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Link Building Resources 30 Jun 2009, 1:57 am

1. Link Building
2. First Impressions
3. Minisite Development

Domain Name Wire

Go Straight to Google for SEO Truths 23 Jun 2009, 11:53 am

Matt Cutt’s video series is worth watching.

There are a lot of half truths in the search engine optimization industry. So it’s refreshing to get an inside take from Google’s traveling search guru, Matt Cutts. I recommend watching his video series on YouTube.

As you know, I don’t usually recommend watching videos. But Cutts “cuts” to the chase (sorry, couldn’t help myself), answering the question in the first 30 seconds of each clip and then explaining his answers. Here are some of the questions Cutts answers in his videos:

-Should I use hyphens or underscores as separators in URLs? (A: Hyphens)

-How much does a domain’s age affect its ranking (A: Nothing really now, but this might matter in the future. Google filed a patent on this, but as of February this year it hadn’t implemented it.)

-Is redirecting a large number of domains suspicious? (A: Not necessarily. Google redirects a bunch of typos.)

-Does the position of keywords in the URL affect ranking? (A: Barely)

-Why does Google index blogs faster than other sites? (A: It may index them faster, but it may be just the blog index.)

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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RSSmeme

Bing It Is: Microsoft Rolls Out Its New Search Engine 28 May 2009, 10:05 am

http://www.rssmeme.com/story/11492121/bing-it-is-microsoft-rolls-out-its-new-search-engine Shared 14 times. Tagged Products (891) .

It was no secret that Microsoft was getting ready to roll out a new search engine, and today, the company began the official roll-out of Bing - the successor of the company's less than successful Live Search efforts. Formerly known as Kumo, Bing, which should become available worldwide by June 3, is Microsoft's latest attempt to steal market share away from Google. According to Microsoft, Bing, while providing a good general search experience, wants to focus on providing an especially good user experience in four verticals: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business.

Sponsor

For the most part, Bing's interface resembles that of today's Live Search, with a large 'cover image' on the front page that surrounds the search box. The major difference in the user interface is the addition of guided searches in the left sidebar, though Microsoft says that the real changes are under the hood. The company argues that it can bring a new approach to Internet search by providing a richer, easier, and more organized search experience. This, for example, means that Bing will integrate data from consumer reviews when a search brings up a restaurant, for example.

Good Enough is Not Good Enough in the Search Business

According to Microsoft, "30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result." We haven't been able to put Bing through its paces yet, so it remains to be seen if it actually works as well as Microsoft promises it will. We have seen too many promises in the area that have remained unfulfilled (we're looking at you, Cuil), so we will hold back any judgment until we get to test Bing ourselves.

One thing is clear, though: a search engine that is only 'good enough' will not be enough to gain back any market share from Google, which now virtually controls the search engine market. Microsoft argues that this large amount of market share can make Google slow to innovate, but then, it remains to be seen if Bing can offer enough innovation to entice users to switch. Yahoo Search, after all, is also innovating furiously, but hasn't been able to capture any new market share lately.

Rebranding Virtual Earth, Farecast, Cashback

Always happy to change brand names, Microsoft also announced that Virtual Earth, its mapping platform, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise. Travel search engine Farecast, formerly known as Live Search Farecast will now become Bing Travel, and the Live Cashback program will now be Bing Cashback.

Discover Bing

Microsoft also launched a new site, Discover Bing, that goes into all the details of how Bing works and the decision process behind the creation of it. And if you still can't get enough news about Bing, our friends over at CNet also feature an in-depth look at how Bing came to be.

Search Engine Journal

3+ Keyword and Topic Visualization Tools 19 May 2009, 4:41 am

Very often you can’t grasp the topic until you sit down and map it on the sheet of paper. Sometimes, you also need someone else’s input to see how others perceive the topic. Well, the good news is that there are online tools that can offer this “external” help in any topic visualization. Use them when:

• Doing a keyword research to see more related terms and phrases;
• Doing initial topic research to see neighboring niches;
• Brainstorming for new article ideas for your website or blog, etc.

Entity Association Graph

MSN Entity Association Graph visualizes “the associations between entities by mining the co-occurrences of entities in search queries or search sessions” (note: I couldn’t get it working for search sessions).

Visualization:

• Associated terms (”entities” or “nodes”): the number in each node represents the frequency of the entity name in the sample search log data.
• Relations between the core term and associated terms: the number between two nodes indicates how closely they are related. You can specify the edge strength of the graph.
• Relationship / edge types: co-occurrence or MI (point-wise mutual information).

Visual Thesaurus

Visual Thesaurus (reviewed by me previously) visualizes lexical relationships between various word meanings.

Visualization:

• view semantic relationship between words;
• rotate word maps in three dimensions to reveal complex relationships;
• see each word definitions when hovering over.

Wikipedia Visualization Tools

VisWiki visualizes relations between topics based on how they are interlinked within Wikipedia article. Clicking “Related” brings forth more neighboring topics:

EyePlorer (previously reviewed by me on SEJ) visualizes knowledge graphs (k-graphs) derived from Wikipedia content.

Visualization:

• Topic clustering by associations;
• Topic relations (double-click on any eyespot);
• Topic combinations (explore related eyespots of two or more topics combined).

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

3+ Keyword and Topic Visualization Tools

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Search Engine Strategies - SES Conference 15% Affiliate Discount 21 May 2009, 12:02 pm

SEO.com » Blog

Caution! rel=”nofollow” Discussion 16 May 2009, 10:01 am

What is Rel=”NoFollow”

The Rel=”NoFollow” link attribute made its debut back in January 2005. It was brought to the internet scene by Google to help combat comment spam for blogs and guestbooks.  The name implies that search spiders should not follow the link. What it really means is, “don’t pass on any rank to the following link” or “don’t give any score to this link.” The general idea was to limit the exposure comment spam was giving to unrelated and spammy websites. It is NOT used to keep search engines away from certain website pages.

It has since mushroomed to other areas of internet marketing and linking. Google now recommends adding it to paid/advertising links. Others suggest using it on a site’s internal links to help manage page rank. Still, many think it is hurting the internet and should be eliminated.

There has been significant confusion over the nofollow attribute for the last few years. What is it? Should we use it? Should I add it to all of the links on my site? Will it hurt my site rank?

Allow me to shed some light on the subject.

When to use or not to use the nofollow attribute:

1. DO NOT use when you have a link to a legitimate and useful website. The internet thrives on links between different sites and pages. Think of a link as a recommendation. With a link from your site to another, you are telling your readers/users the following site is useful. When you add a nofollow attribute to a link, you are effectively removing your endorsement for that webpage.

2. DO USE nofollow for paid links. This is definitely an area of debate. When choosing sides, my money lies with Google. They clearly state, “In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters to use nofollow on such links.”

3. DO USE nofollow on untrusted content, or if you don’t want to vouch for content your site is linked to. A great example of this is what nofollow was originally created for, untrusted user comments on blogs and pages. This can discourage spammers from using comment fields in your system. You may decide to remove the nofollow attribute from trusted contributors, and users who are adding value and usefulness to your content. It is common for webmasters to use follow blog comments to encourage more interaction and higher quality comments on their site.

4. DO USE nofollow on links that search engines won’t be able to use otherwise, registration or sign in pages.

There will continue to be discussion regarding when and how to use the nofollow attribute. My advice is to follow the recommendations from the search engines. After all, they are using nofollows to help rank content.

seo: Frequently tagged products at Amazon.com

The Truth About Search Engine Optimization (Paperback) tagged "seo" 11 times 1 Jun 2009, 9:30 am

The Truth About Search Engine Optimization (Paperback)
By Rebecca Lieb

Buy new: $12.91
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Customer Rating:

Customer tags: seo(11), search engine optimization(9), search marketing(8), search engine marketing(7), google(6), blogs(5), search(5), internet marketing(4), internet(2), marketer, b2b, marcom

Search Engine Journal

Do You Use Your Brand Name in the Site Title Tags? 12 May 2009, 6:14 am

I normally recommend adding your brand name at the end of the title tag throughout the site (especially if the brand name is short, catchy and unique).

The main reason for that is that it helps for branding (people consistently see the name pop up in SERPs). If the brand name contains a keyword, the tactic also results in some unexpected long tail.

I really saw no downside: in the worst case the name is just cut off in SERPs (if the title turns out to be too long). Keeping the name closer to the end made sure all title tags were unique.

However last week I came across this interview with Neil Patel talking about how he managed to boost rankings of TechCrunch.

One of the first things he did was to remove the word ‘TechCrunch’ from the page title template, so that instead of “Post title - TechCrunch”, it became just “Post title”.

Neil’s explanation that it made all pages unique, besides:

They already ranked high for the word “TechCrunch”. Why would you need to use this word throughout the whole site? [refer to the full interview for this part]

This encouraged me to bring it to discussion here, so:

And please share your opinion in the comments!

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Do You Use Your Brand Name in the Site Title Tags?

Search Engine Journal

Duplicate Content Issues Visualized: Collection of Useful Infographics 11 May 2009, 5:04 am

Duplicate content is one of those topics that are almost impossible to explain to non-SEO-savvy people. The best way to that is to visualize. So here’s my collection of SEO infographics related to duplicate content issue: each section contains the image, source and related articles on the topic:

Duplicate content on blogs:

Source: SEOmoz.org

Further reading: Finding Duplicate Content

Duplicate content caused by URL parameters

[click to enlarge]

Source: Google Webmaster Central

Further reading:

• How to Find Your Website Duplicate Content Issues
• About URL Tracking Parameters and Duplicate Content Issues
• Google Addresses Duplicate Content Issues Caused by URL Parameters

Search Engine Treating Duplicate Content:

Source: Search Engine Land by Elliance

Keyword Cannibalization

Source: SEOmoz.org

Further reading: Keyword Cannibalization and How to Handle It

How to Handle Duplicate Content

Proper interlinking strategy:

Source: SEOmoz.org

Further reading: Internal Site Linking : An Easy Way to Improve Your Rankings

Canonical tag:

Source: Dynamical.biz

Source: SEOmoz.org

Further reading: Where Can the Canonical Tag Be Actually Used?

301 redirect:

Source: Elliance.com

Further reading: 301 redirects (+ video included)

Just quit it :)

Source: flashdaweb.com

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Duplicate Content Issues Visualized: Collection of Useful Infographics

Search Engine Journal

Greatest Linkbuilding Story Ever Told 6 May 2009, 5:37 am

My philosophy is that if the link gets indexed in Google then it is a really good back link. Those that get indexed higher have more quality. Those that get indexed AND rank for your specific keyword are generally the best backlinks to have.

I use Firefox with the SEO for Firefox plugin to help weed out backlinks. This plugin highlights nofollow links with a red highlight which makes it easier to determine if it’s a decent back link to get. Saves a lot of time when you’re searching through the search engine trying to find backlinks.

I have never needed to buy a link from another domain owner, reciprocal link, or even 3 way links. If you look into these tips, you’ll never need to.  You’ll notice that I’m not recommending following your direct competition. A lot of them are on page 1 because of old links that are usually unattainable.

Please use this information with caution, and make sure to read Google guidelines concerning spamming before proceeding with any of these techniques.

1. Checking out the 3rd party competition – This is pretty simple, but very effective. Basically, you will need to search your key term, and sift through the first 3-20 pages of the search results. Notice that I put starting from the 3rd page not pages 1-2. BTW I’m not telling you NOT to start from page 1, but that direct competitors are usually on the first 2 pages. Usually 3rd party websites will fall under the latter pages, and these links are usually of good quality. This is how I found out about MerchantCircle.com. This website is VERY HELPFUL when dominating the top positions for local searches. They offer a blog with follow links.

   Search “Miami SEO” (w/out quotations) – I started skimming the pages starting from page 3, found 8 backlinks

   Page 3 blogtopsites.com, blogcatalog.com
   Page 4 articledashboard.com, articlesbase.com, linkedin.com
   Page 5 pr9.net
   Page 8 merchantcircle.com
   Page 10 shoutyoursite.com

2. Search outside of your niche – I was talking with a local PPC Expert David Kyle, and he was telling me of how many nonrelated sites were being used to rank for Viagra. That got me thinking about how these links were all nonrelevant links, but that they were indexed so high due to their authority. If you search for the key term “buy viagra” (w/out quotations) you’ll notice JUST on page 2 that there are 5 listings with that are forum profiles. All these 5 listings are DOFOLLOW links, and they’re ranking on page 2 for a VERY COMPETITIVE key term. You’ll notice that NOT one of these sites have anything to do with the search term.
3. Follow link building companies – Google this key term w/out quotations “link building companies” The purpose of this is that these guys will know where a lot of links are since they do it for a living. Of course everyone knows about searching for link:domain.com on Yahoo, but sometimes yahoo shows 4-5 pages of backlinks from the same website. I like to get the domain name, and search it with quotations in Google. (I take out the http and the www portion). Get the link building company’s URL, and search it on Google “domain.com”. This step will not bring up all the anchor text links but it weeds out a lot of links.
4. Searching by usernames – This is pretty big since a lot of link builders usually use the same USERNAME! Sometimes the link builder will use different links for different sites, but if you search the username then you’ll find all of their links! You will need to start with the 3rd point in this article, and then start looking for the usernames that are used to create the link. If the username gets indexed, then there’s a huge possibility that the link in the page also got crawled. Try it out, and don’t laugh too hard when you see how many links come up when you Google “layla17” (use quotations)
5. Finding Old domain links – I searched this term on Google “oldest websites online” (w/out quotations), and this link came up astahost.com/info.php/what-100-oldest-websites_t2145.html. I took each link in this website, and went on Google and searched it with a keyword like HP forums or HP blogs or HP community.  Some of these places give you profiles with a dofollow back link.
6. Finding EDU/GOV links - Everyone knows about using inurl:.edu/phpbb2, inurl:.gov/phpbb2, inurl:.gov/forum, etc. I like to also go on Google and search by school name with forum, blog, or community next to it. You can also search for “edu forum” (w/out quotations). One of the simplest ways is just posting a job in the schools job section. A lot of schools allow companies to post a job in their career section with a link. These links are usually w/out anchor text, but are dofollow and edu!
7. Social bookmarking - Directories like DMOZ are outdated, and were/are the old school directories. Most of the pages are not indexed and/or have no PR. Today we have new directories that are created by individual users which are called Social Bookmarking (SB). SB allows you to create your own directory, and you’re allowed to put any anchor text you like. Some of these bookmarking sites also get indexed and may even reach page 2-3 for a key term.
8. Check every unfamiliar link that is sent to you – One of the local experts in Social Media, Roy Morejon, likes to post a lot of good information on Twitter. I have received a handful of backlinks from checking out his tweets. There may be a community in the site that will allow you to get a back link from a profile, blog post, or even the classified section. Roy sent out a link that I knew about before, but if his other readers were paying attention then they would’ve known that they can get a couple of backlinks on http://bx.businessweek.com
9. Search for major blogs that get indexed well - Activerain, Trulia, Realtown, Merchantcircle, Spike, and Wannanetwork all have one thing in common….they all allow free blogs that you can post your articles with a dofollow back link.
10. Guest Blog – You can start off with places like guzzle, associated content, americanchronicle, ezine, helium to post articles with backlinks, and putting links in your profile. This will help you get noticed by Editors on a more popular site, and they’ll ask you to guest blog on their site! I posted an article on this well known SEO blog site, and was spotted by Search Engine Journal’s Talent Scout Ann Smarty. I posted an article about “Building an Authority Site from Scratch” on SEJ, and I received a few hundred backlinks just from 1 article!

Robert Enriquez is an SEO Consultant located in Charlotte, North Carolina. Robert can be found on Twitter or his blog about SEO

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Greatest Linkbuilding Story Ever Told

Apogee Weblog

What is Corpse Traffic? 24 Apr 2009, 9:46 am

• Here is WHY Domainers are getting SCREWED…Google and Yahoo pay for CORPSES!

No wonder some opt out of the domain channel. It isn't about the domain traffic, it is about the corpse traffic that makes targeted traffic have much less value. It is just one small diamond mixed in with a ton of sand.

• Yahoo: Use the Blocked Domains Feature
• Google: Use Site Exclusion for Search Campaigns

Google Webmaster Central Blog

Tips on requesting reconsideration 24 Apr 2009, 10:23 am

SEO Book.com

Buying Links vs Buying Rankings vs Stealing Content vs Selling Scams 23 Apr 2009, 4:11 pm

Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

Organic SEO Site Review 4 Apr 2009, 11:11 am

Download audio file (ASW09-Organic-SEO-Site-Review.mp3)

This session, Organic SEO Site Review, took place Monday, January 12, 2009 at Affiliate Summit West 2009.

Session description:

SEO review of audience members sites with real feedback and direction on how to improve their rankings in the SERPs.

• Scott Polk, Senior SEO Analyst, Bruce Clay, Inc. (Moderator)
• Eric Lander, Organic Search Manager, ADP, Inc.
• Carolyn Shelby, Director of Natural Search, CShel
• David Snyder, Co-Founder, Search & Social, LLC

More Affiliate Summit West 2009 audio is available at http://geekcast.fm/archives/category/affiliate-summit/.

Website Magazine

Twitter as SEO for Google 3 Apr 2009, 7:58 am

Domain Name Wire

Toys.com Loses Google Ranking 16 Mar 2009, 8:09 am

Toys ‘R’ Us loses search traffic from Toys.com domain name.

As I predicted a couple weeks ago, Toys.com has been de-indexed by Google. Now the value of Toys ‘R’ Us’ $5.1M purchase of Toys.com has been relegated to type-in traffic and potentially some of the inbound links to Toys.com.

The type-in traffic is valuable, but now the companies doesn’t hold a lock on the #1, #2, and #4 positions in Google for the term “toys”. Its competitors, including Amazon.com, have a chance to creep up. Toys ‘R’ Us could have used 301 forwards on specific pages of the Toys.com web site to enhance its long tail product search.

It also appears the toy company could use some help managing its domain names. For example, it owns the typo ToyRUs.com (no ’s’ on end of “toys”), but it doesn’t resolve or forward to the company’s web site toysrus.com. According to Compete.com, this simple typo gets over 60,000 unique visitors per month.

Although Toys ‘R’ Us registers its domains with Mark Monitor, it appears to not use its typosquatting services, as evidenced by the many typos of ToysRUs.com owned by unrelated parties.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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The Domains

New Report: Fortune 500 Companies Waste $40 Million Every Day on SEO 11 Mar 2009, 6:26 am

In a new report by a Conductor, a New York Company, that analyzes paid and organic search strategies of Fortune 500 companies they found that Fortune 500 companies spend $51 million per day in aggregate on 88,792 keywords, and only 20.82% rank in the top 100 of natural search result.  This means that 80% of the $51 million a day, $40M a day is completely waste.

The study, measures the maturity of natural search efforts in comparison with the pay-per-click (PPC) spending. The study also examines whether investments for paid search terms made by Fortune 500 companies are paying off. The company published a similar study in November 2008, but this time it looked at the top 200 keywords, rather than the top 10. It also considered branded keywords.

“It remains alarming that although we included branded keywords in the study for the Fortune 500, more than the lion’s share are not showing up anywhere in search results for their most important keywords, including their own names,” said Seth Besmertnik, Conductor CEO.

“As a group, the Fortune 500 continues to remain largely invisible in natural search results.”

When you start thinking about $40 Million dollars spent a day to get moved up on the search food chain it shows hwat a bargain toys.com was at $5.1M.

It also shows you the amount of money being spent trying to build traffic, we our domains naturally have.

One day these companies are going to wake up and take some of the daily tens of million and do what they should have been doing for over 10 years now, by domains that have natural traffic covering any of their businesses, brands or products.

Here’s a great example.

3 weeks ago I went to a movie and of course you have the commercials.  One of the commercials was for a new dove product for damaged hair.

The 60 second commercial talked about the product, how it works and how it fixes damaged hair.

The next night I saw the same commercial run during a prime time show.

I couldn’t tell you the name of the product, just that it fixes damaged hair.

The next day I bid on the domain damagedhair.com that was at namejet.com and won it for $1,900.

I figured if a company is going to spend millions advertising a product specifically for damaged hair, how could the domain not be worth a couple of thousands.

Would’t Dove, owned by one of those Fortune 500 companies, have been better off buying that domain for $50K then spending money trying to move up in Google under the keyword damaged hair, especially considering that 80% of the time, they miss?

How about pending this money in the PPC channel.

The Fortune 500 through their Madison Avenue reps have always talked about not spending more money onliner advertising “because there are so little metrics or accountability” yet they are willing to through away collectively $40M a day on ineffective methods.  If they put the whole $51m into PPC advertising wouldn’t that be more effective than spending it on something that failes 80% of the time?

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Search Engine Strategies - SES Training Atlanta 10% Affiliate Discount 6 Mar 2009, 1:13 am

Coupon Feed

Search Engine Strategies - SES Training Denver 10% Affiliate Discount 6 Mar 2009, 1:13 am

Domain Name Wire

I’m Now Google Analytics Qualified 4 Mar 2009, 8:19 am

New certification test available.

Yesterday Google launched a new program for individuals that want to become “certified” in Google Analytics. It’s a good certification if you teach, train, or just use Google Analytics:

The Google Analytics IQ program is tailored for agencies who want to retain and develop employees who are knowledgeable about Web analytics, and for individuals who seek ways to improve their job prospects or further their own personal development. Individuals do not have to be associated with an agency or organization to take the online course or test.

Since I’m leading a meeting about Google Analytics for an local company today, I figured I may as well take advantage of the new program. What I learned is that there’s a lot more under the hood of Google Analytics than meets the eye. It doesn’t take much to get the basics down, but if you want to dig deep you can tailor it to do essentially whatever you want it to.

I passed the certification test with flying colors barely, and now I can proudly tell people I’m “qualified”. Apparently I’m the 94th person to achieve this status based on the certificate number.

I’ll add that to my Adwords certification. Oh yeah, I’m that cool.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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