Recently, in its Google Webmaster blog (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com), Google posted about spam links in blog comments, and how using these links will damage your positioning. This is a strategy that Work Media sometimes employs, so we wanted to address this subject.

First off, you have to take these things with a grain of salt. Google likes to keep things secretive, and we believe it often does and says things just to create confusion about how its algorithm works. And the Web is built on links. Google uses links to find web sites and as a measure of a site's worth in assigning it a ranking. So, in general, you still have to get links to your site if you want high search engine rankings.

For another thing, we don't think it really makes sense to PUNISH sites for having links to it. That's not to say Google doesn't do it, and it seems to have done it in the past, but think about this: if Google is going to punish a web site for having links to it contained in blog comments, why wouldn't I use this against my competitors? What is to stop me from going around to blogs and submitting spammy comments with links to my competitors' web sites?

Google says this: "...it's useless to think of harming your competitor's ranking by spamming comments with their name, since it usually won't affect their ranking if their sites are complying with Google Webmaster Guidelines."

Ah, there's the rub. If you do things the right way, you will be fine. Here is our approach to blog commenting:

1. Use a keyword for the name field.
2. Type a URL in the appropriate field.
3. Type out a well-written, well-thought-out comment that relates directly to the content of the blog post.

The difference between this approach and what Google is talking about is that we are making legitimate comments, while also taking advantage of the opportunity to get the link.

Here's another thing: don't rely solely on this or any other SEO strategy to get links. Mix it up. And be credible.

Here's another thing that we find odd: one of Google's suggestions is that a way to prevent this is to set comment links in your blog to no follow. However, it was recently revealed that doing that reduces the value of your own internal-pointing or other do follow links. The reason is that PageRank leaks out of your page from the no follow links, even though the pages the links point to do not get credited with the PageRank. So setting your links to no follow is now damaging to your own SEO efforts.

So what should you do? Don't worry about it. Do your blog commenting like we suggest above and you will be fine.

Labels: blog, blog management, blogging, internet marketing, link building, linking, search engine optimization, seo

Google has been doing some things lately with its index that have caused quite a bit of shuffling of rankings. However, what we are finding is that, in general, in a few days things get restored to something like what they were before. So if you have high rankings that have suddenly disappeared, chances are pretty good you will get them back in a few days. The main thing is: stay calm!

We have been checking a lot of our clients' rankings in the beta version of the new Google algorithm which is to be released in the near future. We are actually seeing improvements for many of our rankings with the new release. This validates our theory that, if you stick to the basics and work it, you will be fine.

So...what does that mean exactly?

First off, make sure the copy of your web site (including page titles and headers) is optimized for specific keywords, and not all on the same page. Spread your keywords out!

Make sure you have a keyword-rich internal linking structure. For example, if you are a law firm and your number one keyword is "Huntsville injury lawyer," then you should have lots of links throughout your site pointing back to your home page that incorporate that keyword.

Next, make sure you systematically build up a heavy catalog of external links to your site. And spread it out. If you do reciprocal linking, that is fine, but that should not be your only linking strategy. Submit articles to article directories. Add your site to general directories. Look for lots of places for your links, and add new links regularly.

Also, we have seen some evidence that Google may now be giving preference to sites that have been updated recently. So if you don't do a blog, set one up! Stream or publish it to your blog and update it regularly. Pepper your blog with keywords, links to your own content, as well as useful content from other web sites.

In other words...if you want to maintain or improve your search engine rankings, stick to the basics! It would also be an excellent idea to mix in some social media marketing, but that is another discussion.

Labels: google, internet marketing, keywords, linking, linking campaign, ppc search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

April 8th and my first blog of the month. Shameful. My excuse is that I have spent a lot more time lately updating my newer blogs, those of the legal marketing variety on a couple of other sites. But really, there should be no excuses. I should just get it done. You need to have the same attitude yourself. You must blog!

Okay, now onto the actual subject of this blog.

When link building, the temptation is to always focus on your home page. Obviously, you would prefer that that be the page most people see and arrive at. It's sort-of like the cover of a book. It creates interest and gives the reader a little idea of what it is about.

So people love to link to their home page. However, the problem with this approach is that it does not account for two things:

1. You need to strive for a connection between the keyword in the link (if there is one) and keywords on the page that it links to; and

2. A single web page can only be optimized for a VERY small set of keywords (technically, it can only TRULY be optimized for one keyword).

So you want keyword-specific links pointing to keyword-specific pages. If you always link to your home page, you are not doing this. Instead, you need to practice something called "deep linking." Deep linking is the act of linking not to the home page but to a more specific sub-page. For example, if you have a web site that sells shoes, and there is a sub-page on the site devoted to Nike shoes, then a keyword link like "Nike shoes" would be more effective if it linked to the Nike page rather than your home page.

For help with your company's Internet marketing, contact Work Media at www.workmedia.net, info@workmedia.net, or 888-299-4837.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, linking, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Don't tell me about search engine marketing. I have been doing this for years. I have hundreds of articles and blog posts all over the Web. I have two books in print. I have many satisfied clients. I know SEO.

So I feel qualified to tell you that, without a doubt, link swapping still works. My firm will continue engaging in link swapping on behalf of our clients until we see that it no longer works.

Yet this continues to be a practice that we are questioned about over and over. Look, the purpose of link swapping is not to provide your visitors with other web sites they might want to visit. Not at all. It is only for the purpose of improving search engine rankings.

I'm not at all implying that you should rely on link swapping is your only strategy for getting links. You need lots of links from lots of different places. One way links are preferable to swapped links, and you should take steps to get those kinds of links as well. But link swapping is one important component of your overall online marketing campaign.

If you're going to use this strategy, do it right. To begin with, have mo more than 50 links on a link swap page. So you will probably need to have multiple pages. You also need to supply your link partners with very specific verbiage and HTML to use for their links to you. And remember, this does not have to be a page that is featured prominently on your site. You just need a small text link somewhere on your home page for search engine spiders to follow. That will be good enough for search engines to find.

This is a great way to begin the process of building a catalog of links to your site if you are just getting started.

So don't be a snob. Set up a link swaps page or directory on your site and begin the process of swapping links with other relevant web sites. Over time, it will improve your search engine rankings.

By the way, if you promote a law firm, you have to check out the Law Firm Internet Marketing site.

Labels: link building, link campaign, link swapping, linking, search engine optimization, seo

I have been trying out an article distribution software package called Article Post Robot, and so far I am impressed. Unlike many other things I have tried, this may actually be worth the money. Article Post Robot has some features that I really like. For one thing, it submits to all of the major article directories, and not just directories that are based on a particular kind of script. It also gives you the ability to add your own article directories that you want to submit to.

And it also does article spinning. It uses the traditional article spinning syntax (only it uses "{{{" rather than just "{") and even has the ability to pull paragraphs from different articles located in a directory on your hard drive to create new articles on the fly. So it offers a lot of flexibility and actually seems to work pretty well.

It may be a little soon, because I really like to hammer on any software I use before recommending it, but I feel pretty confident about this one. So here it is: I officially recommend Article Post Robot.

Here is a link if you'd like to check it out for yourself:

ArticlePostRobot.com

Labels: article distribution, article marketing, article spinning, article writing, articles, internet marketing, link campaign, linking, search engine optimization, seo

I logged into Squidoo yesterday to build a new lens ("lens" being Squidoospeak for a web page) for a client. It had been a while since I had logged in, which isn't good but isn't necessarily bad either. One of the great things about Squidoo is all of the modules it provides for building your lenses that update themselves automatically. So you can build a lens that will continue to show new content every day even if you don’t do anything to it for months or years.

Anyway…I logged in to build a new lens and noticed some major changes to the Squidoo interface that make it much quicker to add modules and align modules on your page. Last year, I spent a couple of weeks setting up Squidoo lenses and it was very slow process because of what was required to add and re-order modules. Now that that process is much quicker, Squidoo is much better.

So why should you set up pages in Squidoo? It's been a while since we've talked about it, so here is a super quick refresher. Squidoo is a social networking site founded by Seth Godin that Google really loves. Often, a page on Squidoo that pertains to your subject area will rank quicker and higher than your own web site. So links from Squidoo carry a lot of weight.

You should incorporate Squidoo as part of your social networking/content distribution campaign. If you publish a blog, you should use the RSS module to stream your blog posts to your Squidoo lenses. And use some of the news publishing modules to automatically keep them updated with news about your industry.

The Squidoo teams seems to be trying to make the site easier to use, so if you haven't checked it out yet, now is a great time.

Labels: internet marketing, link building, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo, social networking, squidoo

Today we're going to do a quick product review. For a couple of weeks now we have been using a product called Neurolinker, which is an online service that facilitates link sharing among its members. There are other similar services but we were attracted to this one because of the positive comments we read regarding the developer's support and its price, which is very reasonable at less than $30 per month.

To use Neurolinker, you place a snippet of code (in either PHP or .NET) on the page on your web site that you want to contain your outbound links to other Neurolinker members. Basically, you are setting up a link swap page, only rather than manually set up reciprocal links, the script does it for you. In a day or two after installing the script, you will see quite a few links pointing to other web sites. The beauty of the system is that other members running the script on their web sites will also be linking back to you.

You can configure the links to be highly related to your web site or light on relevance. To start out, I used the more loose configuration. You have access to reports that show exactly what sites are linking to you, which is a very nice feature. I found that there were quite a few sites linking to our sites that were highly relevant, but also quite a few that were highly unrelated. We are now testing the system with the tighter configuration.

The system also has a social bookmarking feature. This is a really cool feature…IF people are doing it. It relies on the honor system, so it does not provide the kind of visibility you get with the swapped links. Basically, you bookmark the web sites of other members, earning “brownie points” as you do. The more points you accumulate, the higher your sites will appear on the list of sites to bookmark for other members. So the more you bookmark others' sites, the more your site will be bookmarked.

We will have a much better idea if Neurolinker is worth using in a few more weeks, but so far it looks very promising.

Labels: internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, neurolinker, search engine optimization, seo

Do links still work? Google publishes a Webmaster Guidelines document intended to give web site owners clues as to what they should do to rank well in its search engine. There has been some commotion in the online marketing industry about the removal of some copy that suggested submitting your web site to directories like Yahoo! and DMOZ. So...is this a sign that
links are no longer important?

Absolutely not. I think it is more a continuation of Google's attempt to eliminate paid links as a way of improving rankings.

For instance, Google is fully aware that Yahoo! charges a fee for inclusion in its directory. So how is this different from buying a link on any other web site?

What this means for you is that you just need to continue seeking links from lots of different locations. Add your web pages to social bookmarking sites. Set up pages on social networking sites. Post responses on blogs (preferably blogs that allow "dofollow" links. Keep writing and distributing articles. These are all still effective techniques for generating lots of links that do not fall into the category of paid links.

As for straight-up paid links, I still think the technique is valid, but it should be used in moderation. If you are going to buy links, buy a small package of links from very high quality sites. Avoid the temptation to buy thousands of low cost links on low quality sites.

Today's Squidoo lens is about running ads on MSN. MSN definitely has its own quirks, so this Squidoo lens discusses some of the things you need to watch out for, and features a number of videos on the subject of pay per click marketing.

Labels: google, internet marketing, link campaign, linking, paid links, scientific search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Today's Squidoo lens is about what to look for in an internet advertising agency.

For a couple of weeks now, we've been building Squidoo lenses on a variety of topics. We hope to achieve "Giant Squid" status because that will give us better leverage of Squidoo for marketing purposes. To achieve that, you have to have 50 active lenses that people actually visit. So we're building lenses on all kinds of topics, not just Internet marketing. Anyway, following are some tips for making the most of your Squidoo lenses that we have gleaned from our own experiences so far and advice we have read from others.

1. Use your keywords in links to your main web site. This is the most basic SEO use of your Squidoo lenses. If you build a good lens, it only makes sense to place a prominent keyword link on the page that links to your site for the SEO boost.

2. Link your Squidoo lenses to each other. Help visitors find their way to your various Squidoo lenses by placing a list of links to those lenses in each one.

3. Spend some time on your lenses. This one seems obvious, but you may be tempted to throw up a bunch of half-constructed lenses. For a Squidoo strategy to work, your lenses really do need to be high quality. Fortunately, using the Squidoo modules, it is very easy to build a lens that updates itself. You just have to take the time to set up the modules properly.

4. Help search engines find your lenses. Link to your lenses in your blog posts or your main web site.

5. Tag your lenses. Do your keyword research (we suggest using Google's external keyword tool) and use a combination of high traffic and long-tail keywords for your Squidoo lens tags.

Follow these tips and you will be on your way to building a series of strong Squidoo lenses that will help your search engine marketing campaign. If you could use some help with these types of advanced link building strategies, contact Work Media at www.workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.

Labels: internet marketing, link building, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, squidoo

Today's Squidoo lens is about advertising copywriting. Strong copywriting can make a profound impact on your business performance. The advertising / copywriting Squidoo lens reveals the top five copywriters whose work you should study to learn how to write powerful advertising copy.

We recently published a new article on our site about a concept called "PageRank reflection," which, in a nutshell, is the process of linking to high PageRank sites that have links back to your site in order to help search engine spiders find the link back to your site. It is similar in concept to link swapping, only rather than having a link placed on the other site via a link swap, you take advantage of social networking or bookmarking sites that let you have control over the link placement. The example we hit on in the article was using Squidoo. To read more about the details of using Squidoo to accomodate PageRank reflection, read the article (no reason to re-write it here).

The general idea is to guide search engine spiders to pages you want them to find so that they will find the links back to your site. This concept applies to any web site where you have a link back to your site. It applies not only to social networking type sites but directories, blogs, and any other kind of web site. If there are blog posts where you have a link
(via a comment or whatever), you should link to the blog in order to let search engine spiders find that link back to your site.

One strategy you might consider is creating a web page specifically for the purpose of displaying links back to your site. There should naturally be some kind of common theme to those links (for example, most links to our site are located on other web sites that deal with Internet marketing), so it will resemble sort-of a mini-directory, which is a perfectly legitimate purpose for a web site. If you create such a site, register a new domain name for it and link to it from your main site. This will allow search engine spiders to easily find your links directory and begin following those links. Those links will all link to pages that link back to your main site. It's all just one big circle.

This process does take some time, but it is time well spent. Eventually, the search engines will probably find most of your links anyway, but the faster and easier you make it, the quicker you will climb the search engine rankings.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net for help with your link building campaign. We can take over the burden of building a broad, well-constructed catalog of links to your site, so you can focus on managing the leads that come through.

Labels: internet marketing, link building, link campaign, linking, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

In the past, we have recommended using paid links (not paid search ads, but paid links) to boost a web site's external link count and improve its search engine rankings. Although much has been made the last couple of year's about Google's battle against paid search marketers who use paid links, the technique continued to work.

But that trend may have changed.

We recently noticed that a site for which we had been using paid links received a beatdown at the hands of Google in terms of its rankings. They plummeted. Around that same time, we noticed that Google had launched a new form where anyone can report a web site for using paid links. Then I guess the Google decency patrol will investigate and punish the site accordingly.

So...when it comes to something so important, so precious, as your search engine rankings, you can't take any chances. We think the environment for using paid links may have gotten too dangerous, now that Google has made it so easy and encourages narcing on other sites for using paid links.

If you are paying for links, our advice is to reallocate that money toward press release distribution. You will accomplish the result of generating new links, and you will be safe from punishment at the hands of Google. So protect your rankings and play it safe.

Stay away from paid links.

Call Work Media today at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net if you need some help with your search engine marketing.

Labels: internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, online press releases, paid links, pr, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web marketing

RSS, or "Real Simple Syndication," is a file format that allows for the streaming of text Web content. It has two primary uses in the field of marketing, and you should probably make use of both. The two uses are to stream content from other Web publishers onto your web site, and to stream your Web content onto other publishers' web sites.

The benefit of streaming others' content onto your web site is that it will keep your web site updated with new content. Search engines love new content, as do people. The way this process works is quite simple, although some programming may be necessary to implement the technique on your web site.

The benefit of having your content streamed to other web sites is that it results in links back to content on your site. If you have streamed content that other web sites find valuable, then it is like casting hooks into a pond. The more hooks you have out there (the more web sites there are that use your streamed content), the more likely you are to get traffic to your web site, either in the form of direct click-throughs or improved search engine rankings.

The easiest way to create streamed content is to publish a blog with a blogging platform that creates automatic RSS feeds of your blog posts. An example is Blogger, which automatically creates a URL to an Atom file, which is just a different name for an RSS file.

However you go about creating your content and RSS file, it is helpful to publish your RSS URL to RSS directories. If you publish your content in blog format, I suggest you use a web site called Pingomatic.com. It will automatically ping a number of popular blog and RSS directories about your updated blog. It is also free. There are more advanced paid options available as well.

If you could use some help implementing RSS into your search engine marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837. We're here to help.

Labels: internet marketing, link bait, linking, real simple syndication, RSS, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

I (Jerry) have been heavy, heavy into article marketing this year. It has become my personal favorite way of increasing link count. However, I am beginning to experience what I believe may be some resistance on the part of Google to rank sites with a large number of links primarily from article-related sites.

You gotta mix it up. In an attempt to do just that, I have also been doing some social bookmarking. But I have to admit, the social bookmarking component has not worked quite as well. The problem there is that for social bookmarking to be really effective, you need lots of other people to bookmark your site BECAUSE THEY REALLY LIKE IT and think others would enjoy it as well. So ultimately, it's out of your hands.

What can you do about this? It's simple, really, although also quite complex. You have to create content that is REALLY interesting. Just being a source of useful information is not enough. You need a gimmick. A hook. Something that makes people laugh, or gasp, or something...you need a reaction!

Simply bookmarking your own home page will not do it. Your site needs to be loaded with interesting content. You may not even want the content on your front page if it detracts from your core marketing message. This is only something you'll use as a hook so that people want to bookmark your site.

I'm not at all slowing down on article marketing. We have seen fantastic results, and it has benefits beyond search rankings, such as direct-click-throughs and credibility. But if you engage in article marketing, you should supplement it with other link building strategies.

If you need some help coming up with interesting ways to build a catalog of links to your site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: link research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo, social bookmarking, social media

Get used to being known as a keyword rather than a name. If you're trying to generate search engine rankings, at least. For example, which of the following would make a better signature for an article or blog post response?

www.franks.com - Jackson's pool table retailer.

or

www.franks.com - Jackson's pool table retailer.

Intuitively, you might think the first one is better, since your business name is hyper-linked. However, the second link will help boost your ranking for the specific keyword "pool table". Assuming that that keyword accurately reflects the products you sell (and that you have done some keyword research to make sure the keyword generates traffic), then the second one is much better for your business.

If your goal is to achieve search engine rankings, then you need to put your ego aside, and do everything you can to seed the Web with links to your site that contain your main keywords. Article writing is a great way to do this. Personally, I'm not convinced that making forum posts with links is still a valid method. I feel like the search engines probably discounted the value of those links a long time ago. But there are plenty of other techniques.

If you need some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article marketing, internet marketing, keyword research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo

Recently, I responded to a question on LinkedIn (or it could have been Yahoo!) where someone had asked the best way to promote a web site if all you had was $100 per month and a few hours of time. I thought it was an interesting question, but one that I felt I had a good answer for.

Based on our experience, here is what I would do with $100 and 2 hours per week:

With the money, purchase some links from a link broker. You should be able to get quite a few links in the area of PR3, which will help your link count.

With the time, I would suggest writing articles. 2 hours per week is enough time to write and distribute at least one article. Over time, links from those articles will really build up. However, to get the greatest distribution possible, I would also highly advise that you use an article distribution service. I suggest articlemarketer.com. However, you will probably need to subtract $10 or $20 from your $100 monthly budget to pay for that.

To make this work, you need to have one or at most two specific keywords in mind for which you want your site to rank. That keyword then needs to be used in your paid links and in at least one link in the article (or the article author box).

There are other factors that affect your rankings, of course - the age of the domain name, the competitiveness of the industry, how well-optimized your site content and code is - but a strategy as described above will make a significant difference, all else being equal.

If you need some help with search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article marketing, article writing, articles, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, search engine rankings

We just paid to have a press release distributed via PRWeb. PRWeb, if you don't know, is a press release distribution service that is tied into a large network of web sites and people to whom it distributes press releases. PRWeb has four basic levels of service which cost up to $360, although you can also spend more than that depending on what extra features you utilize. One such feature is a podcast feature by which PRWeb staff will call you and record a 4 to 5 minute podcast from the call. This service starts at $100.

After distributing a press release, PRWeb provides the following statistics: Reads (the number of times the press release was accessed via PRWeb), Pickups (the number of times the press release was accessed via a consumer or media person), Prints (the number of times the press release was printed), Forwards (the number of times your press release was forwarded via a link on the press release), and PDF Downloads (the number of times your release was downloaded via PDF). Depending on the level of service you pay for, you can also view information such as visits by country, search engines, and search terms by search engine.

Unlike articles, you can place a true hyperlink in the body of a press release. This has considerable value, as you can load the text of the link with keywords relevant to your business. So unlike articles, where your link has to appear in the author's box, which appears beneath the article, an online press release can contain a link back to your web site at or near the top of the body copy.

One problem with online press release distribution is how glutted the market is. It is no secret that online press release distribution is a fantastic SEO technique. As a result, every day there are hundreds or thousands of press releases distributed that are little more than fluff. So, if you want your press release to stand out, you should have something legitimate to talk about. Think from a reporter's perspective. If you were a reporter looking for something to write about, would the press release issued by your company spark your interest? It better.

This press release we're doing this week is the first one we've done where we have paid for PRWeb's top level of service. We'll let you know how it goes, and if we feel like it is worth the money, or if you're better off sticking to the $200 level.

If you could use some help composing and distributing an online press release to promote your business, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, online pr, online press releases, online publicity, pr, PRWeb, publicity, search engine marketing

In the last few weeks, I've been doing a ton of article writing. It has definitely moved to the top of my list of favored strategies. Article writing serves two major purposes: branding and SEO. From a branding perspective, a well-written article can create the impression that you are a true professional in your field. From an SEO standpoint, it can result in lots of keyword-loaded links back to your web site. If you want to use article writing as a strategy for promoting your web site, here are some tips that will give you more impact.

1. Edit and proof-read your articles carefully. An article can end up on hundreds of web sites, and it never goes away. It basically lives forever as a symbol of who you are and what you represent. So it's pretty important that the article be well-written and grammatically correct. It is a reflection of your professionalism.

2. Try to write in a Web-friendly manner. Reading on screen is more difficult than reading something on paper. So use a snappy writing style with lots of short paragraphs. One structural style that works very well for the Web is a top ten list. It doesn't really have to have ten items. Right now, for some reason, top seven lists are hot.

3. Write in a conversational tone. Use the word "you" a lot to engage the reader.

4. Use an article distribution service. I recommend articlemarketer.com. In the past, I have used isnare.com. Isnare is cheaper, at just $2 or less per article distributed, but articlemarketer.com seems to offer wider distribution and much better reporting as to where your articles have been sent.

5. Use an author box that contains a keyword-rich link back to your web site. This gets to the heart of the power of article writing. If you have an article on lots of web sites that all have a link back to your web site, that is good. However, if the text used in those links contains a keyword for which you wish to rank highly, that's even better. For instance, let's say you sell ostrich skin cowboy boots on your web site. If you write an article and distribute it with a link back to your web site in the author box that says "ostrich skin cowboy boots", that will help boost your search engine rankings for that phrase. You would not get the same boost if all of the links simply had
your web site address.

Obviously, to make article marketing work, you need to have something to write about and you need to be able to write reasonably well. If you have difficulty in this area, seek out an article writer to do it for you. We would be glad to help. Feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article directories, article distribution, article marketing, article writing, articles, internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo

An excellent source of links to your web site are the sites that already link to your highest-ranked competitors. Do you want to really get in-depth in researching what web sites link to your competitors? Then follow these steps:

1. If you don't have the Firefox browser installed, go download it: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

2. Install the SEOQuake plugin. You can download it here: http://ff.seoquake.com/

3. Go to http://search.yahoo.com and search for the links Yahoo! has recorded for your competitor's web site. The search query will be in this form:linkdomain:websiteaddress.com -site:websiteaddress.com -site:www.websiteaddress.com

You will be returned a list of web sites that point to your competitor's site, excluding links from the same site.

4. Turn on SEOQuake if it is not already. This is done by clicking the small SEOQuake icon on address bar on the right-hand side of your browser screen.

5. Sort the links by PR or by age by clicking on the down arrow next to "PR" or "Age" on the line that starts "Sort:" directly above the first search engine result.

Now you will have a list of sites, sorted by age or importance, that link to your competitor. These may be excellent candidates for linking to your site as well. Certainly target the sites that appear to be involved in link swapping, because you can get a link from these sites very easily by just providing a link on your site back. Then go after the ones that may be more picky.

Building up links to a web site can be very frustrating and time consuming. If you could use some help with anything related to SEO or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web site marketing, Yahoo Search

We have recently begun being more aggressive promoting our own web site. We have very strong rankings for search engine marketing related keywords that contain the word "Nashville", which is generally where we advise businesses with a brick-and-mortar location to begin. It is often very difficult to achieve high search engine rankings for broad, non-geographically targeted keywords. So generating rankings for keywords specific to your home market is a great way to begin driving traffic to your site that consists of very strong prospects for your service. It has definitely been beneficial to Work Media to be near the top of the rankings in Google for search terms like "Nashville search engine marketing firm". In fact, just out of curiosity, I just typed exactly that search term into Google and we have the top-ranked natural listing and the number one paid search listing. Now that's good shelfspace.

Anyway, we've decided it's time to start promoting our site for more broad terms, not specifically related to Nashville. We have a ton of content on our site and the site is reasonably well optimized, so the main thing we're concentrating on is off-site optimization (i.e., getting links pointing to our site). We've been working on it for a few weeks and have already begun seeing results. But one odd thing happened which we have seen happen a lot. So we thought we would tell you about it so if it happens to you, you don't freak out.

There is one keyword in particular we are keen on ranking for, so it is the main one we have concentrated on in our linking campaign. When we started, we ranked a little past 100 for the keyword. A few weeks after beginning our new efforts to rank for this keyword, we disappeared altogether from the Google results. But we were not worried - we've seen this before.

Sure enough, after a few days, we were back in Google's results for the keyword, this time ranked in the 60's. Nowhere near where we hope to be, but a real nice jump from where we started.

When a web page suddendly begins to have lots of new links pointing to it, that page tends to disappear from the rankings, only to reappear later, higher ranked. Our theory is that when Google picks up on a lot of new rankings for a page, it temporarily removes it from the rankings in order to do some additional analysis on the page. This analysis probably includes Google asking questions like: Are the links relevant to the site? Is the site strong in content? What do we know about the site?

Since our site is very strong in content, well-aged, and has been indexed for a long time, we think Google performed the analysis and made the determination that we were not trying to spam our way into its index. It then re-ranked our site accordingly, taking into account the new links we have.

This is all just a theory, really. But we've never been ones to stress out over trying to figure out exactly how Google's algorithm works. We just follow the basics...and it works every time. So if you undertake a linking campaign and find your site suddenly disappearing from the rankings, don't worry about it. Unless your site is junk, in which case it may not make it out of limbo. So make sure your site is strong on content.

If you need some help with your own site's search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, search marketing, seo, web site marketing

We have been thinking a lot about this whole linking thing that is causing such an uproar in the Internet marketing community. If you haven't heard, Google is supposedly cracking down on paid links and is de-emphasizing the importance of links to a site's rankings...supposedly. We haven't seen it.

We are doing a lot of work right now for a company that is in an industry in which the top competitors are very aggressive about using paid links. In order to compete, we had no choice but to emulate the strategy. There was just no way we were going to be able to catch up using a purely natural linking strategy. It would take years...and we don't have years. So we're paying for links.

Are we going to be punished for buying links? We think not. Another thing we have in common with the companies we are competing against is that we are all heavy spenders on paid search ads. Is Google going to punish some of its best customers...customers who are generating millions of dollars in revenue for the company...for being aggressive in promoting their web sites?

We understand that Google wants its search engine results to be as genuine as possible and does not want companies doing things to try to artificially influence those results. But as a multi-billion dollar company, we do not believe that Google is going to piss off some of its largest advertisers.

Maybe the situation in your industry is different. But how would Google apply different rules to different industries? We don't think it would do that.

Our point here is that you have nothing to fear by going out and pursuing links to your site. Use a number of different strategies - link swapping, directories, paying for them, whatever. Now...we're not saying you should add your site to FFA pages or other sources of junk links. It will be a waste of your time. But for higher quality sources of links - go for it. The best strategy of all is to create content that is so interesting that other sites are compelled to link to you. Natural, non-paid, one-way links are still king. But regardless of what linking strategy you pursue...do not be afraid.

If you need help with your search engine optimization campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link bait, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

A lot has been made in the press and in the Internet marketing community lately about Google's attempts to de-emphasize the importance of links in its ranking algorithms. We've been asked a number of times by our clients if linking is still important. Based on what we have seen lately, the answer is a resounding...hell yes!

Google's anti-linking efforts are aimed at stopping web sites from purchasing links. Google feels this is a manipulation of its system. It wants only genuine, non-paid-for links. However, we are currently promoting a client in a very competitive category in which ALL of the top sites have used paid links to drive up their rankings. And they don't seem to be doing anywhere. In order to compete (and compete quickly) we basically had no choice but to adopt the same strategy. Otherwise, we would be too far behind the ball to catch up. We are not using paid links exclusively - it's just one part of a comprehensive strategy. So far the strategy is working, as our client is climbing the rankings.

Whether or not to use paid links should probably be determined by the competitiveness of the industry you are in. But regardless of your stance on paid links, you definitely need to keep getting links. Start with directories. List your site everywhere you can. Then start writing some articles and distribute them. A site we like for article distribution is http://isnare.com. If you are really dedicated, you can start going out and posting comments on other sites' blogs, with a link back to your site or blog (you do have a blog don't you? It's a powerful content creation strategy).

Then you can move into the realm of social bookmarking. This is where it gets really useful to have interesting original content on your site. If you have a really interesting web site with content that people want to link to, you will do well with social bookmarking. Once you introduce your web site via social bookmarks, hopefully other people will find it interesting or useful enough to add their own bookmarks. This can create a snowball effect where lots of people bookmark your site, thus creating lots of very high quality, one-way links to your site.

We are still using links as an SEO technique, and it continues to work for us. So don't worry about what the pundits say - keep working, keep linking, and keep aggressively promoting your web site. If your web site is high quality with strong content, then a linking strategy will work if you are diligent enough. If your site does not strong content, then you need to address that before you worry about linking. First things first.

If you need some help implementing a linking campaign for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link bait, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

There is a technique that we are playing around with that we believe is an excellent way to explode the number of links reported to your site in Google and other search engines. This technique really only applies if your site has been up for a while and actually has links pointing to it. We noticed that, despite having strong visibility in Google for Internet marketing searches related to Nashville, Google shows few links pointing back to our site. The other major search engines, Yahoo and MSN, show many more results.

If you are in a similar situation, here is how to let Google know about all the links it is missing:

1. Do a search for "link:" followed by your domain name in whatever search engines have a considerable amount of links recorded for your site.
2. Copy the URL for that page of search engine results.
   
3. Visit the Google Add URL page: http://www.google.com/addurl/
4. In the URL text box on that page, paste in the URL from step 2.
5. Click Add URL.

Hopefully, Google will now spider that page, visit the links on it, and find the links pointing back to your web site, which will build up your backlink catalog with Google.

As you know, it can take Google a LONG time to visit a web page added directly (which is why we advise our clients not to submit their site directly to Google), so you will have to be patient while waiting for the pages to be spidered. But if you have few links to start with, you aren't any worse off, and in a few weeks or months you could be much better off.

This process will work for whatever other search engines are missing backlinks for you. And it doesn't just have to be applied with search engine results pages. You can use this technique to inform Google about any web page you think it should know about, as long as it's not on your own site.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net if you need help implementing your own search engine marketing campaign.

Labels: backlinks, internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, seo, web marketing, web site marketing