Web Data Source » competition

Android – Meet the new kid on the block!

Akshay Sura — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:00:07 +0000

Google had captured the headlines once again when it announced its plans for Android, the new operating system for mobile phones. The company has already carved a niche for itself by doing things the “Google” way. The dominance of Google in the search engine fraternity is quite well pronounced and Google apps have already hit the internet by a storm. Probably, an unexplored avenue, Andriod is Google’s answer to the next generation of mobile computing.

The core of Andriod comprises of an operating system, key applications, add-ons and plugins as well as middleware. So it basically forms a complete software stack for mobile devices. It is build upon the open Linux Kernel and adds a custom virtual machine to it, that facilitates optimization of hardware and memory resources. This additionally makes Android an “open” development framework in its true sense. The direct advantage that Android promises is extensibility, and the architecture can be extended to accomodate any future technologies as they continue to emerge.

As an example, a developer writing a new app for the Android can directly invoke any of the phone’s core functionalities. Whether it is making calls, sending text messages, navigating through the underlying file system or using the camera, the rich set of APIs in the SDK will provide the developers with a very cohesive development experience.

The icing on the cake is that Android is open source. Developers can download the Andriod SDK and start developing custom software or plugins for devices that support the Andriod framework. Already, a huge number of applications have already gained popularity in the Android market, including our very own FileDroid.

Are you thinking about the competition from the existing mobile market? Well, for a quick take on that, we have to simply wait and watch. Android can be called the new kid on the block and it is likely to face tough competition from iPhone, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile and Symbian. The open handset alliance, owned by the company, has already 34 companies as its mutual members which include several handset manufacturers, mobile operators and chipmakers. An interesting observation however is the fact that the first launch of Android on HTC was not a grand success. I must say here, that when a new product rolls out into the market, and something that is as complex as an operating system, it has to go through a substantial amount of fixes and updates before being declared stable for all devices. I guess that is what the Android is going through right now. However, it is too early to draw a conclusion about either success or failure of Android. I think Android can get very popular, it just needs good hardware. The G1 doesnt do justice to the Android OS.

A liitle bit of Google is in all our lives, isint it? We have to wait for that little bit to get into our mobiles!

Getting Your Keywords Right

Akshay Sura — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:56:35 +0000

Selecting the right keywords is the first and foremost thing to be considered in the optimization process. If the selection of keywords is not done properly, it would not maximize the return on investment (ROI) on the website promotion.

There are a number of misconceptions in selecting the right and relevant keywords, which, if not checked, can ruin the entire optimization process. Among the various misconceptions, the most common one is that bigger keywords are better. However, this is not true always. Suppose you are a life coach and you are trying to optimize your personal life-coaching website. Therefore, in this case, you can use “life coach” as the appropriate keyword for the site, which is small yet carries a lot of meaning to it.

Keywords should be very specific and should flawlessly relate to the products or the services that are being offered. One can even use keywords in phrases, but the phrases should be in small meaningful sentence format. Moreover, keywords should be such that have high frequency demands and low competition. High keyword frequency can also be defined as those, which are entered in the search bar while searching in any search engine and can draw high traffic. On the other hand, low keyword competition indicates lower number of websites using the same keywords to draw visitors.

Apart from these facts about getting the right keywords, let me share some basic tips that would definitely help you to select the perfect set of keywords for your website. The foremost thing is that you will have to learn to think like a nonprofessional. You might have a thorough knowledge about your industry, but this might not be the case with everyone around. So, while framing the keywords, try to use those words or phrases that a nonprofessional would use who knows nothing about this industry. At the same time, you need to think in an expert’s point of view as well! The product or the service you are offering might need the use of some specific keywords, which the layman would definitely not know. Therefore, it is better to have a balanced perception of both.

So, whenever you are optimizing your website, always remember to pay extra heed to keyword selection, as you certainly know by now, that it is a very important part of this whole optimization process. If you use some rational steps, keeping in mind some basic facts, success might take some time to come. However once it is there, it’s going to be a long lasting one for sure.

Developing Internal Links and Authority With SEO

Jeffrey Smith — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:08:34 +0000

Instead of trying to make a one size fits all argument out of SEO, understand that rankings are a by product of multiple factors unified for a common goal.

SEO should never be an afterthought, but rather a means to produce a specific attainable goal for generating and measuring traffic to your content which can be monetized through sales, lead generation or advertising/visibility for your brand.

Rankings are Produced by the Page

Keep one thing in mind, rankings are produced by the page, so the more quality pages you have, written with specific intent around 3-5 singular, plural or synomic phrases when interlinked with other related / supporting pages is often more than enough to tip the scales in your favor.

Chronology and authority add trust and reduce the time frame for new content to scale the SERPs (search engine result pages). Those pages however, still must have the needed ingredients to stand on their own once the initial evaluation has gleaned their relevance in comparison to the rest of your site vs. your competitors.

Those whose content fits more accordingly to the guidelines of search engine algorithms will rank higher with the least effort.

Your competition is irrelevant if your contents quality and links are impeccable, authority status is the goal for your website algorithmically, but it must still be appealing for the masses or your preferred audience to “get the clicks is deserves”.

The Fallacy of Keywords

If you elect to target a series of competitive keywords, be aware that the more competitive the phrase, the more time and energy you will have to invest in acquiring it.

This is why you obviously want to allocate a portion of your energy to the top tier keywords and key phrases that yield the mother lode of traffic, yet crafting a number of secondary and tertiary terms is a solid strategy for funneling pre-qualified visitors. The argument about keywords that are too broad not being worth their salt truly depends on the industry.

Most insist that one word keywords typically attract those interested in research vs. consumers that are further along in the sales cycle who use additional descriptive modifiers to hone in on a particular GEO location, product or service.

That really depends on the industry, we know for example that hitting the top 10 for SEO (since our industry is all about placement and results) can drive 70% of the total traffic for your website on any given hour, which is why getting back to the top 10 is our #1 priority. Currently we are in the top 15, but that simply is not good enough to make a definitive statement.

A website targeting the words “real estate” or “shopping” however, may not find the effort was worth it, due to the type of people typing this in are using far too nebulous a keyword they will ultimately require some refinement and additional keywords to zero in on their ideal document / webpage.

One solid method however is to:

1) start with your on page SEO factors and internal linking first instead of trying to put lipstick on a pig and pass it off as relevance. Here is a nifty little internal linking tool we developed in house for finding the best internal link / landing pages in a site.

2) Look for ways to expedite trust and website authority and create a healthy balance of internal and external links. Here are a few references for internal link building and how to augment your site from within.

3) Constantly look for new ways to leverage the internal link dynamo / juggernaut effect your own website is capable of producing like its own superconductor (once it is charged with topical relevance).

In closing, remember rankings are by the page, if your position is low on the totem pole then (1) strengthen internal linking (2) look for authority sites for inbound links (even social bookmarks will do) and (3) create a silo of related content (5-10 pages on the topic) to create the appropriate on page indicators needed to warrant search engines awarding you with a higher position.

Manage these three steps with patience and persistence, choose a tight enough niche of semantically aligned keywords and give each page enough time to find its stride (30-90 days) and your concerns about higher rankings will have subsided as you now have a solid strategy to engage in the even that your position (for your existing content) losing its footing.

Building a Profitable Web 2.0 Web Site

Theodore F. di Stefano — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:30:00 +0000

Competition for building a profitable Web site is quite fierce. Yet many of us have dreams of a unique concept that will attract viewers, followed soon thereafter by advertisers. I’m not sure what percentage of aspirants succeed in this quest, but I would venture to guess that it’s a very low percentage.

With the evolution of the Web to the Web 2.0, the task becomes even a bit more challenging. For those who aren’t familiar with the term Web 2.0, Wikipedia can help out: “Web 2.0 is a living term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and Web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the Web …” The complete definition also mentions video sharing sites.

Though the competition is fierce in the Web 2.0 space, it’s encouraging to see a recently formed company quickly create critical mass, thus attracting advertisers and creating a cash flow in less than a year of operation. That company is As Seen On TV.Info, a privately held startup.

A Winning Business Model

It all starts with a winning business model. (Business models are discussed in my article for the E-Commerce Times titled “Why Startups Fail.”) As Seen on TV.Info’s (ASOTVI) business model is unique in several respects.

It creates side-by-side video viewing of an actual Direct Response Television (DRTV) product offered for sale with a critical review of that product. This capability leverages online video technology to visually contrast the major claims of vendor infomercials with reality. Additionally, it does this with a patent-pending, Web 2.0 approach that uniquely provides objective online “You Tube-styled” video reviews, posted in parallel (via Flash Video players) alongside product vendors’ infomercials, thus allowing consumers to see for themselves what products can really do, and what they can’t do.

You might wonder who will be advertising on this Web site. The CEO of the company, Robert Gelinas, told me that he will not accept any advertisement from a company whose product does not pass vetting. In other words, if the product doesn’t work as advertised, ASOTVI will not accept advertising dollars from its manufacturer. He also made it clear that ASOTVI publishes negative reviews whenever warranted and that “no one gets a pass” with a review that isn’t merited. He added that reviews are published at the company’s discretion.

ASOTVI has found a unique niche for itself in that no other independent, objective review organization exists for what is one of the largest segments of the retail industry, DRTV. This segment is noted for its hype and exaggerated claims, as most TV viewers can attest.

An advantage to viewers who want to check on a product is that they can do so at no cost and without cumbersome registration. All they have to do is go to the site and check out the product, assuming that there is a review of the product of their choice.

Revenue Streams Are Important

Of course, a Web-based company needs a steady flow of revenue to survive. ASOTVI’s business model calls for a cost-per-click (CPC) advertising model that comes from either a product’s Review Page, a Run-of-the-Site (ROTS) campaign, or both. Additionally, the company will generate revenue through Cost-Per-Action (CPA) campaigns that flow through associated affiliate networks. Thus, ASOTVI generates revenues from product reviews, even if a product’s vendor doesn’t choose to commission an advertising campaign.

Gelinas noted that a significant part of the projected revenue stream of the company are the numerous retailers of both As Seen on TV products and competitive products. He then added that the site draws large numbers of visitors who have much in common, making them a targeted audience for retailers. As DRTV campaigns mature, the products are then picked up by mass market retailers who in turn feature select displays of As Seen on TV products appropriate to their own merchandising programs.

From my perspective, the retailers can state in their advertisements that, unlike television commercials, customers can see the actual products on display for themselves, along with a parallel review of same.

Getting Products to Review

There are so many products advertised in the DRTV space that one has to wonder how the company gets products to review. I asked this question of Gelinas. He told me that vendors actually send ASOTVI samples of their products which the company then reviews. ASOTVI thereafter produces 2-minute product review videos at no charge to the vendors.

The company has targeted consumer-related product companies and retailers. The greatest present interest in advertising on the ASOTVI site obviously comes from the companies whose products have been favorably reviewed. These companies commission advertising campaigns for their products.

Thus, each time that ASOTVI favorably reviews a product, it creates a potential advertising client. So long as that review stays on the company’s site, the manufacturer of the product remains a potential, if not actual, advertiser. And, the more products that ASOTVI reviews, the larger its advertising clientele becomes. This advertising base will expand in the future, as explained above.

It is indeed a rare instance when a business can identify a niche, a vacuum, so well. This talent has enabled ASOTVI to create a critical mass of advertisers by reviewing (at no cost to manufacturers) company products, thus creating advertising revenue by posting video reviews on its site of actual products that have appeared on TV. And the video review, as mentioned above, is conveniently placed right next to the manufacturer’s video of its product.

I went to the site and first looked at a manufacturer’s TV advertisement of its product, then clicked on the review of the product to see if the claims matched up. I found browsing through the site and being able to get “both sides” of a product’s story quite user friendly.

Keyword Exercises for SEO

Jeffrey Smith — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:09:44 +0000

Don’t be fooled by people trying to tell you that tracking SEO metrics based on keywords and keyword performance is obsolete. Keywords and the traffic they produce are alive and well and depending on the position (above the fold or below the fold) and the percentage of traffic they receive is tangible to assess conversion and performance benchmarks.

Over 80% of consumers hot on the trail of a product or service have a higher propensity of clicking the top 3 search results when presented with the top 10 websites for their query. If a user has to scroll below the fold the click through numbers taper down to the remaining percentages.

However, depending on factors such as:

1) the competition for the phrase

2) the relevance to the searchers intent and

3) the emotional click-triggers from the snippet/description in the search result (and how sticky it is) impact who gets the click.

Obviously, the more keywords that encroach on a topic, the higher percentage for conversion you have from those topics, when each of the pages becomes buoyant after gaining some authority in search engines (typically 2-4 months).

In closing, here is a brief SEO keyword exercise you can use to spread your semantic net a bit wider to funnel and capture more broad and exact match traffic for your pages.

This phenomenon is based on keyword stemming and Pair phrase indexing. The translation here; the more related keywords you have on a page or that reference a page, the higher the relevance for the related keywords.

I have mentioned before that any word on the page is a keyword when combined with the right synergy of on page and off page factors.

So, you never know what may emerge from the vacuum when a query is executed and just how Google, Yahoo or MSN may extract content and keywords from 1 page, 3 pages 10 pages or more from your site to combine an aggregate relevance score for your website vs. your competition.

It is not always clear cut and dried as this (such as the chronology of content and sheer volume) to outrank your competition. However, if you are constantly producing quality content in quantity with this in mind, the likelihood of your site hitting hub status as a resource for search engines to share with their readers is only a matter of time.

Keyword stemming is the premise of topical content reaching critical mass and sending key indicators to search engines that the subject is thoroughly present and saturated within your website.

The more semantic derivatives that exist in your pages, the higher your relevance for the keywords or niche in question.

As an example, just think of Wikipedia and how they virtually rank for every imaginable keyword as a result of (a) their massive internal index of pages and (b) the way they structure their site and (c) the way they cross link to their own content using synonyms and exact match anchor text (the text in the link).

As a result, the topical pools of information they leave behind in the cloud (via cloud computing) drive traffic to related web pages based on this basic premise. We know from SEO that When a keyword is present on a page, the density, frequency and prominence all have an impact as well as how many related pages on the topic exist in your site.

What we are proposing is, since semantic phrases overlap and reinforce relevance, the idea is to use the additional keywords discovered from a thesaurus to shore up islands of content for search engines.

For example, by adding 15 new related keywords to a page that already has relevance for related keywords, the amount of broad match traffic you can attract is exponential.

Over time, new relationships form between pages and phrases to raise the bar for how your site fares in search engines.

Now, for the exercise

1 – pick a keyword you want to reinforce.

2 – use the search command site:website.com keyword in a Google search box to find the target page with the highest occurrence of the keyword (to serve as the preferred landing page since search engines already have opted for that page).

3 – open the thesaurus tool and type in the keyword to find alternative phrases

4 – from the pages below the first result from step 2 (the other 9 below the number 1 spot), edit the page and add or change content to include the new keywords from the thesaurus.

5- from those new / related keywords, link back to the preferred landing / target page.

6 – use this tactic to funnel more traffic, it works since search results often combine a word from the title, another keyword from the description, a word or two from the actual page when searching for the top 1000 websites for any given query.

This is like discovering traffic you never knew existing, since it was latent within your website from lack of expression. More synonyms mean traffic with a very specific intent can find you when they need it most (when executing a focused search).

How Persuasive is Your Marketing?

Jeffrey Smith — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:40:07 +0000

We know that SEO can deliver traffic, but we know from experience that traffic alone is not enough.

Skeptical consumers require more from your websites’ proposition to relinquish their reservations. This requires persuasion and persuasion marketing.

SEO, relevant and persuasive copy as well as usability all need to work harmoniously in order to shatter prior expectations about what users need from a website in order to take action. One aspect presented without the proper balance of the other can leave the visitor on the fence when it comes to making a decision to purchase.

Transforming a prospect into a customer involves multiple emotional and intellectual layers to facilitate trust. Often, the resolve of the prospect is weathered by a natural layer of mental and emotional buffers to offset the sales process. Just consider it natural reaction to being bombarded from disruptions from advertisements attempting to breach their awareness from every angle.

If you realize it or not, your pages are waging an argument of relevance, persuasion and validity. If you win, conversion occurs, if you lose, then your just another stepping stone for your competition who has structured a better offer, argument or call to action.

When dealing with new visitors, your website has a 50/50 chance of winning their vote. Visitors, unless endorsed or referred by a third party (like an authority site, or trusted friend or reference), have a tendency to reserve judgment about a new product of service until the argument of value, impulse and need are mitigated and a clear decision is determined by which action to take.

The primary component to sales is security and trust, without it your page is just another website that made the click and run list. Stickiness for your design and visual appeal all play a part, but the tone of your content and context, call to action and supporting information are the logical areas any visitor will assess.

Every time a new visitor lands on one of your pages, there is a mental checklist that occurs under the surface of their roving eyes. They either (a) within 3-5 seconds fast-track the checklist and like the page or the style of information exchange or (b) look for reasons to pick it apart and move on.

Don’t feel bad, this is nothing personal, just call it our new protection mechanism from over stimulation. Going back to the fact that consumers are constantly being bombarded from all sides and mediums available from billboards to bumper stickers and everything in between, it is only natural to protect your psyche from any random or fleeting advertorial or advertisement you engage online.

Making your argument stick is no longer just a sales pitch, it is a mark of distinction your pages wear like a badge that convey a more human element of appeal to your website. Just like a formal business letter in many instances was the norm from a different era, now an informal email works just fine to get the point across. Similarly selling has taken on a more sophisticated yet transparent approach to the methods of yesteryear.

We are now faced with a transition from conditional stereotypes for business as they are replaced with more rudimentary needs such as:

Why Should I Pick You?
Are You Qualified? If so, How Qualified?
Under Who’s Opinion?
What Credentials and Accountability Do You Have?, Show Me Proof?
Are You Knowledgeable? and Last but Not Least, What are YOU going to do for ME?

Granted, this dialogue may not be obvious, internalized mental checklists such as these are not uncommon if someone is skimming your content for relevance. Only 17% of all visitors actually read your content word for word, most just skim for a reason to dig deeper.

So, if you are thoughtful enough to offer one part design, one part relevance and one part persuasion you can create the perfect combination for conversion to occur.

Just like clapping with one hand presents its own challenge, content that does not address or convey expertise for your product, service or brand will not sway your preferred audience the competition that understands the premise of persuasion.

So, before you think about how many keywords to optimize your website for, how to reach your target demographic or how many links you need to build to take the top ranking spot.

Make sure you have something worthy and remarkable enough to get your visitors off the bleachers and into the game, otherwise you are just cheerleaders for your competition who has structured the better argument to overcome the inertia of indecision with the fervor of their sales offer.

Qualified Impressions Translate Into Sales

Jeffrey Smith — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:11:32 +0000

Its not always the quantity, but the quality of visitor impressions that make the difference. Qualified impressions that translate into leads, sales or click through conversion are the true basis of SEO.

Out of every 100 visitors that visit your site, how many fill out a contact form, pick up the phone, download a special promotional? If you answered 15-25 visitors, then your pages are optimized for lead generation and conversion. Granted not every visitor that finds your site is going to want something from it, the idea is to set the stage for quality vs quantity and the right type of visitor who has a genuine need for your product.

Once you have conducted extensive market research, then cater to their needs and distinguish your website from your competition to leave a lasting impression. People purchase when they want to, not always when you want them to. However, by sending the right signals you can expedite trust through employing usability and testing multiple offers to refine your pitch, your keywords and attract the right consumer.

Curiosity is the basis of commerce when the “I’ve got to have it” impulse flares up and people shift from information foraging to credit card ready click, shop and drop-ship buyers, you’ll want to ensure that they find your site vs. your competitors. That is the real value of SEO, finding the keywords that convert and funneling those visitors to the most appropriate page to test their response.

Finding the right type of traffic is only half the battle, getting them to stay, dig deeper into your content or make a purchase is the real objective if commerce is part of your online model, which is why qualified impressions are better than stragglers drifting in on a whim.

Just like fashion, the mob rule can be swift when dealing with how your brand is perceived. One day your hot, the next day your not. By keeping your landing pages polished, free of clutter and up to date goes a long way to lower bounce rates and create more traction for your website from the millions of impressions with consumers attached looking for what you have to offer.

Search Advertising with the new Microsoft adCenter

Akshay Sura — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:30:39 +0000

With the launch of the popular web service AdWords from Google Inc, it seemed that Google had monopolized the online advertisement management scenario on the internet. However, arch rival Microsoft was not the one to be left behind. Microsoft has recently launched the adCenter service, with similar features to those of Google AdWords and have bounced right back into competition.

The Microsoft adCenter service allows business organizations to manage all their online advertisements as well as their content, form one unified environment. Users can sign up for the service for just $5 and can get started. All they need to do is specify the target audience/market and specify the budget. Microsoft prefers to call this concept, “search advertising”. You need to pay only when a user clicks on your ad while surfing and cost-per-click (CPC) bids start as low as $0.5/click. The Microsoft adCenter service determines how frequently an advertisement is shown by using two similar concepts as used in Google AdWords, pay-per-click (PPC) and click through rate (CTR). Potential advertisers are encouraged by the service to advertise only on searches and write effective advertisements. The Microsoft adCenter allows advertisers to run their ads on specific days of the week. The advertisers also have the option to specify the time of the day during which the ad should run. This intuitive feature ensures that using the Microsoft adCenter service is not only economic but also cost-effective.

The Microsoft adCenter permits the advertisers to target their ads to a given set of demographics. When a user of a certain demographic views the ad, the bid associated with that ad is increased.

The front end provided to the advertisers by Microsoft adCenter is both UI and Web service API based. With the advent of the adCenter service from Microsoft, the Google vs. Microsoft rivalry thus continues and as a matter of fact is good for the end-users.

Competition breeds better products and services.

Using Your Whole Business to Build Links

willcritchlow — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:44:02 +0000

Posted by willcritchlow

In my opinion anyone working in marketing should be reading Seth Godin's blog. Seth is a new marketing expert and his brainstorms and thoughts regularly give me new ideas. I am in the middle of reading one of his books - Meatball Sundae - its contents won't surprise anyone who reads Seth's blog; it's premise is that mass market products are "meatballs" and the new marketing (in which he includes SEO) are "sundae toppings". Trying to add sundae toppings to meatballs results in a mess, and organisations need to be built from the ground up with new marketing built in.

We'll get on in a second to situations where this isn't exactly true, but the basic premise is certainly tempting:

Paypal wasn't done by an established payment provider - it was a start-up
ebay's marketing looks nothing like Sotheby's
Amazon apparently gets ~30x the traffic that Walmart's website gets

There are a few situations where I would disagree with the conclusion that you always get a mess when you add new marketing to old businesses - particularly in SEO - understanding the basics of SEO (not even linkbait etc. but just keyword research and basic technical on-page SEO) can be enough to form a valuable sales channel for old-school businesses.

There are "meatball" businesses like Tesco (our largest supermarket in the UK) who have broadly understood SEO (although they have a long way to go in some areas, they are miles ahead of the competition) and who are now popping up as competitors across many many verticals.

I therefore think it can be possible to translate old-school success into SEO success with some creativity, and it is still possible to start up in traditional ways in many sectors and at least gather local search traffic through basic SEO techniques. Even when the website is effectively an afterthought to the core business.

However...

It is an analogy that has great use for those of us who have to sell SEO and even more so for those of us who have to explain to over-enthusiastic prospects that SEO is not a magic switch we have under our desks marked "Google rankings".

Link building

What do you mean by link building? How do you do link building?

We know from Rand's question and the enthusiasm for various linkbuilding tips that acquiring links is something many SEOs struggle with.

There are a variety of ways of 'building' links - some to be recommended and some definitely not:

Directory links and those that you get automatically just by asking / submitting
Asking for each link and "selling" to the individual webmasters
Link worthy content (and asking for links off the back of this)
Linkbait through social media / viral ideas
Spam
Buying links (through a network)
Buying links individually

These are all the ways normally discussed of getting links (OK, OK, I'm sure I've missed some that are technically different but almost anything will actually fit into one of these categories).

But meatball sundae teaches us that there is another way:

Build your business in such a way that it acquires links

For most of us working on the agency / consulting side of SEO, it is hard to make business model changes (certainly fundamental ones) to our clients' businesses, but if I was starting a new business, you can be sure this would be a priority of mine. Even in established businesses, it can pay to think like an entrepreneur when looking for ways of shaping the business for links.

Lessons we can apply

I am a big advocate of looking for ways that clients' businesses can support link acquisition. For those of you at the expert seminar this week, this fits closely with Rand's presentation on enterprise link building strategies. It became clear at the seminar that there are a lot of in-house SEOs who read SEOmoz and for you guys (or agencies working with larger clients) I think a critical success factor will be exactly this.

In no particular order, here are a few ideas I have had on this subject (I'd love to see more in the comments):

Partnerships and content syndication and all other ideas from Rand's presentation

Rand's presentation at the expert seminar this week talked about this and a variety of other enterprise link-building tactics. I have tried to avoid re-using his ideas (apart from the unicorn link, below). All of his ideas belong in this list as well. If you weren't there, they'll all be out on video soon...

Releasing financial information in link friendly ways

Obviously this is closely regulated, but within the confines of what you are allowed to do, consider carefully how financial information is released as there are many places that are guaranteed to cover it, so some basic linkworthiness and keyphrase research goes a long way.

Allies and internal partnerships

You will have a PR and marketing team. Making friends with them and getting them on your side means that your budget just effectively grew. Both advertising and publicity can attract links if done in the right way. The best advice I can give here is not to preach but rather to help them look good to their boss. Just like any networking interaction - think what you can do for them. Internal networking is no different.

Use your homepage

If you create linkworthy content, and you have a big brand, then you don't need social media to begin the process of spreading it. If your homepage gets tens of thousands of visitors a day, then hitting your own homepage can be as good as hitting the digg homepage (remembering that your content is going to be a lot more relevant to your average visitor than the average digg visitor). Integrate your linkbait into your business.

Use your email list

We've been talking about this one quite a lot at Distilled HQ and maybe it'll be the subject of its own post sometime soon, but the power of building (what Seth calls) a permission-based relationship with people whereby they not only subscribe to your special offer newsletter but also want to hear when you launch new pieces of linkbait is hard to overstate. Think this is crazy and no-one would ever do that? Consider viral ideas like 10 reasons it would rule to date a unicorn. I think a lot of the people that appealed to would love an email when the next one in the series is released.

This is not an exhaustive list (and hasn't even really covered the ways your business can be linkworthy in itself) so I'd love to see your ideas and thoughts in the comments...

Quick note to say thanks to everyone whose hard work went into the expert seminar this week. I got a lot out of the sessions and the networking and it was especially good to put faces to avatars when meeting so many people I've spoken to online but never met before.

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Don’t Forget to Link Out

Jeffrey Smith — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:33:56 +0000

Search engine optimization is more than just a series of techniques. It is a concept of continuity, which is why linking out (to other sites) matters equally if not more than who links to your website.

For the sake of relevance and to create the right continuity, you’ll need to create the appropriate signals to search engines that convey (a) your site is an authority and (b) that is it a resource to expedite trust (which equates to pure search engine dominion).

The Premise of Outbound Links

For example, if I wanted to rank for the word SEO, then by me linking to a site that already ranks highly for the term augments the continuity of the content on my site. Although they may not link back (unless you appeal to them in some way shape of form) the transaction still has a favorable impact on your link profile.

Transparency and Hub Status

By linking out to quality sources, this establishes your site as a resource known as a hub site, meaning just in case you didn’t find what you were looking for here, we have included some great links you can follow to complete your search on the topic. By doing this properly, this tactful and selfless action can spring-board your pages past your competition and virtually leave them in your shadow as far as rankings are concerned.

This strategy involves achieving a state of balance through observance of the quality and quantity of links in to links out (per page and for the entire domain) creates a distinct profile that eventually is used to identify the caliber of your content. Obviously, this is yet another layer of the process of SEO, but a very important one for consideration when your aim is to create a series of strong pages about a topic to garner a high ranking position.

Using the Link From Domain Search Command to See Your Outbound Link Profile

Rand Fishkin from SEO Moz (note the tactful outbound link) discussed a great search command in the “Give it Up Session” from SMX Advanced, that works using MSN Live search that provides a snapshot of who your site links to by using a simple search command, linkfromdomain. In order to use the “link from domain command” just open MSN Live Search and type linkfromdomain:website.com and hit return to see the outbound link profile of the site in question. Obviously, you will need to replace the generic website.com with the site you are inquiring about.