Link Building : Help Your Employee Grow

Find something that will make the job more interesting and help your employee grow. Set aside a certain amount of time each week, even if just an hour, for this project. Here are some examples.

Flextime

Is your link marketer creative? Remember all those link building ideas that were suggested you didn't think would work?

Allow your person to spend a certain amount of time each week to try some out. Many may not work out well -- yet other successful ideas may arise from those.

As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."


Networking Events

Have a person that enjoys socializing? Send them to networking events to meet business people, and to obtain some great links at the same time. These are the type of links that would be hard to get via e-mail or a phone call.

Take them to industry conferences, chamber of commerce events, or any local business networking event. The ROI from links more than justify the cost. Just ask the sites with top three results in competitive fields.

A couple weeks after the conference have them contact their new colleagues. That's when the actual link development begins.

Some might be reluctant to send their main link person to these events for fear of them being recruited by another company. Trust me, if they wanted a new job there's no shortage in the link field! Instead keep them happy, and motivated to stay with you.

Study Traditional Marketing

Everyone is looking for that sexy, clever new idea to astonish the world. The truth is most traditional marketing tactics can be applied to link marketing.

If your link person is really into marketing, this is a great strategy. Have your link marketer study more traditional marketing techniques, then figure out ways to apply it to links.

On a tight budget? Have them study guerrilla marketing strategies. That's always a good way to reduce costs.

Their Personal Interest

Another way is to allow them to study successful sites in a field they like. Since they're already interested in the topic they know the sites. They also know the industries well.

Have them study how those sites obtained their links, then figure out a way to apply it to your site. The results will surprise you.

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Why Your Blog Isn’t Getting Any Readers

Boring posts

Going through a boring blog is like reading a comic book or a novel with a dragging plot. Uninteresting or poorly-written articles may be the main reason why people don’t take a second look at your blog. When posts become dull and predictable, your readers lose their urge to return to your site.


Outdated blog posts

Blogs can be considered as magazines, too. A blog’s content should be fresh and regularly updated, to keep the readers’ interests and attention. Many Web users visit blogs because they want to know about and learn new things.

Untidy website

Fill your site with useless ads and disorganized content, and people will surely avoid visiting your blog in the future. People put a lot of importance on the visual appeal and design of the websites they visit often, because these factors also affect a website’s functionality. Cluttered websites tend to repel, instead of attract, site visitors.

Disabled comments

Many people choose to communicate with blog authors by posting comments on blog entries. When the blog’s ‘Comments’ feature is disabled, you’ll lose the opportunity to gain site traffic and potential links that can enhance your website’s SEO campaigns. Blog commenting is one way of expanding your network, because readers, bloggers especially, want to interact and share their ideas with you.

Posting unrealistic content

Many blogs out there are obviously unrealistic and dishonest. Don’t post about your supposed encounters with famous personalities or celebrities just to boost site traffic. Lying would definitely spell doom for your blog’s existence.

Not responding to e-mails or comments

Many bloggers tend to leave their e-mail accounts unchecked, because they focus more on their blog posts. You should remember that not all readers direct their queries on your blog; some prefer to do it by email due to issues of privacy. Whether it’s through email or direct blog commenting, take the time to answer your reader’s questions.

Having a profit-centered blog
Majority of bloggers on the World Wide Web consider their blogs as extensions of their business websites. There is nothing wrong about that. However, business bloggers should remember not to focus solely on profit. Do not over-promote your products and services, because it will only annoy your readers. They visit your blog to learn about you and your services, but not to buy all your products.

More: SEO Updates

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SEO Factors For Improve Search Engine Results

One clear lesson emerges from this list, which has been compiled by people from all over the world in a variety of fields, not just SEO. The lesson is this: If your SEO people aren't talking to your coders or your writers (or better still, supervising them), you're in trouble.


Factors that improve search engine results:

Code

1) Search terms in the "TITLE" tag
2) Search terms in "B" or "STRONG"
3) Search term in anchor text in links to a page
4) Search term in image names
5) Search term in image ALTs
6) Search terms the first or last words of the Title Tag
7) Search terms in the page name URL (e.g. acme.co.uk/folder/searchterm.html)
8) Use of hyphen ("-") or underscore ("_") in search terms in URL (for example, search-term.htm is better than searchterm.htm)
9) Search terms in the page folder URL (e.g. acme.co.uk/search-term/page.html)
10) Search terms in the first or last words in the H1 Tag
11) Search terms in other "H" tags
12) Search terms in the page's query parameters (e.g. acme.co.uk/page.html?searchterm)
13) Search terms (and location) in the meta-description tag
14) XML sitemap
15) XML sitemap under 10k
16) Accuracy of XML sitemap
17) Sitemap folder geo-targeting
18) Index/follow meta tags
19) Robots.txt present
20) URL length
21) Title attribute of link
22) W3C-compliant html coding
23) Video header and descriptions
24) Video sitemap
25) Compression for size by eliminating white space, using shorthand notation, and combining multiple CSS files where appropriate. GZIP can be used
26) Use CSS sprites to help consolidate decorative images
27) No redirection to other URLS in the same server
28) "NOSCRIPT" tags (even though I don't know anyone who doesn't have JavaScript enabled)
29) Geo-meta tags if the business serves a targeted geographic area
30) Relevance of "TITLE" tag to page content
31) Relevance of "META DESCRIPTION" to page content
32) Code-to-text ratio
33) Canonical URL
34) Directory depth
35) Number of query-string parameters
36) Link attributes -- like rel=nofollow
37) Link structure
38) Microformats
39) Mobile accessibility
40) Page size
41) Page accessible
42) Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has)
43) ALT Image Meta Tags (this can be helpful for FLASH elements too)
44) Age of prominent / 2nd level pages

Copy

45) The most important rule of all: plain old simple quality relevant content
46) Keyword density
47) Keyword proximity -- number of words between search terms (less is better)
48) Keyword positions in page
49) Keyword prominence (start/end of paragraphs or sentences)
50) Words in page
51) Page category (or theme)
52) Relevance (to searched phrase)
53) Synonyms to query terms
54) Language
55) Linear distribution of search terms
56) Legality of content
57) Frequency of updates
58) Standard deviation of search terms in the population of pages containing search terms
59) Semantic relevance (synonym for matching term)
60) Rich snippets
61) Rich snippet UGC rating
62) Search term density through body copy (about 3-5 percent)
63) Search terms in internal link anchor text on the page
64) Search terms in external link anchor text on the page
65) Search terms in the first 50-100 words in HTML on the page

Site

66) Length of contract for ownership of domain name
67) Domain registration information hidden/anonymous
68) Site top-level domain (geographical focus, e.g. .com versus co.uk)
69) Site top-level domain (.com versus .info)
70) Sub domain or root domain?
71) Domain past records (how often it changed IP)
72) Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
73) Domain IP
74) Domain external mentions (non-linked)
75) Geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster Tools
76) Domain registration with Google Webmaster Tools
77) Domain presence in Google News
78) Domain presence in Google Blog Search
79) Use of the domain in Google Analytics
80) Server geographical location
81) Server reliability/uptime
82) PageRank of a page (the actual PageRank, not the toolbar PageRank)
83) The PageRank of the entire domain
84) The speed of the website
85) Reputable hosting company
86) Geo-located results
87) Search terms in the root domain name (searchterm.com)
88) An active Adsense campaign
89) Domain age (older is better)
90) The number of pages on the topic related to the search term
91) Wikipedia listing?
92) Listed in DMOZ?
93) Number of pages within site (more is better)
94) Website size (bigger is better)

Links

95) Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to other pages of this site)
96) Quality of link partners
97) Diversity of link partners
98) Links from good directories
99) Rate of new inbound links to your site
100) Relevance of inbound links -- subject-specific relationship with target page
101) Placement of back-links in page
102) Quantity of back-links
103) Quantity of linking root domains
104) Quality of linking root domains
105) Link distance from higher authority sites
106) Outgoing followed links from back-linked pages
107) Domain classification of linking domains
108) Outbound links with keywords
109) PageRank of outbound link targets

Behavior

110) SERP click-through rate. If your website is ranked No. 1 for "bike shoes" but 90 percent of the traffic goes to the website ranked No. 2, Google will notice and make an adjustment
111) Search trend data
112) Social graph fans (they like/follow you)
113) Social graph fans earned impressions (they talk about you)
114) Social graph fans earned impressions with links (talk about and cite your content)
115) Secondary fan connection citations earned impressions
116) Secondary fan connection citations earned impressions (retweets, likes of friends)
117) Other citations (social media linking)
118) Visits (personalization)
119) Visits (scraped from Alexa)
120) Number of SERP click-throughs
121) Visitors' demographics
122) Visitors' browsing habits (what other sites they tend to visit)
123) Visiting trends and patterns (like sudden spikes in incoming traffic)
124) User experience -- "human raters" -- a large number (thousands) of Google employees are there solely to check and manually tweak search results.

Rules for beating Google

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Google Tools! For SEO Helps…!!!

We all love SEO tools because they can make our lives so much easier. Members of SEOmoz know this better than most with the array of tools that SEOmoz has. However we always want more as there are always some tasks that can be automated or made quick by using a tool instead. Google actually provides tools that can assist with SEO tasks; some of them you may know about, others may be new to you. Either way, I wanted to give you a run down of ways you can use Google to help with SEO tasks.

Just as a quick side note, Google actually has an SEO guide (PDF link) which is pretty good as both an introduction and a reminder of the basic principles of SEO and how Google works. It amazes me how many SEOs don't read into the technical side of Google and how everything works behind the scenes. This guide helps to cover some of this.

So what tools does Google give you...

1. Follow Finder

This tool helps you to find people on Twitter who are similar or related to the person you search for. You just enter the profile name of someone and the tool will return a list of people also on Twitter.

Practical Use - Very handy if you are just getting into a new market and want to find out who the key influencers are as well as who is active in that community on Twitter. This can lead to the potential of outreach and building relationships with these people. The tool does seem quite accurate given the results that it returned for a search on Rand's profile:

2. Google Sets

I've been using this for quite a while now and even though it is very simple, it is quite useful. You input a keyword and the tool will return a list of keywords which are similar to the one you started with. Here is an example of what results I was given on a search for "BMW":

Practical Use - I use this a lot when I am just starting a project and need to get a feel for all the different related keywords that could be related to the client. It's almost like a brainstorming tool and can certainly help if you are stuck or have brain freeze!

3. Google Alerts + Google Reader + iGoogle = Win!

So this one is a combination of tools. You can use this combination for a number of purposes, but the idea is that you can get these tools to work together then feed the output into an easy to consume format.

Practical Use - I have two main uses of these tools. The first is like an improvised reputation management dashboard. I do this via the following steps -

• Setup a Google Alert for my keywords, eg "Paddy Moogan" OR "Patrick Moogan"
• Add this Google Alert to Google Reader - you could stop at this point but it can look much better!
• Take the RSS feed from Google Reader and add it to your iGoogle interface

So when I login to iGoogle, I have a small widget which will contain any mentioned of the variations of my name. You can then mark them as read and only see new results in your feed which makes things much more efficient. Fortunately today there are no mentions of me. :P

4. Latest Results

Not many people think of this as an SEO tool but it can be used in a few different ways. The way it works is very simple, just input your keyword and click on Latest from the left hand menu:

Practical Use - I sometimes use this combined with a site: search to see how a website is being cached by Google. If you enter a very large website with lots of link juice, then you can pretty much see live re-caching of the pages on that website, just like this example using the BBC website:

Another use is to use a similar approach to my previous task of monitoring Google Alerts for mentions of your brand. You could run a search for your brand, then leave the latest results running in a different tab / browser whilst you do other work. Then just come back every so often and see if there are any relevant results to you.

5. Google Suggest

Again, this isn't really thought of as an SEO tool but it should be! I actually blogged about this quite a while ago and gave a few instances where this may be useful. In partiuclar when you have to do some very quick keyword analysis and give an answer to a client. There is some debate as to where these results come from, but to me it seems to be a combination of search volume and on-site factors as well as social mentions. So it's still a valid source to look at when trying to come up with additional keywords - in particular long tail keywords.

Practical Use - Fortunately there are tools out there which make using Google Suggest as a tool a lot easier, one of which is this tool from Rob Millard which makes use of the Google Suggest API.

6. Google Insights

I don't use this as much as I should really. I don't think the data is 100% perfect but when doing comparisons, it can often come in handy.

Practical Use - Make comparisons between similar search terms to see which one you could be targeting and see which ones have become more popular in recent times. I also use it to try and see what search terms are rising pretty fast. If you are lucky enough to see one that is related to your industry, you can sometimes ride the wave by publishing a news article or piece of content around that term. This works especially well if you are included in Google News too. Here is an example of what I've found at the time of writing:

7. Google Webmaster Tools

This one kind of goes without saying! There is a wealth of information inside Webmaster Tools and Google are releasing more features all the time.

Practical Use - I love using Webmaster Tools when doing technical site audits. Google gives you information on crawl errors and what they have found in terms of on-site issues which you can then try and fix to improve your site.

8. Google Trends

Trends is a little different to Insights which I mentioned above. One of the extra features that Trends gives you is the ability to see the "Also Visited" and "Also Searched For" information. We can see the following results when I searched for www.seomoz.org which seem fairly accurate:

Practical Use - This is a very useful one for doing research around a market that you don't know too well, for example at the start of an SEO project. It can also give you some ideas for sites to get links from, because these are very relevant sites. You can also use these sites to do backlink checks for finding more links that you may not have previously seen.

9. Wonder Wheel

Another useful tool from Google is the Wonder Wheel which was introduced quite a while ago. It's very good for finding related keywords, almost like Google Sets or Google Suggest which were outlined above.

Practical Use - Where the Wonder Wheel really helps is when it comes to showing clients and non SEO people a way to visualise keywords that are related to each other. It works very quickly and you can easily get into the long tail of search terms. Here is an example if you were working in an industry that sold garden sheds, after just three clicks I've got some long tail keyword ideas and can see what the competition is like for each one by looking at the search results to the right:

10. Image Swirl

I've cheated with this one a little bit - it hasn't really got any SEO use from what I've seen so far. But it is so cool to use! It shows you images that are very similar to each other and the interface is very slick and smooth. Its almost like the Wonder Wheel but for images:

A screenshot here can't really do it justice so just go and have a play :)

11. Google Zeitgeist

Thanks to Justin for pointing this one out to me. This is almost like a combination between Trends and Insights but looks so much better! The link above is to a summary of 2010 and the billions of searches on Google during the year. You can click on various world events and see a visual representation of which were most popular and in what parts of the world. Just check this out:

As I said this one is quite new to me so I'm yet to find an SEO use, but it sure looks great and has tons of data for you to look at.

Well there you have it, eleven tools given to us by Google. Go have a play and let me know in the comments if you have any others or different uses for the tools above.

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