need. If you don’t like what they have written or the tone of writing ask for edits. More than likely they will accommodate.
Be Greedy. The point of creating this directory is to build links. This can be accomplished in two ways. The first is through reciprocal linking (more on the other link building method later). Your directory is free or at least it should be. You don’t want your directory listings to be paid, it would reduce the validity of the listings. If you are gong to provide a link to outside companies with content and a recommendation, then asking for a link in return seems reasonable. At the least, they should link to their own detail page.
Be Proactive. This isn’t a “build it and they will come”scenario. You will have to solicit companies you want to include in your directory. After you have set up your categories (if needed) and have added a few companies you may start receiving requests at some point, but be vigilant and only let in the top companies that you would recommend. You don’t want to compromise your directory’s integrity with low-quality listings.
Reap the benefits. Here is the second way to build links. Now that you have a selective and high quality directory, other sites will be more inclined to link to it of their own accord. You have created “link bait” and will attract links pointing to you industry resource directory.
To wrap this up, here is the main idea to keep in mind. The directory should be considered useful by all parties. You should request links and use the directory as a link bait opportunity. The directory should represent only the best, recommended companies in your industry and should be focused.
This will require some work but you will also have created a useful tool that will attract attention. The time you use to build this directory will be well spent. You may even show up in the search results for the companies you list.
Good luck on your wonderful super awesome resource directory.
52 SEO Tips
I also want to thank everyone who reads this blog and has been here for my year long commitment to creating a new SEO Tip every week. This is the final tip out of 52 SEO Tips for the year 2007. It started as something I thought I could in a few minutes once a week, but turned into a much bigger effort as I tried to create tips that were more than just writing “Do keyword research.” It has been fun and frustrating and I’m glad to have completed my goal. There will be more SEO tips, but not every week. I’ll also be attempting to write more commentary now that I can focus less on SEO tips. So keep coming back and keep commenting and maybe we can both learn something.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Link Building, SEO Research | 15 Comments »
Friday, December 14th, 2007
Well, I’m almost done with my 52 SEO tips, only 3 more to go so I’m trying to finish strong. And since going green is the theme lately, I’m following the trend. Recycling links can be an important part of your link building campaign.
We often overlook the links we already have or links we didn’t actively build ourselves. Your site may already have links pointing to it, but if those links aren’t keyword-rich links then you are missing out on potential SEO benefits.
Let me give you a great example of a missed opportunity. SnagAJob.com is a leading job search website and the have thousands of links pointing to their site. A large number of links is a good thing, but the majority of their links have the link text ‘Snagajob’ in the anchor text. Many of these links are on EDU sites which pass along wonderful link popularity but so much is wasted when the anchor text is your domain name, or worse, your website address (www.snagajob.com).
As part of our strategy for SnagAJob we have been contacting sites with SEO-unfriendly links asking the anchor text to be changed to keyword terms they are trying to rank for such as part-time jobs, jobs, job search, etc. Our success rate is much higher than seeking out new links. And keyword-rich links that have age is a great combination for moving up in the search results.
Do a backlink check with MSN for your site. MSN allows you to search for anchor text too which you can see how to do in my MSN backlink check post. Look for links that could be improved such as those using just your domain name and start contacting those sites linking to you. Requesting changes to your anchor text is a worthwhile investment of your time that could reap better rankings in the search engines.
‘Going Green’ never felt so good and your site may thank you with an influx of new traffic.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Link Building, Live Search (MSN), SEO Strategies, SEO Tools | 9 Comments »
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
Social Bookmarking is in fashion and many people are submitting web pages to digg.com, stumbleupon.com and delicious.com. I have written about the advantages to bookmarking your own web pages with these social sites and how your traffic can increase (see StumbleUpon Shark Surfaces). But what do you do if you have nothing worth bookmarking at the moment but want to get involved and build links at the same time? Try intelligently commenting on other bookmarked pages. I’ll use Digg as an example since they follow commented links and are the giant in social bookmarking.
Take some time and search through Digg for a article that has been “dugg” and is related to your site’s content and make a comment on it. Usually there are relatively few quality comments and as long as you are genuine and thoughtful you stand a good chance of keeping your comment and your link. The key is to make sure the link to your site is related to the dugg subject matter. While this can be done easily, what else can be done to utilize Digg’s popularity?
Try following the link to the dugg web page see if that allows comments. If the content is on a blog you can probably comment on it there as well. That page will have many links coming to it, especially if it was popular on Digg, so placing a comment with a link to your related web page will benefit from the Digg popularity.
Maybe this is perceived as an around about way to get a link, especially since it may be a no-follow link, but the traffic will usually be more targeted traffic with a higher chance of converting once the visitors reach your site.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Link Building, Social Media Optimization | 3 Comments »
Friday, November 2nd, 2007
Link exchanging has certainly lost favor and some SEO consultants don’t do link exchanges period. I am also of the mind that link exchanges don’t count for much, but I also know that link exchanges can be part of a SEO strategy. Two of our largest clients are still employing targeted link exchanges and are ranked highly for very competitive terms.
So, if we can all overlook the great swell of negativity for link swaps lets take a look at how to find good exchanges. There is an excellent tool from SEOChat.com: Page Rank Search Tool. If you visit this page you can type in your keyword and then a phrase with “exchange links” or “add links” and it will find the strongest ranking page with those terms. A real world example: “diamonds” exchange links
With some modifications, you can also use it for non-reciprocal link building and article placement. Be creative!
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Link Building, SEO Strategies | 6 Comments »
Monday, October 29th, 2007
Rarely would I ever give advice that included putting material on an external site rather than your own site. But when considering videos I have to say that making sure it is branded correctly and posted to YouTube.com is critical. YouTube.com gives small businesses the possiblity to have national exposure, possibly even more than a a network advertising campaign. It would require an extremely viral video but it has been done by many companies as well as individuals.
There are just too many viewer on YouTube.com to pridefully say you are going to post your video on your site and wait for the video linkbait to catch on. With YouTube.com this can happen overnight with the right video and your traffic would be derived from the grass roots marketing of your video on YouTube.com.
Once the video is posted on YouTube.com you can post it on your site and YouTube.com will pick up the link to your site. It will be tagged with NoFollow, so no link juice, but it will provide traffic through the link. You will also want to brand the video with your web address.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Link Building, Out on a Limb, SEO Strategies, Social Media Optimization | 7 Comments »
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
As any SEO company will tell you, link building is the backbone of a successful SEO campaign so many of my posts revolve around methods of building links without actively searching out links. If you can create buzz and get links naturally just by having creative and helpful content you will increase your chances of higher rankings.
One of our clients, F. Curtis Barry & Company, a warehouse consulting firm, has done an incredible job writing on their multichannel company blog. They have done so well that their blog actually has a higher PR value than their company blog. The blog acquires links more naturally and therefore has the opportunity to drive traffic to their company site, so having the blog rank well is good thing; it is a online sales tool that is at work 24 hours a day.
In our experience with writing and managing blogs for our clients we have discovered that writing about other blog posts can sometimes have a side affect of a link pointing back to the post from the outside blog post. For F. Curtis Barry this backlink came from the Wall Street Journal. The post on the F. Curtis Barry Blog commented on an article (and linked to it) by the Wall Street Journal and a few days later traffic was coming from an automated link back on the WSJ artilce. It is good thing to get traffic and links from WSJ.com…and we didn’t even have to ask.
Be careful though, writing about other comments and posts is a good strategy but only when done with sincerity. It can show that you are only writing about other articles for pure marketing results if you aren’t careful. Have a valid and well-thought out opinion if you do try this. Also realize that you may not receive a link back or that the link may have a no follow attribute negating any link juice (We DoFollow links). So be sure your post is valid on its own merits.
Comments and linking to blog posts on this site are always welcome. We check out links to our content all the time and will comment on other posts about us frequently. Have anything to add? Please add a comment or post on your own blog.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Blogging, Link Building | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 5th, 2007
Posted in Google, Out on a Limb, SEO Mistakes | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007
As a senior member of a successful SEO company I’m always on the lookout for ways to make my job easier. Usually my job consist of defining an SEO strategy that will help our clients achieve high rankings in the search engines. High Rankings are supported by high-quality links, so how do we find high-quality links without doing a lot of work?
Hello, Google Alerts.
Google Alerts is a nifty tool that will monitor Google results with predefined search terms and then email you those results. They will send the email to you once a day, as it happens or once a week. You can insert any topic or query that you wish to keep tabs on.
For example, you can type in a competitor’s business name and/or his web address as an search term alert. Every time Google finds the search term they will send an email detailing where it was found in an email. It is like having a paid researcher always on call for free.
How best to use this for SEO you ask? Easy, here are just a few ideas. Let’s assume you have written an article or press release. You submit it through your normal channels but then you set up Google Alerts to notify you everytime it finds the exact title of your article. Be sure to put the search term in quotes so it looks for an exact match (“My Article Title”). Now you can track in real-time where you article gets picked up and then contact any of the sites that have placed your article or press release and contact them directly about a partnership. Maybe the next article you write can be given more prominence on their site or you can provide the webmaster original content with embedded links to your site.
Or you can track competitors by their name and URL find websites where that information has been posted and follow the same strategy by offering original content of your own. If you find a blog that has posted about you or your industry maybe you can become a contributor.
You can track a product name or service you want to sell or any word or phrase that will help you market your site to the search engines. And since Google is providing the information, you have a good shot at Google finding your link the next time they visit the site you have partnered with.
As with most SEO strategies you need to be creative with this idea and strike while the iron is hot. Constant alerts can keep you motivated and attentive to the market within your industry as well helping you keep a vigilant eye on your competition.
Has anyone employed this strategy for link building? I’d love to hear success stories.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Google, Link Building, SEO Strategies | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
When submitting press releases as part of our SEO services we are often asked why we chose PRweb.com as our vehicle for submission rather than PRNewswire. When compared across our big three parameters PRWeb is the better service for our purposes. PRNewswire seems more like something large companies use to get out news because they send your release more to journalists and less to Web outlets. This summarized it nicely: “Services such as PRNewswire and Newswire provide a far more targeted channel to specific demographics than the cheaper alternatives, however unless you’re willing to pay top-rates, the SEO benefit (on a keyword level) is less.”
Pricing
PRWeb.com is more affordable, which our clients certainly appreciate.
| PRWeb |
PRNewswire |
| No membership fee. Their “average” press release costs is $80 with the SEO Visibility option being $200. |
Membership based with annual fee of $150. From their site: “The cost of distributing your news release is determined by the newsline you select and the length of your news release. Each newsline covers a specific geographical area ranging from local, regional, national and international. Prices start at $180 for a city/metro or statewide distribution. A national distribution starts at $680.”PRNewswire Toolkit |
Reach
The reach appear to be better on the web, which is our focus.
| PRWeb |
PRNewswire |
| “Gets picked up in leading online news sites like Yahoo! News, Google News, Ask.com, and Topix. Additionally, your press release is distributed through a host of other online news sites including our own PRWeb.com and eMediaWire.com, which deliver over 50 million page views each month.” |
“Your message will reach mainstream and industry trade media, thousands of web outlets and PR Newswire for Journalists, a digital media channel serving more than 85,000 registered journalists across the globe.” No mention of Google News ” among 3,600 of the world’s most widely accessed Web sites” |
Cached Pages
Of course this is just one example, but Google may index PRWeb better as well.
PRWeb: August 28 press release – Cached – PR3 value.
PRNewswire: August 28 release – Not cached – Page has been cached but no PR value.
Both sites have their advantages, but for SEO, it would appear the PRWeb.com is still the best choices for helping your rankings.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Link Building, SEO Strategies | 13 Comments »
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
If you read my post about Squidoo last week you know I got addicted to it just a little bit. Our SEO company has started using Squidoo as a tool and sometimes one tool can lead you to another. This discovery was totally serendipitous. As I was trying to market my own Squidoo pages (lenses as Squidoo calls them) I had a thought on how to use Flickr to build links. (Flickr is an online photo management, photo sharing web 2.0 site.) I had been placing some images on Flickr so I could then link to them from my Squidoo page. Once all the images were in place I went back to Flickr to start naming them and adding descriptions. Then I thought, “Can I place text links in the descriptions?” And you what, I could and you can too. Flickr allows you to place links in the photo descriptions and they are real HTML links that are followed by the search engines.
I’m sure you can see the uses for this. Does you site sell products? Can you place the photos on Flickr? If so, you should add your product photos and each photo should have a title, description and link to that product. These links meet many of my perfect link criteria especially since you control the anchor text of this one-way link. Of course you should always make sure the link makes since. If you are selling a bike, take a picture of the bike put it on your Flickr account and then link to that bike on your site.
Flickr images are returned in search results and Google currently has 26 million pages cached so Flickr has good search engine visibility.
To further prove this works, do a search in Google for ‘dark phoenix costumes‘. I’m a bit of an X-men fan and so I posted some artwork of the Phoenix character which is the subject of my Squidoo page. As of August 19, 2007 you should notice that the #9 search result is my Flickr page I created and the #6 result is for my Phoenix Squidoo page. The Flickr Dark Phoenix Costume page only took one week to be cached by Google and now a one-way link has been cached with keyword rich anchor text.
Please don’t abuse or spam this technique but instead try to provide information for your customers with the photo. I’m sure Flickr would have no problem turning all the links to redirects or nofollow links such as Wikipedia. Don’t abuse, just use.
Let me know if you have tried this already or what success you have had with this strategy.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Link Building, Social Media Optimization | 15 Comments »
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