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A Linkbuilding Method So Effective I Can’t Believe It’s Not Blackhat

by on Aug 10, 2008 (0) Comments

An alternative title for this would be “Tom’s headsmacking linkbuilding tip #1″ but I’m not sure this will be a whole series so I’m going to play it safe with a title which doesn’t force me to come up with these ideas on a regular basis. I know, I’m lazy. Bite me!

Talking of being lazy – I’m always looking for ways to jumpstart linkbuilding campaigns and cut corners and if my knowledge of the human race is accurate then the rest of you are too. This is backed up by Rand’s recent post on which parts of SEO everyone finds hardest. The vast majority of you said external link acquisition is the hardest for you.

That’s why today I’m presenting a get-rich-quick linkbuilding tactic which actually works across virtually any niche. Sounds too good to be true right? Well it’s not. Here’s how it’s done. Oh, and by the way it’s 100% whitehat :-)

The basic principle is this:

Find pages or sites which used to offer a service and no longer do

As soon as I had this idea I did a Google search for no longer available and I spotted ranking 4th the BBC Antiques page which is the pagerank 6 antiques page on the BBC site….. WHICH NO LONGER OFFERS ANY ANTIQUES CONTENT. When I saw this page I knew instantly that this idea was going to be killer and would find me a LOT of quality links.

Does Google Have An Organic Growth Problem?

by on Aug 10, 2008 (0) Comments

Google pulled in $5.37 billion in revenues last quarter, and $1.25 billion in net profits (nearly ten times what Yahoo made last quarter). Yet behind the consistently amazing financial performance, a few chinks are beginning to appear in Google’s armor. The biggest one may be the increasing gap between its organic revenue growth and its total revenue growth.

Google does not break out its organic revenue numbers (the revenue from its core businesses, not including contributions from recent acquisitions, investments, interest, or foreign exchange fluctuations). But in a note put out on Friday, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney gave his estimates of Google’s organic revenue growth. He warns, “We have seen steady and material deceleration in GOOG’s organic revenue growth,” and he expects that trend to continue in the third quarter as well. (Even so, he still reiterates his buy rating on the stock).

I’ve put his organic growth rate estimates together with Google’s reported total revenue growth rates for the past four quarters in the chart and table above. In the third quarter of last year, both growth rates were the same: 57 percent. By the second quarter of 2008, Google’s total revenue growth rate had settled down to 39 percent, but its estimated organic growth rate was significantly lower, at 32 percent.

Stop Stealing!?!? Affordable, High Quality Photos are Within Your Reach

by on Aug 09, 2008 (0) Comments

Are you a designer and wonder where to find high quality images?  Are you using unlicensed pictures and images because you don’t know what else to do?  High quality images aren’t nearly as expensive as you think!  Some very talented photographers are leaving mainstream outlets and submitting their photographs to sites that sell directly to the end user.  Artwork, photographs, images, background… every type of graphic you need are available in multiple sizes and file types.

Personally, I use two different sites, both have subscription packages (which is the best deal if you use lots of images) and sell individual images.  Both start at just $1 for many images and are safe and secure.  I have found both have VERY talented photographers and between the two, I can almost always find what I have in mind.

Social Media + Universal Search Combined is Like a Gold Mine!

by on Aug 09, 2008 (0) Comments

Are you struggling to find the appropriate definition of Social Media? You need not, as Social Media is defined as the integration of different activities including the social interaction, technology and also the building up of pictures, words, audio and video.

Different forms are being included in the social media and it includes message boards, Internet forums, wikis, weblogs, videos, pictures as well as the podcasts. In the same way, social media also make use o different technologies like the picture-sharing, blogs, wall-postings, vlogs, instant messaging, email, crowdsourcing, music-sharing, voice over IP and lot more. You can also find different applications of the same like the You Tube, Google Groups, MySpace, Wikipedia, Last.fm, Flickr, Orkut, Facebook and the list goes on undending.

Social media is considered to be entirely different from the traditional media which has been outdated these days even though still in use. They include the radio, newspaper, television, telephone, books etc. With the social media it is possible to interact as well discuss with the people by sharing the meaning with the utilization of the technology.

One of the greatest advantage of social media and the talked about one is the search engine optimization. It is also referred to as the social media optimization and can be done by implementing several techniques to enhance your website, product, business or even the services.

Social media helps in bringing more traffic to your websites along with the backlinks. There are different ways through which the social media facilitates the search engines. It includes deeper indexing, indexing sites faster and also the number of votes related to quality of sites.

Hey Google Can We Get a Clear Cloaking and First Click Free Explanation

by on Aug 08, 2008 (0) Comments

One of the more common questions I get from people is how do I show my paid context to search engines, but not to non-paying/membership customers, and staying within search engine guidelines. The answer always comes dangerously close or steps over the cloaking line.

Despite what search engines will say, even on panels at SMX shows, I still come across examples of getting partial content locked behind registration subscrptions walls (yes it’s a lot less often but it does still happen). Also as anyone who has ever tried to fix a computer problem will and gotten a certain “experts” site which dominates tech solution searches with wikipedia like visibility will tell you, cloaking IP delivery not only works but it works well.

So Google I know you like loosely defined things in your help and guidelines, as they give you flexibility and wiggle room, but I think the time has come to get a little more specific. Is showing everything to the search engines, but only the first subsection within your guidelines? Is it ok to show limited content if you require users to register but not pay for membership?

If you really wanted to be helpful you could offer some pseudo coding examples. No I’m not asking you to do people’s programming for free, but a simple framework or architecture, so companies could give specs to programmers and developers would be helpful.

Why SEO Should Never Be An Afterthought

by on Aug 08, 2008 (0) Comments

SEO should never be an afterthought, there are essentially two ways to rank (1) as a result of clear planning with deliberate intent and a master game plan developed over time or (2) hey is it too late to fix this site and eek some performance out of it?
Why SEO Should Never Be An Afterthought, by SEO Design Solutions.
How many times have you ever thought, if I only knew what I know now years ago (when you first started your website) and wished you could simply turn back the clock and start fresh, then you are not alone.

In case you ever wondered how to essentially rank for everything in your niche, then you could take a few pages from the SEO play book of the site we stumbled across earlier today. In fact, it was so inspiring, I had to write about it to commend them on a job well done.

Search engine optimization is constantly evolving and with it the semblance of design, content and site architecture are fusing into “the ideal delivery system” to entice traffic, user engagement, viral marketing and conversion.

This mutation / new generation of hybrid sites (part e-commerce, part blog, part affiliate site) are emerging frequently and blazing a trail to the top 10 of multiple industries. Webmasters (much like scientists) understand that when you properly combine the right elements and streamline content, links and information architecture for a common goal, the result is an authority site designed with a distinct purpose that gains momentum daily.

You can learn a great deal from looking beneath the hood of other websites (to see which layers are worthy of emulating or modifying from other SEO’s or web developers). Here is an example of a site that is truly a masterpiece built to virtually dominate its industry through layers of overlapping optimization, content development and site architecture.

The site, www.like.com holds top ranking positions for thousands of brands, has millions of pages indexed, hundreds of thousands of links and yet has a cool demeanor and impeccable design with a strong visual call to action. All of the components were so balanced, that I simply could not shake the sites blueprint after observing the amount of thoughtful planning and advanced SEO tactics that went into developing and maintaining such a pristine web creation.

This is clearly an example of SEO done right. If anyone ever told you that a theme cannot be modified to encapsulate multiple product lines within a broad market category, then this site is an excellent case study, not to mention, it has style to boot.

The fact is, acquiring positioning for each and every keyword is a task unto itself. Each page should be treated as its own site (then again you never know how many sites were 301 redirected into this one). In any case, it is important for a site to constantly utilize the mechanisms of self-referral (internal linking) to cement relevance from within.

This when combined with an optimized CMS (content management system), the proper use of titles and tags and links results in a ranking juggernaut that expresses itself like a dynamic time-released capsule through SERP (search engine result page) domination.

Yahoo And Google Now Let You Opt Out Of Ads (Because It’s Better Than Letting You Opt In)

by on Aug 08, 2008 (0) Comments

All of a sudden, Yahoo and Google want to make it easy for you to opt out of their ad targeting on both their sites and across the Web. Yahoo announced a new one-click opt-out policy today, and Google made it possible to opt out of both Google and Doubleclick ad targeting with one click yesterday.

At least Yahoo was honest enough to come out and say that the new policy was a direct response to Congressional scrutiny over the intrusiveness of online advertising and behavioral targeting. Google’s announcement was buried in a blog post about Doubleclick cookies.

The truth is that both Yahoo and Google would rather take symbolic action themselves than be forced to take a more draconian one later. Who’s going to bother to opt out of ad targeting? Some people will, but the vast majority of people probably won’t. What would really mess up Yahoo’s and Google’s advertising ROIs is if Congress mandated that ad-targeting (via cookies) be opt-in. They’d surely get even fewer people opting in for those cookies than they will now get opting out. I know I’m too lazy to do either.