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Evaluate Your Link Building Strategy and Let Others do the Work for You

How much are your links worth? How much did you used to pay and how much do you currently pay? How much will you continue to pay per link? How many links do you have? How many do you need? Are you getting a good return on your investment? Eliminate the cost per link, invest in content and get better returns from link building and see how others will do a majority of the work for you. Link building is tricky business and, if done properly, can mean big business. If done improperly, you can lose face and your rankings.

Link building is expensive and there is no way around it. In order for your web site to be considered an authority online you must have links and lots of them. Just like anything else there are automated ways of getting links, there are companies you can pay to get your links, you can buy individual links, or you can spend time negotiating linking exchanges yourself. There is a right way, a wrong way, and the sleazy way.



Links are a tricky part of site optimization because you can have hundreds of them and only a low percentage offers any value. Many link building service providers bank on your lack of understanding with this issue and are able to easily get links for you, however, they charge you a premium and the links are likely causing more harm than good. Be sure you can trust your SEO to provide quality links and ask them to show you the value.

Telling the difference between a good link and a bad link is complicated and technical. Every site is different and handles linking in a different way. There are many online programs such as a blog that can be used for community interaction and discussion. They may allow an opportunity in the comment for linking, but normally not the kind of value you’re looking for. If you understand a little bit of HTML, view the source of the page in question and locate your link. Here’s a tip: If you see rel=nofollow in the <a> tag of your link, then search engines are unable to follow the link and therefore unable to give you any equity from the link.



There are other techniques employed which are harder to detect where javascript is placed in the <a> tag of your link, which also prohibits search engines. They may contain something like an “onclick” event, which does the linking and is also not followed by search engines. If the search engines don’t follow the link, the only benefit it provides is whatever traffic frequents that page and the percentage of traffic clicking on the link.

So, how do you know if your link is the good kind of link, if you aren’t very technical? You could always email me at stacy@edit-x.com or you can check your sites link index in various search engines to see if it shows up. This can be done by putting “link:www.yourdomainname.com” in the search engine query box. Yahoo is the best for this purpose as this will show you all of the sites linking to your site and the location of the link. This can take time depending on how many links you have, as you may have to sift through several pages to find or not find the link in question.



By now we have likely all subscribed to a link building service or paid for links, some good and some bad. We all get the emails from off-shore development or SEO companies offering a service to get you links of varying Page Ranks and for X dollars per link. Either that or your SEO company offers the service through some automated software and charges you monthly. We get our link reports and feel link progress is being made. Well it is not. In fact, this type of link building is doing more harm than good.

These techniques often have short term affects, if any at all. They lack stickiness, which means they often don’t last more than a few days to a couple months. A true link would be around forever or as long as the community or web site exists. Off-shore companies often employ persons who lack the understanding of your spoken language and/or the language of your community, in which case cannot effectively contribute a meaningful comment. This leads to a spammy looking link to your site and the links or posts containing the links are often reported and removed within hours. The ones that stick are put into a report, you are billed, and then they are likely removed within months, as the administrators may have limited time for moderation. It’s a numbers game. They submit 50 to get 10 to get paid, to make you feel like you’re getting value and repeat. Automated software works in much the same way, only they have a tendency to create highly uniform links, which are detectable by search engines and can actually lower your rankings. Plenty of software claim to allow for random link generation. Don’t be fooled. If it sounds too good to be true, then it is. If it were this easy, I wouldn’t be writing this post.

Real link building is hard work and requires knowledge about your industry, products, and services in order to be able to contribute meaningful interaction in the site or community where the link will be obtained. Be sure your link building provider has invested the time to learn about your business and can speak at an educated level to represent your company for community involvement.

Link building and community involvement are great and no doubt, if executed professionally, will embed your web site into the audiences that are looking for your products and services. There is another way to obtain links which pushes you closer to becoming the authority, has a longer lasting viral effect, and contributes to your web sites growth and allows your web site to become a true asset to your community. All of this for roughly the same cost of more traditional link building.

Calculate how much money you have spent on Link Building, thus far. 20 links of varying PR at an average of $20 will cost you $400. This example is likely small for many of you, but $400 is a lot of money especially when you consider copy writing costs or potentially saving that money and writing a bit of content yourself --you’re the expert, right? Your expense is now time that is invested into your website, instead of others. You are the expert, right, don’t forget that transferring the knowledge to the copy writer takes time.

If you were to write one decent blog post or one decent article related to your industry, it is likely to contain many of the keywords you are targeting. If you write this content to be informative, catchy, entertaining, yet educational, you will notice a whole new type of link building, which will get you more bang for your buck. This one article has the potential to be linked to from many users who found your article useful and want to share it with others. To get 20 links on an article of this caliber would be a simple thing and likely generate more. You would have spent the same, if not less, and contributed something meaningful to your industry or community and are one step closer to building your online persona or identity.

This is often referred to as Link Bait. You’re using your knowledge or expertise to entice others to link to your information and they will do so, because they found it useful and want to share it with others in their community. This is often done with videos, freebies, useful online tools, quizzes, games, and yes, simply content.

Not only is this the good way to build links, you’re not having to go after related sites, track down people, correspond for months, make time consuming posts only to find them removed, negotiate or barter. The links will come to you and they will last a very long time. Other people will do all of the linking for you and that is how they thank you for creating something helpful or useful. One helpful hint here is to be sure to return the favor. If you see others linking to your posts and they have similar meaningful posts, don’t forget to mention their post and link to their sites. You will be amazed to find they might return the favor again.

You can even use a small budget to help get your ideas off of the ground and start linking to your content with pay Per Click advertising, use traditional link building techniques to seed your link bait within related communities. A link to an article of value is a lot less spammy looking that a link to a product, service, or web site homepage.

Link building is a chore, it can be very expensive, whether they have value or not. Create something that has lasting value and you will continue to receive good links month after month with no additional effort. Use the power of numbers and the viral nature of your knowledge, expertise, and written content to increase your good links. Who knows, you might find that you actually enjoy interacting with your community, your customers, potential customers, and search engines.

Quick Tips

1. Be weary of purchasing paid links or directory listings
2. Be sure, if you subscribe to a link building service, you are getting links of real value
3. It’s more time consuming but if you are involved in related communities you can get quality links
4. Your best option is to provide unique, quality content that others will want to link to

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had a customer inquiring today about our SEO services. He asked me to provide him with some rankings of our existing customers. I told him, sure I can show you them, but it will make no difference to you.

If I told you we ranked someone for red widgets, would you know the difference in red or blue widgets. If we rank a customer #1 for red widgets and only 100 people per month search the keyword, what does it matter that we have a #1 ranking. Really the keyword to have ranked is blue widgets at 10,000 searches per month, but we only have a #4 ranking. Obviously less impressive even still on the first page, but what if I told you we got 1,000 clicks per month from that organic listing? That is more impressive than the #1 keyword ranking. Sounds obvious, right?

The only way we can provide meaningful information for our new customer is, if we have another client with data in the same industry, same products, and often same location. Targeting red widgets in Denver is very different than targeting red wigets in Miami. So rarely do we have an example of what we can do for our new customers and looking at existing work doesn't provide an accurate detail of what we can do for your business in your specific industry. Looking at previous work only shows our accomplishment in that industry and with that customer’s budget constraints.



Any keyword ranking can be achieved provided the right amount of time and effort. Search Engine Optimization is not rocket science, but it does take a certain amount of experience to know where to focus your time, energy, and which keywords should be targeted first. Often taking a mid-range keyword, building off of that to increase traffic, and ultimately conversions will help create new revenues to help offset your SEO expenses. I am not saying not to focus on the top keywords all this time, only to take a long term approach with them. Some SEO efforts improve with age.

So how can you determine, if your SEO knows what they are talking about? I'd say the best thing to do is ask for references. Why don't people ask? Any one of our customers will be happy to share their experiences with another and tell how we have improved their rankings, conversions, their overall knowledge about search engines, their own customers, and web sites in general. If you can't get references, then the SEO likely does not have repeat monthly customers because they are not performing. I would ask for references from customers from six to twelve months of continued service.

The next item you can ask to review, although they may not show, is current and archived reporting. Essentially you should ask to see those reference reports and look for an increase in rankings over time. They may not show you current client data, but they may show you expired client data. Each of our customers has an initial report before any work begins so we can see the improvement over time. The problem is that targeted keywords lists can change, so the reports are not 100% reliable for that purpose. If they have good aged references and good steady reporting they are at least doing the most time consuming part of the project, which is customer service and data management.

You can, also, ask for examples of copywriting. If the copy is illegible to a human, then you have a problem. Your SEO needs to write copy for both search engines and people. Remember, getting the user to the page is only half of the equation. Your SEO should also focus on converting the user for a sign up or a sale. The content should contain some marketing one liners with calls to action. You have to have some action you want the user to take, engage them, and give them tools to use your site more efficiently. Give them a reason to contact you or buy from you.

As far as what your SEO will be doing with all of the data collected each month, its a tough call. Every SEO is different and their are so many techniques for achieving rankings you have to go with what works for you. I recommend a trial period 6-12 months with goals you both agree on. You can also ask to see the monthly plan and make suggestions. The more you get involved the more you will get from your SEO.

Here are some things you will want to pay attention to:

• The number of links back to site. Try putting this in Google: "link:www.yourdomain.com" and "link:yourdomain.com" See Edit-X here
• The number of pages indexed. Try putting this in Google: "site:www.yourdomain.com" and "site:yourdomain.com" See Edit-X here
• Fresh new content each and every month. They may ask you to hire a copywriter and then optimize those pages.
• Internal site links, keywords linked in your site to pages in your site.
• Title, Meta Keyword, and Meta Description Tags, Headline text, Image Alt Title Tags and Body text on all pages.
• Monthly Reporting, traffic analytics, visual charts and graphics, and detailed activity logs.
• Compliant HTML, XHTML etc. Clean lightweight code and images makes for happy search engines.

Interested in getting an SEO? How about a test drive? Kick the tires on Edit-X. Give us a call at 720-982-7770 and Get a Free Usability Review and Free Site and Keyword Ranking Report. That is a $250 value.

Why not look under the hood? We will give you aged references to call and show you our detailed and exclusive reporting. You will learn something about your web site and, more important, you will learn how to improve your web site. See why we are a safe and trusted White Hat SEO.

Edit-X Wants to Be Your SEO

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In the old days it was location, having an easy to remember or short domain name or your ad placement. However since search engines took over it isn’t about where it is about what. Your customers’ find your web site based on keywords and your rank and relationship to those keywords and that is when content became king.

How old is your content? Where did you get your content? Did you write it? Did you have someone else write it? Did you copy it from a manufacturer or a competitor? Did the person who wrote it know what they were doing? Did they research your industry keywords and did they optimize your content for the top performing and top converting keywords?

Keyword traffic is based on popularity, buzz, product release date, and current events. This means that what worked three months ago is not always working today. This could be the difference in 1,000 clicks or 10,000 clicks in a given month on a single page. If you are not paying attention to your content you are missing the keyword trends and traffic.



Keyword popularity and density get users to your pages via search result ranking but what about keeping the user on your page and encouraging them to take an action. Most web site content is stale and lacks the energy required pull the user in, keep them from clicking back and better yet, convince them to continue browsing or fill out a form. Creating intriguing content is a complicated matter and often times require a 3^rd party to assist in this process.

We always recommend working with copy writers to help boost your content and they often have great new and innovative ideas since they are looking at your content from the outside. This is important as many organizational and user action strategies are overlooked internally.

Is your web site built for location or content? Working with so many web sites means we work with just as many copy writers. We have access to a network of individuals who will be able to help you attract not only more visitors but convert them into customers. Consider your content, not your location.

If you haven’t already… check out Google Trends.

http://www.google.com/trends

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

All web site owners want as much search traffic as they can get but, many are missing out. If you are only advertising in Google AdWords you may be reaching the majority of searchers but, does your industry niche use Google? What if they use Yahoo or Microsoft? What if another, smaller, search engine provides better niche traffic? Do you know your audience and have you optimized your PPC campaign for them?

Find your target audience and do the research required to determine the best avenue for your PPC dollars. Finding new keywords can often be a tedious and time consuming task. Using your web server statistics can often reveal new keywords and areas of interest to help you mold and shape your campaigns.

I recently talked to a customer who had issues with their Google campaign and 100% of their traffic was gone overnight. Looking at their Analytics from one day to the next was like comparing the heart beat of a marathon runner to a complete flat line. Had other programs been in place the traffic report would have been much less dramatic and budgets in other programs could have been increased to offset the loss.

You wouldn’t put all of your retirement into stocks? So why is all of your PPC in one program? You need to prepare your PPCP (Pay Per Click Portfolio) and invest in some cash and bonds. Spending a few dollars in several programs may provide enough information in just a few days for you to make an informed decision. You might find that other programs convert higher and for less money.

It is important to diversify your PPC exposure to ensure your web site is reaching its full potential. Use your analytics to better understand your target audience, do some research to locate industry specific search programs and invest in multiple PPC programs to be sure that your PPC traffic doesn’t crash.

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you've been around the Web for any length of time, you've heard of SEO—or, if you're not familiar with the acronym, Search Engine Optimization. It's the process of making sure you're your Web pages rank at or near the top when people do a search in Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com, or whatever search engine they use.

Over the past few years, as SEO has become big business and CMS products commonplace, a concern has arisen that a CMS can hinder getting high scores in search engine rankings. And these rumors of poorly behaved CMS products fouling up your SEO, sadly, were true.

What many people don't know, however, is that over time both CMS products and search engines have grown up and they get along much better these days without needing anywhere near as much “supervision.”

When you look at URLs, for example, often for any kind of page that is fully or partially generated “on the fly,” you'll see parameters—basically non-English strings (&var=value) of text with question marks, ampersands and numbers, that only mean something to the system reading them. Content management systems are masters at generating these undecipherable URLs. Problem was, for a long time, the search engines weren't great at reading them.

When search engines relied heavily on URLs with few to no parameters, this was a big problem. But now that search technologies focus more on the content on the page and linking, the unruly URL is much less of a barrier than it used to be. Yes, it's nice to provide user-friendly URLs, but it's no longer a show-stopper for search rankings and indexing.

Another behavioral problem had to do with tags. For those of you who learned HTML “from scratch”, you know what these are. They are HTML tags put at the top of each page that provide metadata—information that says what the page is about, including the description and keywords. They don't show up in your Web browser, but search engines can see them.

In the old days, immature CMS products, while they may have been easy to use for entering content, didn't always give users a place to specify meta information for each page. Thus, search engines, some of which used meta tags as their primary indexing mechanism, would see every page of the site as the same page. Consequently, your pages were virtually invisible to the search engines. Nowadays, most CMS products provide easy interfaces for SEO and prompt users to enter titles, descriptions, keywords and even allow you to write your own URLs. Problem solved.

Search engines still look at URLs and meta tags, but, as they have gotten more sophisticated, rely on them much less, and more on the actual content-- the words actually on the page. So the issue of your CMS circumventing your desire to play nicely with search engines is much less bothersome. Now, rather than your tech team focusing on the mechanics of SEO or mod_rewrite within your CMS, your writers can focus on the art of SEO, which is in the content itself.

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

News and history junkies take heart: Google's new News Archive Search lets you search back over twenty decades worth of historical content, including scads of articles not previously available via the search engine.

"The goal of this service is to allow people to search and explore how history unfolded," said Anurag Acharya, Google distinguished engineer, who played a major role in shepherding the new product.

Google has partnered with news organizations including Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Guardian and the Washington Post, and aggregators including Factiva, LexisNexis, Thomson Gale and HighBeam Research, to index the full-text of content going back 200 years.

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Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

ESPN.com said it is ending its deal with Yahoo to show text ads on its Web pages, choosing instead to sell the placements itself.

ESPN plans to roll out its own Google-like auction system for placing text-link ads on its site, letting advertisers target placements based on keyword or section. The ad system, which uses New York firm Quigo's AdSonar platform, will be up and running this fall, the company said.

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Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Search Engine Watch editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan recaps top search engine stories from August 2006.

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our SEO buddies at Wordtracker recently launched their own blog:

Wordtracker Blog

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Big companies with huge budgets certainly make it more difficult for smaller search marketers to compete, but ingenuity and creativity can still provide a compelling competitive advantage regardless of budget constraints.

The "Big Ideas for Small Sites & Small Budgets" session at SES featured several search marketing experts sharing helpful tips for small business marketers.

It's no surprise that small businesses were well represented at SES. After all, it was smaller firms that primarily drove the first wave of growth for the explosive search engine marketing industry. But today, with Fortune 1000 companies crashing the search marketing party, many small firms are wondering if the Web really is the "great equalizer" they hoped for. What was once a small businesses' best kept secret has now become part of nearly every marketer's mix.

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Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 06:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Maintaining and marketing a website can be a difficult task especially for those who are inexperienced or who have very little experience. SEO rules are constantly changing and even then, many SEO professionals disagree on the actual specifics required to optimize a website. This is in no small part due to the search engines themselves.

Major search engines like Google are constantly striving to ensure that sites at the top of their result pages offer invaluable information or service to their visitors. However, webmasters who are looking to make quick money while offering very little quality content are always finding new ways to beat the search engines at their own game. For this reason, search engines regularly change the methods they use to determine relevancy and importance of your site.

Continue reading "Organic Search Engine Optimization Tips" »

Posted by R. Stacy Cook at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)