Hobo Link Building

Table of Contents  Creative Commons .................................................................................................................... 3  Shaun Anderson........................................................................................................................ 3  A Basic Quick Linkbuilding Intro ............................................................................................ 4  Should I Buy Links To Improve Google Rankings? ............................................................... 5  Linkbuilding Is Easy When You Have Content worth Linking To......................................... 6  Your Link On ‘Links To Useful Sites’ Pages – Yuck!............................................................. 7  Some Google Toolbar Grey Pages Do Not Pass Anchor Text Value Or PR? ........................ 7  Stop Building S*&t Links ....................................................................................................... 10  I Spent a Year Adding Content & My Competitors Nicked My Rankings............................ 13  Quick Linkbuilding Tip – Get Links From Universities ....................................................... 14  SEO – Limit Anchor Text Links To 55 Characters In Length?............................................ 16  Google Promotes Uncool URLs? ............................................................................................ 18  Google – How Many Words In A Page Title Tag? ................................................................ 18  What Is The Best Title Tag For Google? ............................................................................... 20  How To Get Quality Back Links The Top Competition Has ................................................. 22  Go Off Topic & Get Natural Links From Trusted Sites ........................................................ 23  How I Got 500 Real Backlinks In 2 Minutes ......................................................................... 24  Broken Links Are A Waste Of Link Power ............................................................................ 24  Finding Suspended Websites & Link Opportunities With Google ........................................ 26  Link Building – Should I Avoid Reciprocal Links? .............................................................. 27  Linkbuilding Tip – Syndicate The $h!# Out Of Your Content Via RSS! ............................. 29  The next article is a bit of a theory…… ................................................................................. 30  Is It Diversity Of Keywords In Link Profile That’s King? .................................................... 30  Link To Important Pages In Your Site – Often ..................................................................... 31  What Is Nofollow? Should I Use It On Internal Links? ....................................................... 32  Buying Old Domains & Redirect Them To Get High Rankings ........................................... 34  How To Change Domain Names & Keep Your Rankings in Google ................................... 34  301 Ways Of Getting A No1 In Google > Moved Permanently! ........................................... 35  Links From Unrelated Sites.................................................................................................... 38  Google Trusts Domain Online Business Authority ............................................................... 39  Are Directory Links Still Worth It? ........................................................................................ 40  Do Article Submissions & Press Releases Still Work? .......................................................... 41  How To Get Started In Social Media | Shana Albert............................................................. 42 

Links That Effect Ranking Change In Google SERPS......................................................... 47  The Ultimate/Best/Complete/Directory/List Of Dofollow Blogs ........................................... 49  What Do You Want To Rank No1 In Google For Anyways?................................................ 50  1 Blog Comment, 2 Hours Work & One Amazing Link ........................................................ 51  Hide Your Links & Muddy That Link Profile! ...................................................................... 52  Get Links From REAL Sites (IE Sites That Aren’t Just THERE To Link To Other Sites) 53  The Perfect Link Strategy In SEO – Mix It Up!.................................................................... 54  Why Vary Anchor Text In Linkbuilding Campaigns ............................................................ 56  Bad Neighbourhood = Google Penalty – Do You Link To One? .......................................... 58  Beginners Guides .................................................................................................................... 60  SEO News ................................................................................................................................ 60  Hot Articles .............................................................................................................................. 60  Forums .................................................................................................................................... 60  Great SEO Articles .................................................................................................................. 60  SEO Blogs ............................................................................................................................... 61  SEO Tools ................................................................................................................................ 62  More DIY SEO Resources ...................................................................................................... 62  Contact Us @ Hobo ................................................................................................................. 63   

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Creattive Com mmons •

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The Hobo SEO S Blog and a its original content are licensedd through a Creative Commons Attribution A 2.5 Scotlannd License. You are perrmitted to republish an nd rework conntent on youur own blog if you link to the origiinal article oon the Hobo o website. Created in n October 2009 2 by Shaaun Anderso on Warrantiees – Absoluttely 100% none n – This whole publlication is oopinion, speculation and possiblly, out of daate already. Supplied ass is, and refferences possts on the Hobo H SEO Blog as a well as other o notablee and generrally reliablee sources. I hope it help ps you.

Shaun n Anderrson Shaun Anderson A iss the Web Marketing M D Director and Lead SEO at Hobo Web W LTD, one o of Scotland and thee UK's best seo compannies. An obseessive passiion for on-site SEO, linnkbuilding and a web accessibbility, Shauun has workeed on hundrreds of web bsites, in eveery kind off market. Shaun sttarted working in an advvertising agen ncy in 1999, instrumentaal in the  foundingg of a dedicaated websitee design divission of the aggency, in 200 01/2,  and co‐ffounded Hob bo Web LTD, a specialist seo and web bsite design  company based in G Greenock, Sco otland, on Ap pril 01, 2006 6.  Through hout his care eer Shaun haas been invo olved in  website e design and search engin ne marketin ng  projectss for universities, college es, charities,  corporate, small bussiness and sme, finance sites,  well kno own UK bran nds, cathedrals and the N NHS ‐ to  name bu ut a few.

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A Bassic Quick Linkbuilding Intro • •

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If a site waants to link k to you from m a page wiith 100 linkks on it you can basicallly forget it as the strengthh of the linkk is shared by, b well, 100 others! You should d try to gett your webssite into thee good ‘neighbourhooods’ of yourr industry. Try T and get links from the t neighbo ourhoods at the top of G Google for your y key phrasess after all Google G likes these sites enough to rank r them! F Find that circle of sites wheree all the big boys in youur industry link l to and are a linked fr from and get involved. Don’t D worryy too much about a “them me” of webssites linkingg to you thou ugh – as this is well,, a bit, unprroven. Goodd for traffic though! See who lin nks to yourr competitoors and try and a get a linnk as well (oor pay mon ney to have their link l replaced with yourrs lols Use Yahooo and type “link:yourco “ ompetitors.ccom” and seee who linkss to them. Yahoo Y is kind enouggh to rank paages virtuallly by the nu umber of baack-links sittes have in site s explorer – making m it onne of my most m used seo o tools. Join Sociall Networkss, not for thee links them mselves, but to get yourr content no oticed so real sites linnk to you! A link is a link. If som meone, anyoone wants to o link to youu accept, juust don’t alw ways reciprocate with a linkk back to theem (may negate the vallue of the linnk) and cou uld see your site loose trust. Reemember Gooogle says it i is (virtuallly) impossible for a sitte to hurt your siite by simplly linking too your site, but you cann hurt your ssite if you liink to another sitee with a ’shaady’ backlinnk profile. It doesn’t hurt h to get a link from m a low or hiigh Google Page Rank page. Todaay’s NoPR page miight be a PR R 5 page in reality, as Google G Tooolbar Pageraank is out off date. So if you have h a site about a Dogss you might want to lin nk out to Crrufts or the Kennel K Club or Wiiki is a goodd one. Naturrally, MOST T importanttly, you shoould also gett relevant sites to link too you. If yoou have a co ostume website, find a ccostume weebsite you can addd your url too for free. Again A thoug gh, this is a bit b unproveen – and harrd to prove! Goood for user satisfaction s though! Good Googgle rankinggs is not all about who you get a liink from (allthough it manly m is!) it’s whoo you link to t – this is thhought to be the measuure of the truust of a sitee and seems fairlyy reasonablle to me. Linnk to authorrity sites in your industtry as well as a other sites that loook like quaality upcomiing sites, an nd stay clearr of suspectt sites.

Obviouusly I assum me you have a blog withh original co ontent on it!! And remem mber its qu uality of links noot quantityy. If I was too sum it up, I’d say – get links from m real sitess. I’ve gott some articcles that migght illustratee how to geet links, and how to makke links, bu ut in a responssible way. I’’m not abouut to give otther sites heeadaches beccause in thee end, the more m people know k aboutt certain linkks, the fasteer their wortth evaporates.

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Should I Buy Links To Improve Google Rankings? Buying links that are search engine friendly is against Google TOS. If you buy links to take the risk Google will penalise you (from a reduction in your toolbar pagerank, up to removing your site from its index). If buying links was ineffective, it wouldn’t be against Google TOS. Think about that. I can’t remember the last vertical I checked there weren’t people buying links to improve search engine placement – so the competition is doing it. Last time I checked, they were ranking pretty good. I can’t advise you to buy links but I can’t honestly advise you not to – although I will point out again Google will take you down if it finds out. If you are buying links, make sure your links aren’t obviously paid links, though. That is, don’t buy links from obvious places. If Google gets better at detecting these, it’s the obvious paid links that will be hit first. I can say, I don’t buy links. Not at the moment anyway. There are still plenty of ways to get links without paying for them: SEE How I Got 500 Real Backlinks In 2 Minutes for example.

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Linkbuilding Is Easy When You Have Content worth Linking To Getting other sites to link to yours is easy when you have content worth linking to. It really is that simple in some cases. Your content should be original, but it doesn’t need to set the world on fire. The more content you add to your site, the more likely people will link to it, today or in the future. I’m still getting links from stuff I wrote years ago. So first thing you should be doing is, er, adding content to your site. I personally think HowTo articles or articles that discuss a common problem often discussed in forums etc – some call it timeless content – is best suited to linkbait (and visitors!). This is always going to get linked to at some point if it’s presented slightly differently, and interesting. Once you get enough links and you feature in the top 3 results, you’ll find you start to pick up more and more natural links – it’s a reinforcing effect. Where to start? See that crap little FAQ on your site? Those frequently asked questions nobody asks about? Those need expanded – each FAQ should be its own page with a good page title and in a well structured site. You need to ask yourself what people want to know about your products, or your industry – not necessarily YOURbusiness. Having content on your site makes it so much easier to pick up links. If you have no content, while you can still rank in Google via links alone, you’re limiting yourself in a way you might not recover from. So first lesson in linkbuilding ….. Add content to your website that’s not strictly about your boring company.

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Your Link On ‘Linkss To Useeful Sitess’ Pages – Yuck! Don’t settle s for a link on “usseful links”” pages on sites s as these are about 1% as usefful as your siggnature linkk on the 10thh page of a forum threaad – e.g. nexxt to useless! – Unless of course the t Page is a PR 9 withh a lot of baack-links itseelf! That’s not n likely. Google hates links pages. Try it – throw up u a “links to useful sittes” page onn your webssite and watch as a Google iggnores yourr page unlesss you have a LOT of online o businness authoritty. Google doesn’t waant to list paages with noothing but liinks on it annd actively identifies th hese pages and a nukes thhem from thheir SERPS in a LOT of o cases! If someeone wants to t list your site on theirr links pagees, consider how much value thesee links really are. a If there are a lot (1000+) of linkks on there – any benefi fit to your siite is microsscopic. • • •

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Check if thhe links pagee is in Googgle at all utilising the in nfo operatorr - info:www w.hoboweb.co.uk Consider hoow authorittative the sitte in questio on is – is it an a importannt site within your industry? (IIf it is, it’s perhaps p worrth getting a link here just in case.) Find out thee Google Paagerank of the t actual page p the linkk is going too feature on n – not the PR of thhe home page. Some people PR iss totally uselless – it’s nnot, not for a quick check on what w Googlee thinks of thhe page. Check how w many backklinks point to the linkss page from m within the actual site, and if it has any extternal backlinks using the t Yahoo site s operatorr.

Some liinks pages might m be useful if it’s on o a very au uthoritative site, but moost link pagees go the wayy of the Doddo within tim me. Avoid getting g a lin nk on linkss page if at all possiblee. Related d Articles Some Google G Toollbar Grey Pages Do Noot Pass Anchor Text Vaalue Or PR?? First – I actively monitor m Greyy Google tooolbars on in nternal pagees on variouus sites. I love it when I see a new one o Having a Google Toolbar T Greey bar, (pagees that look k, according to Google’s toolbar fo or your web broowser, to haave no Pageerank) whilee it may hav ve no appareent detrimenntal effect to rankingg the actual page p in SER RPS, *migh ht* be an in ndication th hat page is not passing anchorr text value or pageran nk. I’ve tested it on a couple c of paages. I can’t find a greey bar pagee that I can n determinee passes anchorr text value. The same pages appear to pass pagerank, p buut on closer inspection,, this might be b because of o syndication to other sites. As I monitor m the phenomenoon, it’s interresting to see which w pagess pop up witth Grey Tooolbar valuess. The last one o I saw (w which appeaared from noowhere) was a page witth sloppy innternal anch hor text variiation to thee same page, low link equuity and a possible slight dupe conntent issue.

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But what is the meaning of the Google Grey bar? If it is not a ranking penalty, perhaps it’s a sign the page isn’t passing value to other external sites? Some other notes: • •

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Typically pages that have relatively less links pointing to them, but well linked to pages can have a grey toolbar too Pages with no Toolbar PR do rank so they must have real PR – in most cases for ‘honest’ pages toolbar grey has no detrimental effect in rankings even for mildly competitive phrases Obviously pages that are nothing more than manipulation or engage in shady links somewhere, or have a severe duplicate content issue, might have grey bar and will probably not be in the Google SERPS Some pages don’t seem to pass anchor text value, some do (although this could be because of syndication issues by scraper sites and duped and reworked content) Pages with a toolbar grey may still apparently pass PR to other pages (I tested this specifically a couple of months ago) with one link to a new site from a greybar page I thought might have been a 3 or a 4 – and the site got a PR 2 I think (although again this could be syndication ripples i.e. links from other sites that’s republished this blog’s content). Common problems associated with Toolbar Gray which caused the page to disappear from Google *sometimes* seemed to suffer from dupe content issues, and another typical example was pages with just links. Pages with low link trust that have different anchor text links to the same destination page Pages with links to irrelevant sites which Google *thinks* could be paid links (which are against Google terms of inclusion)

Results? Its buggy that’s for sure – and it’s probably meant to be. You cannot make any assumption about a page with Toolbar PR grey until you look at it, how it’s linked to within the site, which it links to, where it ranks and if its links are passing anchor text ranking value – so this isn’t a simple check. Some pages did seem to pass value, but on closer inspection, I found these articles republished on other sites, so there’s a chance some of these links passed on the anchor text. Theories – I think if you have a toolbar grey page, • • • • • • •

the page may be either brand new and Google does not know about it Google is ignoring it because it has a problem with it (like too much dupe content), the page does not have enough trusted link equity, Google may have penalised it for something like too little unique content Or doesn’t like what the page links to (a paid link?), how the linking is set up or it looks like a traditional links page (which Google doesn’t like)

Of course, it also could be a bug. It sure is glitchy! Page 8  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.

 

What to do •

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Check if the page ranks in Google for its title / main keywords – if it does, it’s not penalised – maybe it just isn’t passing anchor text (although that’s not to say every page with toolbar pr passes value). Get more links to the page in the internal navigation and in page and see if it’s a lack of trusted links problem. Examine who the page links to (a possibility but I see the same type of linking on pages with PR) – I surmise a page might need a certain level of trusted links Is the text totally unique? Rewrite it. Does this page look like a links page? Change it. Trying to do too much with your anchor text? Change it. If it’s a low quality page with little traffic anyways, sometimes I just 301 Redirect it to the most relevant page on the site

Finally, if you see a grey toolbar – check to see if there are any issues I’ve highlighted above. Sometimes it looks like a glitch, sometimes not. If it ranks and you’re not bothered about spreading link equity to other sites, don’t worry about it (for now). Remember – not every grey bar links page pass no weight!

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Stop Building S*&t Links

When you build a wall, you do it bit by bit, with the same kind of identical bricks until you have a lot of bricks that all look the same… presto, you have a wall. That’s building. My mate does that. You can’t build links that way and EXPECT to win the ranking wars in Google as Google is actively fighting you. Your bricks kind of need to be different brick to brick. There’s a thought out there. Get 200 or 300 or 400 links and you’ll rank. So it’s natural that you think I’ll buy some links from that mob (and I mean mob) for $200 and I’m sorted. You’re not. Those links are s*&t (sorry no other word to describe it). Depending on how good the search engine optimisation company is of course – there’s different varying colours of s*&t but generally speaking you stand in it when you open your email and it says: We noticed you don’t rank for any of your keyterms. We are an expert linkbuilding company….. They’ll come from spammy blog and forum comments that might hurt your brand, or web hosting companies with an obvious paid link profile. Even if they are decent at their job – a competitor will just report you for buying links if you do it too much. It will stick out like a sore thumb you’re buying links and that’s against Google TOS. Stop thinking about building links. Start thinking of promoting your useful content.

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Here’s how I built links the past 2 months to the Hobo site. First, I understand building links (YUK) is about relationships with real people and trying to get links from real sites. 1. I refocused my internal links (I’m testing a few things) 2. I created my 1. SEO Guide For Beginners which Matt Cutts sphunn (V Cool) – a thanks to Edward Lewis of SEO Consultants who gave me the confidence to publish. 2. A PDF of my SEO Guide (along with an email burst telling my subscribers and Linkedin buddies it was ready (latter, a bit spammy, sorry about that!) 3. a free wordpress plugin that may conserve Google Pagerank 4. A month of linkbuilding tips on my blog (about one a day – spending no more than 1/2 hour each article) – more for beginner subscribers to the blog than to garner links at this time. 5. An online press release or two 6. I sent out a couple of email requests for links to sites I thought would actually benefit by linking to a particular article on this site – no, really! 7. Syndication (!) – I really don’t care who republishes my content if they link back 8. I pointed out to a few people their blog rolls looked a bit thin without Hobo on it lol 9. A couple of other minor things…. one of which was a mistake I’m reversing. 3. I told the world about my content (and in doing so my online buddies) via Twitter (mainly – it costs nothing to promote my content or others) hoping they’d help me give it a push (as I do theirs – in fact I have been asking a lot of them lately… next month will be about helping them push their stuff – it’s all me, me, me at the moment it seems!) I didn’t ‘build’ one anchor text rich link like ‘Scotland’ in there (well, until just then). (I will go into all that above during the course of the month). I’m finished with all that 2005 seo crap – it’s depressing, not lucrative and in some cases, a total con; even if you do lose rankings on some narrow terms that are pure vanity. The results were Wordpress itself linked to me,SEroundtable linked to me, SEOconsultants linked to me, Sphinn linked to me, Search Engine Land linked to me (a couple of times), I got a couple of links on PR7 and 6 pages, and I got a couple of blog post links out of the blue from buddies and people I’ve just became buddies with lol (not because they were buddies, because the content was worth a link and not just a Twitter). On top of that, Smashingmagazine.com and some Brazilian version of Techcrunch linked to posts that where over a year old that largely went unnoticed at the time. For a small company in Greenock, Scotland, that’s a lot of attention. I also got links from some other really authoritative seo sites (I’ll reciprocate later). As a result, my subscription count has went from @1,500 in a month or so to nearly 3,000 which will make the whole process a lot easier next time. Oh, I got a lot of traffic too and I’ve Page 11  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.

 

been asked to do a couple of guest posts on blogs I read which is V cool. That will hellp in the future tooo. What diid I do? – I just helpedd people out with some free stuff thhat helps theem achieve their own goals in the hoope similar minded folk will help me to achieeve mine. Easy. I createed content and I told people p abouut my site: Tell thee world abouut your site. Google It’s cleaarly not rockket science but it takes a lot of efffort. (I even got to chat briefly withh a Google Spam guy (Not MC) who wished me luck wiith my SEO Boook) This poost might seeem a little serve servinng – apologiies for that. I just wanted w to ensure this moonth I said Stop S ‘buildiing links’ annd Start prromoting yo our site. It’ss easier andd more rewaarding.

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I Spent a Year Addding Contennt & My Coompetitors Nicked N My Rankings I just sp pent a yearr adding oriiginal content which peeople have told t me is reeally usefull, getting relevant linnks from thoose in my niiche, going for quality of links rathher than quaantity of crap links, not keyword k stuuffing, stayinng within Google G guideelines, not bbuying linkss from ng links to bad b neighboourhoods, not n crappy host compaanies in far-away-landss, nofollowin hiding text t or linkss, preventingg Google’s index being g spammed,, not using m my client siites to promotee my own rankings. Some of o my comp petitors now w rank aboove me with h cheap exacct match dom mains, regu urgitated content, no relevannt links, crapp links, keyyword stuffing, floutingg Google guuidelines, bu uying links froom crappy host h compaanies in far-aaway-lands, links to baad neighbouurhoods, hid ding text and linkks, spamminng Google’ss index, usinng client sittes to promoote their ow wn rankings lol LOL OK K I have 1000 more tim mes Google traffic t than these guys because theeir terms aree so narrow and their coontent is lukkewarm, so maybe I sh houldn’t com mplain. I’vee got a lot off real humanss subscribedd, too, whichh is very vaaluable to me. m But it alludes to ann age old quuestion: What to t do? Link kbuild, or Add A Conten nt? I chose to add conttent becausee I am tryinng to build a brand. THA AT’s what I recommen nd to clients. I prefer to syndicate s annd network (for this sitte anyway) these t days tthan linkbuiild. If you plaay this gamee Google wiill actually send s you a lot l of decennt traffic butt you’ll prob bably lose groound on verry focused teerms to com mpetition that are reallyy going for tthem – see what I think off natural linnks and googgle seo. PS I donn’t out anybbody and it’’s not sour grapes g – I th hink SEO iss SEO – goood luck to everyone e whichevver tactics and a strategyy they choosse to employ y. I am actuually friendlly with a lott of my competitors. Maybbe I should register r SEO O Greenock k Dot Com just j in case lol. I actually change thhe terms I target all thee time too with w this sitee – and I’m ALWAYS testing on site – that’s whaat you can do d if you’vee got a lot of traffic andd a little braand and I sup ppose. What arre you doing just now?? Adding coontent, netw working, synndicating or linkbuildin ng – somethiing else? Reemoving yoour internal nofollow links (?) evenn heh heh.

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Quick Linkbuilding Tip – Get Links From Universities One of the simplest ways I use to build links for any business is finding colleges and universities who link degree students and alumni to to job opportunities, and promote their student discount partners online. I consider links from very real sites like these as authority building links. Obviously the first thing to do is get used to publishing your job vacancies and any offers on your site, and then telling potential linking partners about them. TIP - never take these jobs offline either - just mention "Role Filled" and strike out the text. Target Asset = Job Vacancy / Internships For (with your important keywords of course) Key Link prospects = Universities and colleges, alumni sites Link prospecting queries (in Google) = jobs degree site:.ac.uk, careers opportunities site:.ac.uk, careers advice site:.ac.uk, jobs degree site:.edu, careers degree site:.edu, careers advice site:.edu + variations Example Page typical of what you might find http://www.careers.manchester.ac.uk/recruit/target/mgip/employerprofiles/ Another variation of this is colleges and universities that publish links to sites that offer their alumni special student discounts (so effectively, all you need is a student discount for products or services). This is useful even for small businesses in a very tight catchment area. Target Asset = Student Discount For (with your important keywords of course) Key Link prospects = Universities and colleges, alumni sites Link prospecting queries (in Google) = student discount partners site:.ac.uk, student discount partners site:.edu + variations Example Page typical of what you might find - http://www.richmondcollege.edu/content/student-affairs/student-discounts.aspx Of course, in every case you need to dig around the site in question but offering a student discount to all colleges and universities and building a list of marketing communications offers at unis and colleges and contacting them asking for a link in their newsletter (which many have) in return for a student discount is going to be more rewarding than sending out 1000 unsolicited spam link request emails. TIP - don't be cheap. The better your offer for students, the better chance you'll get a link. Ultimately these kinds of educational links are a win win - they are not hurting either site, and students get a good deal too. If you have good content on your site, you can just go right on and ask them to link to it if they already have a habit of linking out to similar sites to yours, or even send them articles about "How to get a job in {keyword} services" for their careers newsletter or resource section.

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Tell The World d About YYour Sitee But Don n’t Ask Fo or Links!  Google used to sayy: “Have other relevaant sites linkk to yours.” Now itss guideliness recommennd: “Tell thhe world aboout your sitee.”Google It’s cleaar. Google does d not waant you ask king specifiically for lin nks becausee this is a cllear attemptt to manipullate their lisstings and thhis is as far as I think thhey go at thhe moment. It’s a bit poorr advice whhen the key to t ranking inn Google iss having othher relevant sites link to o your site! Links are a what the web is about though and a it is why y Google is the numberr 1 search en ngine. Links were w about before b Googgle. There’ss nothing wrrong with getting g otherr sites to lin nk to you as long as it doesn’’t stick out like l a sore thumb t you’rre looking for f Pagerankk or improv ved rankinggs for particuular terms. Private discussionss with people you know w are anotheer thing, buut when I askk for links (which ( I don’t doo very oftenn), I never ask a for speciific keyworrd anchor text. If I sendd out an emaail, I’ll point soomeone in thhe directionn of the pagge, and I’ll point p out thaat linking too it might haave some beenefit to theeir visitors. On some occcasions in the past, I’vve offered too reciprocatte the link IF it is of beneefit to the reeaders of thee other pagee. I never sppecify any aattribute of the t link either i..e. whether or not it is search s enginne friendly. I wouldd not go on record thesee days sending an emaiil out sayingg: Link to me using thhe followinng keyword text on a paage with paggerank of minimum 2… …. … and neither n shouuld you. Yoou never knoow who willl end up reaading that aand it makess it clear you donn’t have a cllue what yoou are on abbout and willl take links from f and liink back to anybody dy. w peoplee to link to you y in a particular way, make suree the title off the page yo ou want If you want links to have the keeywords yoou want to raank for and generally speaking, s a llot of folks will use those words w to linkk to you. If, of course, the t page is useful u in soome way! A And don’t sen nd out spam em mail requests. I get huundreds of bottom b feedeer link requuests and don’t answer any of them m. A waste of o time. There iss many wayys to skin a cat of coursse, but this is i how my seo s companny does it – and I’ve said beffore, we’re a content foocused seo agency. a Wee don’t buildd links to crrap (not eveen s!&t links). PS – Hoow do you tell t the worlld about youur site? Twitter. Stumbbleupon. Preess Ads. Arrticles. etc etc Page 15  Copyrighht © 2009 Thee Hobo SEO Company C VAT T No. 880 513 35 26 • No. SC C299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote q / cost estimate. e Hoboo is based in Greenock G (neaar Glasgow) inn Scotland in tthe UK.

 

SEO – Limit Anchor Text Lin nks To 55 Charaacters In n Length h? Republlished from m Oct 20, 20008 – As this post is geetting talkedd about in foorums at thee momennt I thought I’d bring too the front of the blog so comments can be addded if you wish w Anchorr Text Optiimisation As a seoo I wanted to t know – how h many words w or ch haracters does d Googlee count in a link? What’s best practicce when creeating links – internal, or o external?? What is thhe optimal leength of a HTML L link? It appeaars the answ wer to the quuestion ‘how w many worrds in a textt link” is 555 characters, about 8-10 woords. Why is this importtant to know w? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

You get to understand how many words Goo ogle will couunt as part oof a link s keepp titles to a maximum m a amount of ccharacters You can see why you should me should be b short andd why urls sshould be sn nappy You can see why yourr domain nam You can see why you should s rewrrite your urlls (SEF) It’s especiaally useful especially e w when thinkin ng about linkking internaally, via bod dy text on a page.

I wanted to see how w many woords Google will coun nt in one ‘lin nk’ to pass on anchor text power to t a anotherr page so I did d a test a bit b like this one below; 1. pointed som me nonsensee words in one o massivee link, 50 words w long, at the homee page of a ‘trusted’ site s 2. each of the nonsense words w were 6 characters long w rank nno1 for, and d added 3. Then I did a search forr somethingg generic thaat the site would n links the nonsensse words to the search, so that the famous “Thhis word onnly appear in to the site” (paraphrasee) kicked inn 4. This I surm mised wouldd let me see how many of the nonsense words Google wo ould attribute to the target page p from thhe massive 50 word linnk I tried to get it to sw wallow. c toool the answ wer was….. Using a character calculator 1. Google cou unted 8 worrds in the anchor a textt link out off a possiblee 50. 2. It seemed too ignore everything elsse after the 8th word 3. 8 words x 6 characterss = 48 charaacters + 7 sp paces = a nice round annd easy to remember number n – 555 Characterrs. So, a poossible best practice in number of words in an n anchor texxt might be to keep a lin nk under 8 words but importantlyy under 55 characters c because b everrything afteer it is ignorred (in the linkk)? Page 16  Copyrighht © 2009 Thee Hobo SEO Company C VAT T No. 880 513 35 26 • No. SC C299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote q / cost estimate. e Hoboo is based in Greenock G (neaar Glasgow) inn Scotland in tthe UK.

 

Continued….. This off course has an impact in i writing your titles fo or pieces youu want linkked to – espeecially for thosse with a haabit of takingg the articlee title and lin nking it to the t page. M Most are awaare a title shoould be under 70 characcters to havve maximum m impact in Google. Froom a test I did, d Google ignored woords in a titlle after 70+ characters. But if Gooogle only atttributes the first 55 characteers in a linkk, does this mean m there’’s at least a 10-20 charracter no-m man’s land to consideer when creaating links & headliness? mportant keywords at th he beginninng of your ppage title, an nd your All the more reasonn to have im brand name n at the very v end? If you like this testt, you mightt like; 1. 2. 3. 4.

Will Googlle Rank Pagges Better With W Valid Code? C How Manyy Words Will Google Count C In Thee Title Tag?? A Google Friendly F Weebsite Naviggation Systeem Do It Yourself Search Engine Opttimisation

Addendum  If peoplle used the title t of this page to linkk to this artiicle, which is preferablle, (Limit Anchor A Text Links Under 55 5 Characteers In Lengtth? (I’ve tw weaked this again)) a – Thhat’s 54 chaaracters, within measured m toolerance. Buut because of o my websiite URL struucture and llength, I miight be losing out o if peoplee link to thee article usinng the URL L. (http://ww ww.hobo-weeb.co.uk/seo oblog/inddex.php/ancchor-text-length/) – Unnfortunately y that’s overr 60 characteers, with Go oogle *possibbly* ignorinng the rich keywords k at the end of the t link What doo you thinkk about this anchor text optimisatio on observatiion?

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Related d Articles Google Promotes Uncool U URL Ls? Google recently gaave more assistance to webmasters w s, if you cann call it thatt, concerning url rewritinng, or changging dynamiic variable filled f URL to more seaarch engine friendly, more m human readable staatic lookingg URLS (OK K, URI). g not to rew write a website urls, beecause They acctually could be interprreted as recoommending there is a chance yoou could screw things up. u They buusted some ‘myths’ tooo; 1. Myth: “Dynnamic URL Ls cannot bee crawled.” (knew that)) 2. Myth: “Dynnamic URL Ls are okay if i you use fewer than thhree parameeters.” (thou ught that) I’ve meentioned beffore having a keyword in a url on its own has a minusculle, if any, efffect on the rankking of a paage but mayy have somee benefits wh hen people use the url to link to th he site (I think it does). I do seee what Googgle is doingg – they are telling peop ple ‘Google can read dyynamic urlss – that’s what w I will taake from thhe post…. buut only the most m ignoraant seo doessn’t know th hat already. It’s not exactly in line l with whhat the W3C C recommeends, from what I can determine. In Cooll URIs Don’t Change, they t determ mined a SEF url was moore user frieendly, now and a in the longg term, for humans. h Some may sayy W3C adviice is outdatted, or trite,, but I still try t and follow it i where I caan. I still beelieve the beest method for construccting urls iss short and to t the point – human readdable preferrably. If youu go through h a site CM MS change, yyou can rew write to keep oldd urls. Of courrse, sometim mes it’s hardd to follow even the beest advice, but b it’s alwaays worth remembbering and trying t in thee end to achhieve usabiliity, accessibbility and viisibility. I wouldd still recom mmend rewriting urls, despite d this post p from thhe Google W Webmaster Team. Then aggain, this addvice is morre usability orientated than t a searcch engine opptimisation benefit. …and interestinglyy, the Googlle Webmastter Blog seeems to prodduce SEF Urrls LOL and d it’s worth pointing p outt – Google is not the onnly search en ngine (I didd say that didn’t I)

Google – How Maany Words In I A Page Title T Tag?

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Note – This is a test, testing Title Tags in Google. Consider also Google Title Tag Best Practice and How Many Characters In A Title Tag For Google. We recently tested “how many keywords will Google read in the title tag / element?” using our simple seo mythbuster test (number 2 in the series). And here are the results, which are quite surprising. First – here’s the test title tag we tried to get Google to swallow. And it did. All of it. Even though it was a bit spammy; Using a keyword search – hoboA Hob1h – we were surprised to see Google returned our page. We also tested it using – Hob1g Hob1h – the keywords right at the end of the title – and again our page was returned. So that’s 51 words, and 255 characters without spaces, 305 characters with spaces, at least! It seems clear Google will read just about anything these days! ************** Update: Qwerty pointed out an interesting fact about the intitle: site operator in Google.

…..results as expected. But next in the sequence returns the following, unexpected result…..

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So whaat does this tell t us? Gooogle seems to t stop at th he 12th wordd on this paage at least when w returninng results ussing the intiitle: site opeerator. Anotther interestting observaation. Thank ks Qwertyy. ************** We’re obviously o n sure whaat benefit a title not t tag with h this manyy keywords in it has forr your page, inn terms of keyword k dennsity / dilutiion, and “clickability” in i the searcch engine results pages (S SERPS). 500+ words is certainly noot best pracctice! When creating c youur title tag bear b in mindd Google on nly shows yoou the first 70 characteers (about 8 words) in SERPS andd many thinnk you need d to get a weell formed uunderstandab ble call to action in this spaace. But from m this simpple experimeent, its clearr Google reads much more m to factoor your pag ge in the serps. A lot more. 1. SEO Myth Buster #1 – Google Prrefers Valid d HTML & CSS? C 2. SEO Myth Buster #2 – How Manny Words In n Your Title Tag For Gooogle? But whaat about Yaahoo and MSN? Well so far, neitheer of these engines e has indexed thee page, even whhen it was created c withh a title tag of o 26 wordss. They are obviously a bit choosieer than Google at the time of writing. •

Character Counter C Toool

Update – Check thhis out aboutt Google annd Spammy Page Titless!

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I’m keeping these 1 A Day SEO Tips in July quick and simple – and again, this is just my preference, backed up with observations I’ve made over the last few years I’ve been learning / practicing seo. This is the stuff people ask me on a daily basis at my seo company – What Is The Best Title Tag For Google?

  Title Tag Best Practices  For me, a perfect title tag in Google is; 1. Highly relevant to the page 2. The ‘crown’ of a keyword targeted article with keyword once 3. Probably 5-12 words, but ideally under the 70 characters limit, so the full title appears in Google SERPS (search engine results pages) but it depends on the page content – character counter. 4. A call to action which reflects exactly a searcher’s intent (i.e. to learn something, or buy something, or hire something. Remember this is your hook in search engines! 5. The perfect title tag is unique in relation to other pages on the site 6. I like to ensure my keywords feature as early as possible in a title tag 7. For me, the company name goes at the end of the tag, and I use a variety of dividers as no one way performs best 8. I like to think I write titles for search engines and human 9. Know that Google tweaks everything regularly – why not what the perfect title keys off? 10. Don’t obsess! Natural is better, and will only ‘get better’ as engines evolve 11. I think the more unique a title is relative to the site, the better in the long run. For instance, I’m probably going to change the title of our blog, to just ‘Hobo’ – one word. If all my titles were different and had ten words, that’s a 90% variation title to title. I like this and will be moving towards it. I would expect Google to reward this lol Note; When you write a page title, you have a chance right at the beginning of the page to tell Google if this is a spammy site or a quality site – for example – have you repeated the keyword 4 times or only once? I think title tags, like everything else, should probably be as simple as possible too, with the keyword once and perhaps a related term if possible. I think it’s fair to surmise Google might treat title tags (or title elements) on more authoritative domains differently than on new sites, too, that is, as with other things, more trusted domains might get away with more spammy titles, but from a user point of view and with searcher intent (and Google’s commitment to this) at the forefront, I’d try and keep things as simple and looking as human-generated and unique as possible. I’m certainly cleaning up the way I write my titles all the time. How do you do it? Page 21  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.

 

How To Get Quality Back Links The Top Competition Has Here’s a quick strategy to get quality links anyone can do – it’s white hat and gets you pagerank, trust, authority and rankings. Depending on the type of niche you’re in, you may have to go slightly off-topic in your linkbuilding efforts, but these are real quality links – the type SEO talk about but many don’t actually explain where to get them. I build links through content of course: 1. Identify the top ranking sites in the vertical you’re observing 2. Identify the top ranking sites top linked-to articles, and the highest Toolbar PR pages on their site using a tool like Yahoo Site Explorer (which does a pretty good job of listing pages by the amount of links they have) – consider running it through LinkDiagnosis too for PR values 3. In turn, pick out the sites that link to those sites – chances are you’ll find these pages have a lot of PR and are trusted by Google. 4. Where relevant create similar but original, perhaps more up to date content on your site 5. Contact the sites that link to competing sites, and send them a link to your page, asking politely if it might be relevant to their visitors too. You only need a couple to come off and you have a few links on high PR pages (I’ve done this with pages PR0-PR9 before) and more importantly Google will trust your site more. The steps are easy, but can be a drawn out process. Worthwhile though every now and again to get. It’s not a get quality links fast game, it’s just a get quality links game.

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Related Articles Go Off Topic & Get Natural Links From Trusted Sites A lot of SEO & Internet Marketing blogs will say pump out a lot of relevant content on your blog, build a resource all around a specific subject. Even Google says to do the same. What you won’t normally hear is to improve your traffic, improve the number and quality of your links to your website is to go off topic…. write about anything that is timely – especially when it’s even slightly topical. While on the whole of course that’s good advice, I’ve went off topic on a number of times. Because of that I’ve been linked to by authority sites that wouldn’t link to a seo company normally. I had a PR 9 link once because I wrote about something ‘slightly’ off topic. Today I was linked to a .edu on a ‘slightly‘ off topic subject to an article I wrote 2 years ago. Last week this site got a home page link on what I can only determine was the Brazilian version of TechCrunch and sent me nearly 5,000 visitors on a link that was buried 4 pages in on the article (to an article that was a year old). The link was to a ‘slightly’ off topic subject area but I rank number 1 for in that competitive but similar niche. When you go off topic into less competitive niches, you have a better chance of ranking on the first page of Google. If you are the number 1 link in a SERP, you wouldn’t believe the amount of natural links you get just because you are already No1 – it truly is a self reinforcing effect and can be a powerful way to attract links over time. The number 1 position truly is a self reinforcing position especially if there’s any semblance of a natural linking profile in that particular keyword vertical – i.e. tutorials, research, how-to etc. These links from trusted sites help ranking your content – especially your new content. A natural link from a trusted site (or even a more trusted site than yours) can do nothing but help your site. I would think when a trusted site links to your site, the trust Google places in your site because of that link raises your own trust levels, and while not helping you rank immediately for your main terms, can help you when you publish new content in the future. Of course if the off topic trusted site links to you with good keywords you don’t get much better. Now for sure, I don’t go that far off topic so my links are even better for linkbuilding purposes. Sometimes I’ll write about something we intend to do in a few months so it’s of use long term. But certainly, going off topic every now and again, especially with a helpful article on your blog certainly gets you links, sometimes tons of traffic, some you wouldn’t normally receive in your boring niche. And you know you can monetise anything if you can be bothered and take advantage of any page that’s been linked to heavily. Sometimes it’s surprising the quality of links you get. Page 23  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.

 

How I Got 5000 Real Backlink ks In 2 Minutes This is something similar s to thhe linkbuildding tactic I laid down in i my last ppost. It’s all about spottingg opportunitty. Only laast week I ussed a very simple s methhod to get 50 00 links froom a PR 5 siite with oveer 3000 links to it. Yes a REAL R site. Best B of all, I’ve I used the same method to conttact 10 otherr sites with exxactly the saame request about the exact e same matter. m I’ve used this m method quitee a bit over thee last couplee of years. Lookingg at the SER RPS I was interested i inn, I spotted an a expired suspended s ddomain thatt was rankingg for a term I cherishedd. The site was w actually suspended,, and had beeen like thatt for the last six months. Thhere was no content on the site, so I knew imm mediately itt was the strrength of the inncoming baacklinks alonne that was keeping thiis high. I coould of courrse look to buy b the expiredd domain (buut it belongs to a comppetitor – I’m m sure if I exxpressed a vvalue in it I’’d lose out!) So I rann the expiredd suspendedd domain thhrough a baccklink checker, identifi fied the mosst powerfuul links, conntacted the site s owners in question n and explaiined to them m: 1. They were linking to a dead site (and ( had beeen that way for 6 monthhs) ould 2. I had exactlly the same (nay betterr and up-to-date) contennt on a site that they co link to if thhey wished. p outt they had broken links on Not onlly did I get a friendly email thankiing me for pointing their sitte (broken liinks are nevver a good thing), t I now w have 500 new links oon a real sitee pointingg to my sitee. Linkbuiilding for me m is all aboout opportunnity – spotting it and acctioning it too get real baacklinks from real sites. If you y can see a win-win (something ( as simple as a links in reeturn for po ointing out another site hass broken linnks on it) jump on it. If you can’t c see win-wins – yoou’re not a linkbuilder l – hire someebody lol. Part of linkbuildingg month forr beginners At Hobo! By the way, w the ressult is I now w rank and that t suspend ded domain has sunk – oops

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The best piece of advice I ever read about creating a website / optimising a website was years ago: Make sure all your pages link to at least one other in your site This advice is still sound today and the most important piece of advice out there in my opinion. Yes it’s so simple it’s stupid. Check your pages for broken links. Seriously, broken links are a waste of link power and could hurt your site, drastically in some cases. Google is a link based search engine – if your links are broken and your site is chock full of 404s you might not be at the races. Here’s the second best piece of advice in my opinion seeing as we are just about talking about website architecture; Link to your important pages often internally, with varying anchor text in the navigation and in page text content …. especially if you do not have a lot of Pagerank to begin with!

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Findiing Susp pended Websites & Link k Opporttunities With Go oogle I thoughht it was woorth a post specifically s on finding suspended accounts with Google. I really don’t want w to causee other sitess trouble, soo most of my m tips you’vve got to use your brain n a bit. Here’s an examplee: Basically, you find d suspended d accounts using Goo ogle which are a related to your site, find out whoo links to thhem, and conntact the linnking sites informing i thhem they linnk to a dead d /suspennded accounnt, and ask thhem to linkk to yours in nstead. Examplle – here’s the t first onee that poppeed into my head: h Toys & ” “suspeended accou unt” – bingo – number 1 listing l is a site s with aboout 35 linkss (see here http://w www.googlee.co.uk/searcch?q=toys+ +”account+ssuspended”)) from otherr sites using g yahoo site expplorer. Repeeat ad nauseeum till you find decentt link opporrtunities – itt’s not just “suspennded accounnts” you loook for eitherr Using thhis strategyy you’re cleaaning up thee web, gettiing backlinkks and helpiing webmassters removee deadlinks on o their sitee. OK, so yoou’re screwiing the susppended webbsite a little, but it’s suspendded for a reaason, and haas been thatt way for so ome time or Google woouldn’t havee it in its index. This woorks especiaally well forr How-To Content C and Tutorials etc and helps you build the trust annd authority of your sitee. It’s a doog eat dog world w out thhere lol

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Link Building – Should I Avoid Reciprocal Links? A lot of seo will say avoid reciprocal links because they are less benefit today. Some years ago it had seemed apparent that ranking improvements via reciprocal linking strategies had been to a large extent nullified. I remember reading in the forums something like a 90% reduction in effectiveness – statistics, eh? Theory – If someone links to my site, and I don’t link back to them, that’s said to be a good link. A one way link. When you link back to that site, that’s what a reciprocal link is. If a very trusted site links to my site, and gave me a ranking boost, am I expected to believe that linking back to them will remove my ranking boost? I don’t believe that to be the case. I don’t think it aligns what Google is trying to do (when not trying to make money) – i.e. improve their search results. When a trusted site, or a site with online business authority, links to a site it deems trustworthy, and boosts rankings to improve its SERPS in line with its algo, it’s not going to dump that site back down the rankings just because it reciprocates. Linking back to a site that links to you is actually a very common thing on the web. All these links build your own sites trust and authority in Google, which you can unlock with fresh topical content via a blog for instance – which I think is more useful these days than ranking for a major keyterm. Consider the small site that links to its industry body, and a year down the line the small site is a big player, with links from the industry body. Is that link useless? I would think Google is a lot smarter than that, at some level anyway. I think Google would at all times take into account the trust and authority of the sites in question. Perhaps in the algo it’s about who links first, but even then, I think it’s about HOW TRUSTED the MOST TRUSTED SITE IS IN THE PARTNERSHIP and whether or not Google will like the links. I would think trust in a site lifts it out of the normal filters Google applies to low quality sites, or untrusted sites. My rule of thumb is I don’t mind reciprocating links at all, especially if the other site is more authoritative or is highly relevant to my audience and I never use low quality reciprocal linking between untrusted sites as an actual ranking improvement strategy. I never answer reciprocal linking request emails, or send them out. I never link to a site JUST BECAUSE THEY LINK TO ME, because the chances are, they are linking to any site out there regardless or not if it is in, or has the potential to be one day, a bad neighbourhood, and Google reserves the right to penalise you badly if you link to one of these.

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So: • • • • •

avoid low quality reciprocal links where possible, and avoid get-links-quick schemes try and get other sites to link to you first, Google has a LONG memory don’t worry about reciprocating links with real trusted sites don’t use reciprocal links as a ranking improvement strategy – get those kind of links elsewhere don’t just link to just anyone, especially just because they link to you

Of course, you could robots.txt out of nofollow links you give to other sites but generally speaking it’s bad karma – better to play nice, where possible.

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Linkb buildingg Tip – Syyndicatee The $h h!# Out Of Your Contentt Via RSS! You will see a lot of o people beemoaning other o peoplee nicking theeir content aand using itt to power crappy c spam m sites plasttered with Adsense. A Wh hile this is a real conceern, generallly speakinng I don’t mind m people republishinng my conteent (on this site s anywayy – hey it’s creative c commoons seo anyw way) as longg as they linnk back to th he original article. Syndicaating via RS SS is a greatt way of addding links to o your link profile, andd driving traaffic to your sitte. ALWA AYS link to other o articlees on your blog b in an arrticle you write, even if it’s just sp pam blogs thhat are scrapping your coontent. If you are a using Wordpress, W use a plugin like Joost De D Valk’s RSS R Footer pplugin, which places a link back to t your articcle in the foooter of you ur RSS feed so when peeople nick your y feed theey are linkbbuilding to your y site, whhich is nice. The posssibilities with w RSS synndication (if you are a content provider) is friightening, in n terms of linkbbuilding andd instant proomotion whhen syndicatted to places picked upp by Google news. I’ve donne quite a bit b of this ovver the last year y especiaally. • • • •

ENSURE you’re y feed is pinging Google G Blog g search, piingomatic annd preferab bly feedburner etc and ensure the feed haas links backk to the orig ginal article,, because ulltimately yo ou want Google to recognise r yoour content on your site as the origginal sourcee Always linkk to other pages on youur site in an ny article – you y should bbe doing th his anyway! fi site Gooogle picks the t If I am despperate to maake sure myy site is defiinitely the first content up on, I’ll hit publish, p go to Feedburn ner, sync myy feed in Trroublehootize and pull it in myy Feedreadeer just to bee sure Goog gle knows exxactly wherre it found itt first.

Some tiime ago I diid a quick teest with an article on an nother site. Before I hit publish, th here was no exact matchh in Googlee or Yahoo for f the exacct title of thee article. Noow, there arre still 127,0000 mentions of the articlle in Yahoo. A month ago a there were over 300,000 menttions of the articcle.

All I didd was publiish a blog arrticle. Syndicaating your content c is goood news iff you know what w you’ree doing so practice a biit – results vary v of courrse PS – Neever, ever, ever e link baack to the sittes syndicatting your feeeds, in casee Google deecides it actuallyy is just a sccraper site. Page 29  Copyrighht © 2009 Thee Hobo SEO Company C VAT T No. 880 513 35 26 • No. SC C299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote q / cost estimate. e Hoboo is based in Greenock G (neaar Glasgow) inn Scotland in tthe UK.

 

One other thing to note – while these sites can send you traffic and link back to you, their whole aim is to get people to their site and usually you’ll find them plastered with distractions to keep them from clicking through to your site. In the end, it depends on your intent and how compelling your call to visit the original site is. You do control that! The next article is a bit of a theory…… Is It Diversity Of Keywords In Link Profile That’s King? No this isn’t an article about backlinks beating content because we know the right backlinks keep nearly blank pages high in Google – for months at a time. It’s just a theory so feel free to discuss with me in the comments. Bit of a ramble. I’m thinking about this and looking for exceptions, or evidence against, and to start an honest discussion. I’m fed up pumping info out; I’d prefer to start a discussion on this one. It’s about ranking in Google or not ranking. Based on observations. Links affect rankings, more, they even PERMIT rankings. If you haven’t got the keywords in links you won’t feature and you certainly won’t rank. Content is king, especially for humans, but that content can’t rank without links. I often wonder if Google needs the keyword you want to rank for in the site’s link profile. If it’s not in this link profile for your site, you won’t rank. You get the keywords in your link profile by • •

getting links from other websites (primary) internal navigation links (secondary)

I’m wondering if Google treats a page title as a tertiary link if the first two signals aren’t clear enough and especially if the content is well cited (but with poor anchor text)?) The relationship between content and links is incestuous and can’t be separated. I think seo zones. To rank it needs to be in your link profile and in your content, more specifically in: 1. Links 2. Title 3. Content In that order. Google is making it harder to rank without having the keyword in these zones. Even though the title is 2nd in my list, you can quickly see how pivotal your page title is. I mean can you even rank what’s more important out of the 3? Adding a made up keyword to a page invites the supplementals to kick in with different rules – letting content rank without links (I think). Page 30  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.

 

In norm mal serps yoou can have the word onn the page but b because it is not in the link pro ofile it won’t rank. Thouggh in a page title, it mayy rank, throw w in an inteernal link orr backlink, it i will rank. I’m talking keywords k heere not phraases. Perhap ps authorityy sites rank k because of o their link k profile, noot the contennt (although h, of course, they woulddn’t have thaat link profi file without that t contentt!) – But I aam talking about a the actuual wheels thhat are playy here. I don’t think t I needd LOTS moore content on o one pagee, I think I need n LOTS more titles and words in my link profile p – thee content jusst backs thiss up (a strannge thought if you think k about it). So in effect for new pages you can geet away with h less contennt (more maay increase long tail searrches). So it’s not n content I am addingg, I am add ding important keywoords (and d diversity of these) to my link profile. More links less conteent – and I’m m still not liinkbuilding yet. You caan do a lot of thhis via internnal links onn a strong doomain. So for ranking, r th he most imp portant is: 1. Diversity of o keywords in your enttire link pro ofile 2. Diversity oof keywords in your pagge title 3. Content (ennough to maake a page relevant r to the keywordds it can rannk for) If you thhink this waay you can get pages thhat don’t ran nk to rank, quite easilyy. and you don’t d need to buy 100 crrappy links from f domaiiners (althou ugh that cann work too llol). But yess you can geet to the endd of this artiicle and say so links beeat content, and yes, theey can, but youu’ve missed the point off what I am m on about or o my writinng has confuused – sorry y. Mmmm m…. I don’t think I neeeded this muuch content!! Note peerhaps I am not thinkinng about thiss the right way. w If someeone can heelp, let me know and yess of course I know theree are other things t at plaay too. PSST – Did you seee our new SEO S Refereence Guide For Beginnners? I certaainly didn’t need that muuch content, but hey I went w for it Link Too Importantt Pages In Your Y Site – Often O I’ve meentioned this before. Onnsite, one of the most important i thhings you caan do, is lin nk to important pages often. o I usedd a ‘links-arre-lasers‘analogy last year y which I still use today. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Links Are Lasers L Linking Too A Page Heeats Up A Page P Pages Get Hot H Or Coldd Dependinng On Numb ber & Qualiity Of The Links To It Cold Pagess Don’t Rannk For Sh*t Hot Pages Rank! R Page 31 

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In the diagram above, this is how I optimise sites. I focus on the main pages in the structure, the pages we need to rank at any one time (especially on a new site). I make sure I link to these pages more than any other – and it appears, by doing so, Google does see these as important pages on my site. You can achieve this with secondary navigation arrays and links in content, but I would err on the safe side, and vary your anchor text as much as possible. And don’t just link for linking sake. Remember, links from other websites also heat up pages. Make sure you link to other relevant pages from these hot pages, to spread the heat throughout the site. I’d go one step further and say link to your important pages from your home page. 1. Optimize A Website Structure 2. SEO Heat Analogy

What Is Nofollow? Should I Use It On Internal Links? Adding rel=”nofollow” to a link effectively stops a link being a link, as far as Google is concerned. This means the link does not count as a vote, does not pass page rank, nor topical Page 32  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.

 

relevance(!). For innstance, moost blog com mments are nofollow linnks, unlike this blog;

Hobo >

There are a a lot of people p who argue everyy single thin ng about nofollow and PR. That no ofollow links paass PR, that you cannott sculpt page rank becaause you cannnot see it. I think nofo ollow is as Googgle says effe fectively a non-link n – annd I think you y can scullpt PR, just not ‘accuraately’ lol. You cann certainly control c PR on a granular level (paage by page in this casee) – i.e. whicch page gets avaailable Google PR. Some thhink, if thatt’s the case, you can scuulpt Pageran nk, and chaannel page rrank to impo ortant pages inn a site. Forr instance – adding nofo follow to yo our contact page, p or discclaimer, or privacy policy. I’m attemptting to get to t the end of this seriess before I mention m Pageerank, as it really r is not som mething youu should be that t concernned about. You Y get pagge rank by bbuilding link ks to your sitte – PR is a by product. Just get linnks. I think it i was Matt Cutts from m Google whho said (paraaphrasing); 1. Yes, it’s okk to do this 2. Yes, it can have a ’second order effect’ (cryp ptic as usuall) I tested it, and as faar as I am concerned, on a 300 pag ge site at leaast, any visiible benefit is microsccopic. Unlike some of thee White Hatt Shock Trooops, I have no problem m using it, bbut I would prefer p to keep it to a miniimum, and, old school, sculpt PR by b having an a intelligennt navigation n system. As I saiid, I have noo problem using u it. It’s up to you. And Matt Cutts was teelling the tru uth – it’s veryy much a seecond order effect, if noot less. I am using it on thee Hobo site at the mom ment, althoug gh most of it will be gooing shortly y. I will be keepping the noffollow link on o my homee page, to en nsure the linnk back to m my home paage is a keyworrd. Just old habit h really. (ED that’ss long gone too becausee it doesn’t work like th hat) Nofolloow can be a ‘complicated’ construcct, dependin ng on who you are listeening to. I go into it more inn the article;; •

http://www w.hobo-web..co.uk/seo-bblog/index.p php/sculpt-ppagerank-noofollow/

If you have h never heard h of Rel=”nofollow w” before, probably p best to forget about it – but I thoughtt it best to toouch on it

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Buying Old Domains & Redirect Them To Get High Rankings Say you see an old site that is ranking in Google for a lot of terms and there is an opportunity to buy that domain and redirect it to your site – will you keep those Google rankings? I’ve not actually bought someone else’s domain for a long term myself, but I’ve redirected plenty. The way I see it, Google ranks pages because of the trust of a particular domain it’s on, the links that point to it and the content it has on it. If you keep most of these intact, buying old domains and redirecting them to similar content shouldn’t be a problem. Even when redirecting pages, I usually ensure page titles and content are very similar on both pages if I want to keep particular rankings. Be careful though – Google is under no obligation to redirect domains and transfer rankings, and has said as much, as plenty of folk have been involved in bait and switch strategies. AND I would keep such things under the radar as possible, and I’d also worry about changing the actual registrant’s name on the domain in case it’s reset. Google has offered via webmaster tools a method to validate both sites (not needed in my experience but perhaps worth it if you are shelling out a lot of cash) and redirect via 301 redirects.

Related Articles How To Change Domain Names & Keep Your Rankings in Google We’ve all been there. Sometimes when you rebrand, you want to transfer your old domain to a shiny new web address. Many don’t realise though that you should actually ensure you transfer the age, authority and trust your site has in Google to this new web address. Traditionally when I move one domain to another, I usually just stick a few 301 instructions in an htaccess and start getting links to the new domain. I’ve always found it pretty painless although I can appreciate it’s easy to screw up if you don’t know what you’re doing. Now you can actually tell Google about your domain name change in Google Webmaster Tools. If you’ve moved your site to a new domain, you can use the address tool to tell Google about your new URL. We’ll update our index to reflect your new URL. Changes will stay in effect for 180 days, by which time we’ll have crawled and indexed the pages at your new URL. The change of address tool is safe, because only verified site owners can use it. You can check the tool at any time to see the information provided to Google about your domains. Page 34  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.

 

This new tool from Google will be handy for some, though, you’ll still need to know your way about some technical aspects to use it. See moving your website to another domain.

301 Ways Of Getting A No1 In Google > Moved Permanently! It amazes me more people don’t use the search engine friendly 301 Redirect (Moved Permanently) to capture top positions, especially when they control satellite sites for particular keywords, that rank well, or even are in the top ten serps. I see satellite sites all the time ranking for good keywords, but the actual satellite sites themselves are often garbage and usually outdated – sometimes not exactly a compliment to the main brand site.

Recently I decided to 301 an unbranded satellite site (or mini site) into the main site of the company as I am fast falling out of love with the mini-site strategy. Creating 10 (interlinked) sites in a crowd out strategy for one serp is embarrassing to me nowadays but it is a technique I used years ago. I just prefer having the one main site to seo now and working to increase that sites authority and trust – managing 10 sites usually means a lot of them won’t get the time spent on them to actually convert the traffic to leads and sales. Absorbing the satellite site would at least ensure these old pages previously on the satellite site where more likely to be kept up to date on the corporate site, and at the same time, the actual corporate website, well branded, now ranked for the competitive term.

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You can see from the illustration above and below when I achieved the no1 position with the satellite site, the actual corporate site was actually taken in a slightly different direction.

I wanted to make the main company site (in Green) be the number one result, and basically I wanted the mini-site to vanish, but transfer all itsGoogle juice / Google ‘heat’ and good rankings (as well as 600 visitors a day) to the corporate site. The diagram shows it seems to have worked exactly as expected.

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I completed this utilising the oft forgotten about (but perfectly white-hat) search engine friendly 301 Permanent Redirect in the .htaccess file on the old site (in red) to the corporate site (in Green). redirect 301 /old.htm http://www.example.com/new.htm

I ensured the new page on the corporate site was basically very similar in theme to page that Google currently ranked at No1 in the SERPS, so Googlebot wouldn’t think I was up to anything other than transfer rankings I had earned largely through organic links and ninja linkbaiting & linkbuilding on the old site. The end result is very satisfying as: 1. The main site now ranks no1 in Google 2. The main site now has absorbed the authority and trust of the old page which should help its overall domain trust score in the search engines. 3. The page is now branded with the corporate id = better brand visibility 4. Inexperienced linkbuilders will be scratching their head for ages to come wondering what has happened and how the main site actually ranks at No1 in their attempt to reverse-engineer that particular serp. It took about 2 days to actually see the old site disappear in Google and for the redirect to take effect. A ‘new’ no1 position and 600 more visitors to the main site each day.

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Links From Unrelated Sites You do not always need to get links from related sites (in your niche, subject area) to rank better in Google. I’ve engineered better rankings for sites getting links from unrelated sites so I would say getting links from unrelated sites is not a bad thing in itself. It really depends on the sites in question, what you’re linking to, and the intent. It’s a bit of a band-aid though. I’ve only used that method for clients who seem incapable or unwilling to add content to their site and to be honest I am moving away from those kinds of clients all the time. For maximum impact, it’s far more important to try and aim for links from related pages at least – i.e. a page with a good page title etc with your desired keywords in it. A link on a page on an unrelated website with a measure of domain trust / authority discussing your subject area is worth its weight in Gold. I’ve actually increased rankings from unrelated pages too, though. I am not saying don’t get links from related sites – the audience and traffic possibilities alone make links from related sites worth it. I’m just saying links from unrelated sites work just as well sometimes. The same goes for linking to unrelated sites. And I’m not advising getting links from unrelated sites or to use this strategy as the only linkbuilding strategy you employ, in case I upset the white hat shock troops. I just think a link from any real site is a decent link. It’s easy for seo to advise “get links from related sites….” – it’s safe, it’s what Google wants to see, it seems to compliment some of Google’s ranking algorithms – that’s why they do it. Just don’t discount links from unrelated sites as useless – they are clearly not.

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Related Articles Google Trusts Domain Online Business Authority So Google calls it online business authority? Basically, you have a ‘popular’ site a lot of other sites link to. Perhaps a site which has a lot of links from other online business authorities too. An OBA usually has a decent amount of traffic too. This is what Google calls it anyways. Amazon has a lot of online business authority…. (Official Google Webmaster Blog) SEO more usually talk about domain trust and domain authority based on the number, type and quality of incoming links to a site. Examples of trusted, authority domains include Wikipedia, the W3C and Apple. How do you become an OBA? Through a killer brand or service, usually a lot of useful content on your site and through telling a lot of people about the excellent content on your site. How do you take advantage of being an online business authority? Either you turn the site into a SEO Black Hole (only for the very biggest brands) or you pump out information – like all the time. On any subject. Can you (on a smaller scale in certain niches) mimic an online business authority by recognising what OBA does for Google, and why Google ranks these high in search result? These provide THE service, THE content, THE experience. This takes a lot of work and a lot of time to create, or even mimic. In fact, as a SEO, I honestly think the content route is the only sustainable way for a most businesses to try to achieve OBA at least in their niche or locale. I concede a little ninja linkbuilding goes a long way to help, and you have certainly got to get out there and tell others about your site… Have other relevant sites link to yours. Google Webmaster Guidelines

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Are Directory Links Still Worth It? The problem with trying to answer such a generic question is that not all directory sites are treated equally. Some are good sites, and some are spam. Inbetween the vast majority of directories are just so wide in depth and so narrow in keyword diversity and so strung out in terms of pagerank (or ranking ability) and full of pages Google doesn’t want to list in search results to make them very low quality links to your site. From my experience (and I’ve tested recently) I’ve never seen a site penalised by MANUAL directory submissions to any directory site nor by building these links over time. On the other hand, I’ve never seen a site really benefit from having a lot of directory links in the last couple of years. Perhaps there’s a massive grey area between these two that means spammy tactics actually would give you a better result, but I don’t know, I’ve not pushed in this direction for years. The time spent manually submitting to directories is often better spent elsewhere like adding a page to your blog and hoping you get somebody to link to it. Niche Local business directories are another matter though. If there’s a local business directory for your area, you should be in it especially if it’s unpaid. If you have an exact match domain, that might be another reason for you to consider directory link building strategies. One thing’s for sure, most directories send you little or no traffic and on their own in little numbers have little impact in SERPS. The only directory I use (every now and again) at the moment is Yahoo, and generally, that’s for brand new sites or sites with low quality or no incoming links. Results can vary dependent on of course the levels of competition in your niche. •

•

I don’t pay any directory, other than Yahoo, to be listed (and for brand new sites and even then, I question the actual cost/roi more and more) – Hobo does not have a link in it as I knew I was going to actively add content / linkuild to pick up links and I wouldn’t expect any ranking improvement by getting it listed now (20,000 links later) Dmoz is worth considering in a long term strategy – submit to Dmoz and forget it – but one other tip if you want to become an editor if you are a SEO – LIE THORUGH YOUR TEETH ON THE SUBMISION FORM AT EVERY STEP if you want listed!

In summary – I wouldn’t bother with directory links at all if you’re actively linkbuilding. Better to get those links elsewhere. Directory link building can be good for muddying your link profile in a long term strategy. Update – Eric Ward knows a thing or two about link building and I found this recent article of his a good read and it’s largely about building links via directory submissions – What If Everything You Knew About Linkbuilding Was Wrong (I think about this a couple of times a day lol) Page 40  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.

 

Do Article Submissions & Press Releases Still Work? The answer is yes, supremely well in terms of promoting your site rather than improving your website ranking in Google. The question is, where you syndicate your articles to, and in turn, which news and press outlets pick those articles up for maximum exposure, and also if those articles on the submission site have a chance of ranking themselves. I avoid article submission sites these days, although they can still be useful. The problem is the competition is so intense in these places, why bother if you can cut them out altogether? The first place for your articles is your own blog, next, it’s getting those article noticed via social media sites and your articles syndicated to other sites. I’ve done that a lot in the past on this blog, but shortly, I’m going to spend a bit of time away from the blog, and add articles to other sites and do a few guest posts I have lined up to get more traffic ultimately, to this blog. I don’t do mass article spinning, each article is unique. I want the actual article to rank and the links to my client website to count for something, every time, so I minimise duplicate content issues by rewriting everything. I prefer to do HOW TO articles, or Press releases that point out USEFUL CONTENT on a particular site. I also limit the number of articles on one PR release site before I move on to another to maximise ranking ability for individual articles. One thing to note about article syndication is your capturing traffic for another site, which does its best to nick the attention of your hard earned visitor to its own content. So 500 people might read your article and only 10 people might actually click through to your website. If you’re seeking attention and mindshare, that might be useful for people to be reading your content, but the point of the article and the call to action need to be thought out extremely carefully. In summary, I’d rather create articles than say chase directory linkbuilding strategies.

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Related Articles How To Get Started In Social Media | Shana Albert 4 Steps to a Successful Start in Social Media The difference between the web of a few years ago and the web today is Social Media. Social Media is basically communication online. That doesn’t sound too complicated, huh? But for many beginners it can be. There are many different forms of Social Media… many different ways of communicating online. Getting involved in Social Media can be intimidating. So much so that you might not know where to even begin. There is Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, Mixx, Digg. There are blogs, forums, wikis, photo sharing, vlogging (video blogging), and others. They are all different, so which do you devote your time to? In this post I’m going to get back to the very beginning….I’m going to explain the very basics of how to get started with Social Media. 1) Figure out what you want to get out of Social Media Ask yourself the question, “What do I want to get out of Social Media?” The answer to this question should direct you to the type of Social Media activities you should participate in…. What activities you will benefit the most from. If you are looking to network online with people who share your passion for swimming then joining Digg is probably not the most productive way to go about that. Below I made a quick chart of common Social Media activities and what needs they meet. Please keep in mind that this chart just gives you a small piece of a much bigger picture. There are many more social media activities and tons more Social Networking sites; SOCIAL MEDIA Blogging

PERSONAL USE • • •

Create a Journal or a Diary Write as a hobby about anything Allows you to have conversations with others regarding your Blogging Topic

BUSINESS USE •

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• •

Add a blog to an established website to add updated content often create a Blog as a Business in itself (i.e. eCommerce, Google Adsense, Affiliate Programs) Allows you to communicate with your customers/clients. Establish yourself as an expert in your field.

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Forums

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Ask Questions & get Answers Meet others with the same interest.

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MicroBlogging

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Fun Chit Chat Keep in Contact with Friends & Family

• • • •

Video Sharing

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Photo Sharing

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Keep Family & Friends in the “know” as to what is going on in your life. Find humorous videos Find “how to” videos.

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Another wonderful way to share memories with family and friends…. anytime online.

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•

•

Social Networking

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• • • •

•

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Friends – MySpace, Facebook, Friends Abroad Relationships – Crazy Blind Date, Animals – DoggySpace, Animal Internet, Petster Virtual Communities – Playdo, Habbo , Whyville Family / Parenting – Got Kids Network, BabyChums, Parenting Hobbies – Sports, Music, Reading, Car Enthusiasts Social News – Digg, Mixx, Reddit

• • • • •

Answering questions can help establish you as a known expert in your field. Answers to your unknown business related questions Branding Create a Buzz Occasional Links to Posts and Product Pages Business/Industry Networking Branding Great way to let other people know about your business & what you have to offer. Show off your products or services. Help with Universal Search Put images of your products and services online. Another way for viewers/clients/customers to find you Helps with Universal Search Jobs, Professional – LinkedIn, The Square, Yahoo Kickstart Industry – Radiologist, Fashion , Art, Marketing Tips, Answers, Suggestions – SpongeFish, Yahoo! Answers Traffic – Digg, Mixx, Reddit Fancy Dress – Costumes

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Again, the above chart is simply a tiny piece of social media activities and what you can do there. There is so much more, as a matter of fact, many of the above Social Media activities and Social Networking sites can be used for either business or personal. It is all in how you use it….. in who you network with. 2) Create your Profiles Once you have determined what Social Sites you want to be a member of it is time to create your Profile. This task should not be taken lightly. It is extremely important to get the profile perfect because this is the first impression other members of the community will get of you. And, we all know the saying, “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression”. I know very cliché, but also very true. Your profile is how community members will begin to get to know you. What you have in your profile will tell other community members a bit about you…. will help members determine if that want to check you out further. What is it you want other members of the community to know about you? •

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Avatar – Do NOT use the default avatar. These get ignored. Not only do the default avatars get ignored, but community members feel these members aren’t very serious about the community. Profile Name – This is the name you want the community to know you by. Make this name memorable. If you are networking for business purposes think of using your Company Name…. great for branding purposes. Profile Details – Take a few extra minutes to come up with a great description of yourself and/or your business. It shouldn’t be too long… just long enough to tell the important things about you and/or your business. If it is too long members might not take too much time to read the entire thing. So, keep it short, but detailed. Website Links – If you have websites that you would like to let others know about and you are able to add links to your profiles….then do it. Active members of Social Networking Communities will most likely be checking your profile out. If you have links in your profile you have a pretty good chance of members clicking on them to check out your sites.

3) Learn the Community Learn the Ins & Outs of being an active and genuine member of that particular community. I know…. boring & unnecessary, right?! Wrong!! •

One of the things that can get you started on the wrong foot with any community is doing something that is against the Terms of Service (TOS). For example, my favourite Social Site is StumbleUpon. But, you can get kicked off of StumbleUpon for many things. One of which is constantly stumbling your own website or stumble Page 44 

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exchanges. So, that would be a huge mistake that many would make if they joined StumbleUpon and started participating without reading StumbleUpon’s TOS. Also, check to see if the community has a FAQ page for Newbies. This would be a lot easier to understand than reading the Official TOS page. Plus, the Newbie page probably lists plenty of tips and community suggestions that can make your transition from Newbie to Community Pro much easier. Another idea is to keep an eye on the popular, most active members. What are they doing, what are they voting on, what are they submitting & what are they commenting on? Keeping an eye on these facts can help you determine what might work and what might not work. I know these things might be time consuming, but in the long run it can make the difference of “making it” or getting lost within the community….. instead of blending in do what you can to stand out. Taking the time to study and learn from the community can give you the information you need to learn what it will take to stand out from the rest.

4) Become an Active Part of that Community. Enjoy it. This is the fun part. This is where you put all that you learned above into good use. Social Media can be a lot of fun and very rewarding & powerful in so many ways. But, the thing is you will need to use this power for good and not evil. I have created the following image to show you what I envision this aura around your Online Community Profile to be:

Bottom line to be a success in an Online Social Community, just like in any Community, be real, be genuine and “do unto others as you would want done unto you” and you will be success. Treat others with respect and you can’t screw up too badly.

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To partiicipate in Social Mediaa can be woork and takee up a lot of your time. But, as with h any commuunity as longg as you aree participatinng in a com mmunity in an a honest annd genuine way w you willl get back as a much as you y give annd probably come awayy with so muuch more.

A Bit About A Shanaa Albert by Hobo Shana is a Social Media M Speciialist and onne of my fav vourite blogggers – you can learn a lot from Shhana, believve me. It waas a real pleaasure to hav ve her guestt post on thee Hobo Blog to help vissitors learn how h to use these netwoorks properlly. She wriites on all thhings Sociall Media andd Web 2.0 on o her blog – Social Deesire. Subscribe to hear moore of her raamblings orr check out her h Stumbleeupon favorrites. Get more of Shanaa at http://ww ww.socialdesire.com/

PS – Annd why not vote for her at the Hotttest Bloggeers Calendarr so she cann get a nice prize Shana now n has thee keys to thee Hobo blogg, so hopefu ully we’ll geet more greaat posts from m her in the futuure Shaun

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Links That Effect Ranking Change In Google SERPS Any link that sends you traffic could be seen as a good link, but what are quality links, what are good links and what are crap links, when it comes to improving the actual ranking of your own pages in Google SERPS? First, you need to be aware that the quality of a link (that effects a ranking improvement for your own site in Google) is dependent on the page and site it is on. Is the site trusted, is the page trusted, is the page in Google’s index at all, how many links point to the actual page your link is on, are people actually going to click this link (that in itself is a good measure of the quality of a link!)? Most importantly, it’s all about the page the link is on. Just because you get a link on a high PR domain does not automatically make that a good link. It’s the page you need to be interested in. You should have a mixture of focused anchor text links, unfocused anchor text links and URL citations (www.hobo-web.co.uk etc) in your link profile to ensure long standing rankings (i.e. a natural link profile). What follows is my general rule of thumb: 1. Your internal links! Get your site in order before you get links. Google loves a good site structure with plenty of text links pointing to each page on your site. I prefer minimal sitewide navigation and a lot of in content links if you have a lot of useful content, and I consider all the time if Google is only counting the first link on a page. Don’t forget to link to your important pages often – ENSURE your get them into Google’s index in the first place. 2. Links on mainstream news sites and other types of authority sites – the Holy Grail in my opinion – promotion, old style. Purely because they are trusted and have a lot of links to them. 3. Related industry site (the aim of seo, and excellent quality, but depends on the site, niche and the type of link – can be very useful) – usually, they too have a lot of links. 4. Link on a high PR old style aged trusted page – like a university resource page – excellent if you can get the webmaster to link to you 5. Links from unrelated sites (depends on the site and the type of link – can be very useful for improving your Google ranking & PR) 6. Link on a blog post (good, dependant on the site, but easily deteriorates over time as a post is gobbled up in sometimes very crap site architecture – a link (in the actual post, not the comments) on the Hobo blog however is a decent link, I’ve tested it, and can be as valuable as 2-3 TPR points. 7. Dofollow Blog Comments (low quality in terms of PR and trust transference, decent anchor text transference if you can get it) 8. Social media site links (opinion, I think these are pretty low quality, but they do get your page out there and of course, it depends on whether it’s a popular piece or not – at any rate, it’s a very temporal effect and it looks like what you end up with is nothing less than a directory style and weighted link from the actual social media site) Page 47  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.

 

9. Site wide links & blogrolls (generally low quality in terms of anchor text transference – used to be good for PR transference but not nearly as effective as it used to be) 10. Article submission sites – dependant on the quality and syndication exposure of the site in question can be useful but usually low quality. Syndicating to these sites can have some cool effects, for now. 11. Directory Links (low quality, perhaps useful when you have a weight of links – depends on the quality of the directory) 12. Forum Signatures (generally low quality, dependant on page and forum, perhaps dependant on number of links too) 13. Link on a useful links page (very low quality) 14. Reciprocal link on a links page (very very low quality) 15. Nofollowed links (like those on most blog comments – useless (though can be used to generate traffic if you link to a popular blog post or comment on one) The above is a general rule of thumb I think and of course based on my experience – some people will obviously agree or disagree based on their experiences. As with a lot of seo, identifying good links is a very time consuming task – Google is always moving the goalposts. Remember too though links need to be complimented by well structured title tags, good content, and a good site architecture. For me, another rule of thumb is the easier a link is to get, the LESS quality it is and you won’t get a better links than from a REAL site.

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The Ultimatee/Best/Coomplete//Directorry/List Of Dofolllow Blog gs Yes – we w are a doffollow blog (though youu need to co omment fasst before wee close the posts heh hehh). I’m nott 100% surre, but I don’t think blog b commeents pass th hat much, if any Pagerrank. They may m pass ancchor text (I think t they do), d but I wo ould have thhought som me smart guy y at Google has workedd a way to identify i andd reduce the weight of these t links. But, eveen if dofolloow links paass some sem mblance of ranking abiility, becausse of dofollo ow list spammeers, most bllogs dump dofollow d aft fter a while, and you’re hard earnedd dofollow blog commennts get nofoollowed. Thhe very natuure of blogs too means pages p themselves usuaally get sucked deep into a poor archittecture, andd the links seeem to reduuce in value,, and that’s only on posts! If dofolllow blogs are a your onlly way of geetting links,, you might have a lot tto learn – haave a read of our free linnk building guide. g A few w links from m a real sitee is much m more value, even e on this sitee, than a linkk in the com mments. Blog coommenting is great wayy to introduuce your sitee to others inn your nice – don’t waaste the opportuunity to imppress aimingg for such a low quality y temporall link such is a dofollo ow link…. EDIT – For beginnners – Whatt is a dofolloow link? It’s a poor maade up term that means the opposite of nofolloow – i.e., it is i a search engine e frien ndly link. It’s just a verry low qualiity type of link. PS – We W use the frree to downlload Hobo Custom C Lin nk Love to control c spam m and nuke human pondscuum dofollow w link buildders, and som metimes wee out idiot ninja n link buuilding commennters. PPS – I intend to teest everythiing I have cllaimed heree, too. Additioon – Phil froom Search Engine E Optiimisation (D Dot) Org lefft the follow wing commeent I thoughtt was worthhy of a link: I also hate the hum man people who w feel thee need to filll the “namee” box with multiple keyworrds. On my blogs, b if it’ss not what is on your birth certificate or soomething veery close, th hen it’s gettting removved. Severall times I’vee had to cheeck my own n sites to make m sure itt didn’t acttually say “spam “ your keeywords heere”, and evvery time it’’s not been that. I pity the t fools whhose “seo” tactics t revolvee around theese tactics. (See whhat you get from actuallly commennting on otheer blogs andd taking parrt in real converssation insteaad of chasinng dofollow w links ONL LY…. somettimes you gget real linkss with decent anchor a text anyway) Page 49  Copyrighht © 2009 Thee Hobo SEO Company C VAT T No. 880 513 35 26 • No. SC C299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote q / cost estimate. e Hoboo is based in Greenock G (neaar Glasgow) inn Scotland in tthe UK.

 

What Do You Want To Rank No1 In Google For Anyways? Some companies want to rank for different things and certain links and strategies achieve different results. That’s the end of link building for beginners month on the Hobo site – hope you found it useful. I’d thought I’d close mentioning you really should have a specific goal every time you start linkbuilding. What do you want to rank no1 in Google for anyways? •

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Your company name or brand? Not only do you want to rank for it, you want to control every mention of your company name in Google, easily done by social media participation and using the authority of other sites to rank for your brand. Very easy to achieve with just on page optimisation and a few incoming low-quality links (sometimes, not even). Your service, in your area? – again, fairly easy. Done with on-page optimisation (geographic mentions in the title and in the text for instance), and generally speaking some low-quality links Your service in your country? - slightly more difficult than above, but can be handled with plenty of low quality links from even low quality, unrelated sites in some cases Your service? – difficult depending on the niche – you’re going to need some decent links or at least the same amount of crap links your competitors have. Crap anchor text links outweigh unfocused poor anchor text links from even relatively authority sites. Your products? – generally speaking, very difficult, especially if your products can be bought in a 1000 other places. You’re going to need links that pass pagerank, anchor text and trust i.e. ranking ability. You’re going to need a few trusted sites to link to you to rank all those products. The more pages on your site, the more pagerank you will need. To get pr, you need incoming links.

A weight of crap links built over time can beat even a relatively trusted site in Google in 2009 – still. However, it’s these links Google have a lot of brainy people working on attempting to nullify, so why swim against the tide? ESPECIALLY considering just a few links from one site can transfer instant ranking ability and trust to a new site, or one link from one PR5 page can transfer enough pagerank to heat up an entire 200 page website with no other links. Finding those sites can be a full time occupation though. Deciding what you want to rank for and how you want to do it are at the core of link building strategy.

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1 Blog Comment, 2 Hours Work & One Amazing Link I don’t do that much blog commenting these days, and I certainly don’t do dofollow list commenting anymore. I spent nearly 2 hours making one comment on a VERY TRUSTED (PR 8) site for a client a couple of months ago because I knew the link I would get would be GOLD – and it was. I’d already determined the site was passing anchor text value, but there seemed to be heavy moderation going on so the comment itself would need to be stellar for them to leave my links intact and not look like some blog commenting scumbag. The comment I left was actually as much as a full blog post as a comment. I researched the topic, tested out the actual blog platform (the blog platform was unfamiliar to me and I needed to see how it handled HTML formatted links) and in the end pulled together some really valuable advice and dropped a link to my client site with spot on anchor text. It took two hours to make that comment, but now one of the most trusted sites in the world links to my client with the exact anchor text we need to get to the top of Google and I didn’t piss anybody off (even Google!). Spot the difference between that type of comment and the no-mark dofollow link-droppers that leave “great site!” in your blog comments. Yes, they might do 100 comments in the time I did one comment, but mine is 100 times better. If you have a good opportunity to get a link – take all the time in the world – all night if necessary – in fact, come back next week. Don’t screw up a perfectly good chance to drop a top quality link just because you can’t be arsed to create a useful comment.

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Hide Your Links & Muddy That Link Profile! I am working with a new client who wants to know why, after being no1 for years, their site is now no.2, 3 or 4 for some of their most valuable terms. Looking at the competitor’s backlinks using Yahoo site explorer for 30 seconds I quickly identify the problem. Your competitors are actually picking up some very decent amazing ninja links from trusted sites with excellent anchor text Very quickly in my head I had a strategy to assimilate these links and add them to my client’s link profile while all the time sourcing my own decent links – links that can’t be so easily cloned. Then I thought: Why haven’t these guys bothered to try and hide their link profile – even a little? It’s as if they’ve sat back and patted themselves on the back for getting, to be fair, excellent link drops. The only problem is that these links are right at the top of Yahoo site explorer! I am going to go in and pick off these links with no work at all using nothing more that site explorer (which conveniently sort of lists pages by the number of links pointing to them i.e. perhaps stronger pages). It’s virtually impossible to not leave a footprint when linkbuilding but what you don’t want to do is have your good links sticking out like sore thumbs especially if they are ninja link drops that any sod can recreate. While you won’t stop a dedicated link hound with a passion to take you out of the top spot at Google, you will make it harder for the inexperienced linkbuilder to pick of your good links by muddying your link profile. The easiest way I know how to do this is by commenting on popular blog posts. Either comment, or via trackbacks if you want to be lazy and do it en-mass. Comment on 50 popular blog posts – nofollow links will do – (you’ll know how strong they will be by the number of comments on the post) and hey presto. You just made it that bit harder for the average joe to find your links in 10 seconds using Yahoo site explorer. If people are farming your links and using old hat competitor research tools, you at least want to make it as difficult and time consuming as possible to identify those links, no matter what tool they use.

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Get Links From REAL Sites (IE Sites That Aren’t Just THERE To Link To Other Sites) Sometimes it’s hard to explain to people what a quality link is but in simple terms this is how I describe a site you want a link from: • • •

It doesn’t have to be relevant to your industry It doesn’t have to be an authority in its niche It doesn’t have to be the same links as your competitors

It can be totally unrelated to your site, too. What it has to be is a site that wasn’t built SOLEY to provide links to other sites because generally speaking, it takes a lot of authority for Google to like such sites (social media sites, directories etc). That’s the sort of links I go for anyway and the more authoritative the site, the better. • •

You don’t want it on a useful links page You don’t want it on a page with other sites as to make it look like a paid link whether it is or not

You do want it on a page that’s in Google’s index, ranks for its title somewhere and does not have a Google grey bar toolbar value (although this can change). If you want to increase Pagerank, you better make sure the pages that link to you have PR, can transfer it and are making your link the focus of the article. Do the stuff above (and a lot of it) and you’ll have a natural link profile as is possible that will probably stand the test of time. I don’t use that many tools for linkbuilding website promotion because I don’t really want the same links as my competitors for my clients – you just need Google, your brain, and I find a script being able to identify Nofollow comes in useful (I use SEO For Firefox but that’s about all I use it for). Of course there’s many ways to SEO the cat (and I don’t IGNORE competitor research) but if I was a linkbuilder picking through a competitors backlinks instead of trying to think a bit more creatively about building a brand online I think I would shoot myself in the head.

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The Perfect Link Straategy In n SEO – Mix It Up! “The beest piece off advice I can give you is i to vary yo our linking strategy. It’s the only way w to be sure you’ll achiieve good raankings, andd keep them m. Remembeer that whatt works toda ay might not worrk “tomorroow” – so it’ss worth expperimenting while all thhe time huntting for thosse “qualityy” links.” Surely everybody e k knows by now, n Googlee, and indeeed the Internnet, is poweered, by HTM ML Links. Good G rankinngs, and succcess, in alll the search engines ressults pages, eventually lies in getting links from other sites to t your site.. Effectively y, the more the better. Bearingg in mind “C Content Is King” K on thee web, no matter m how great g your ccontent is, no n matter how h search engine optiimised yourr page is, if you don’t have h inbounnd links, you u’re usually next to now where in thee Google serrps – especiially in com mpetitive maarkets – probably becausee a competittor has got in i there first and generated some content c and links beforre you. But whaat is the perrfect link? What W is the best b linking g strategy? The T answer is – everyb body has a differeent view off a perfect link, and eveerybody hass different ways w of meaasuring exacctly what a perfect p linkk is. Here’s my m take on what I lookk for when I am link hu unting (all, I think wortth thinking about and in no n particulaar order). 1. Pagee Rank Did I saay Page Rannk? Yes. Gooogle Page Rank R is still important regardless of what som me seo people claim. c Googgle (well, Matt M Cutts, says s the easiest way to get your intternal pagess out of the suppplemental inndex (Googgle’s back up u listings) is i to get PR to those paages. A high h page rank cann also meann your site is i spidered more m frequeently than itt might be (ggood if you u are constanntly adding content c to your y websitee – which of course, yoou should bee doing!) So in a sense, the love affair with w Googlee Page Rank k, which useed to be the be-and-end d-all of G serpss, has startedd again, to some s degreee. How do you y increasee Page Rank k? You good Google simply (!) get linkss from pagees with highh Page Rank k. If you havve a search eengine frien ndly navigation structurre that effecctively spreaads GPR an nd manage too get a link from a very y high Page Raank (7-10) you y are laugghing all thee way to thee bank. Equallyy a lot of linnks from low w page rankk pages will help to incrrease your own site Go oogle Page Raank, eventuually. Some saay ignore Page P Rank. We W don’t. Perhaps P why y we achievved a Page R Rank 7 site after a 10 months when the self s proclaim med “best inn the industrry” is a Pagge Rank 7 affter more th han 10 years LOL 2. Anch hor Text Anchorr text is simpply the text in the link. If I want to o rank for soomething annd I have an n optimissed page waaiting to get links to it, I’d I like a lin nk with my actual desirred keyworrd or Page 54  Copyrighht © 2009 Thee Hobo SEO Company C VAT T No. 880 513 35 26 • No. SC C299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote q / cost estimate. e Hoboo is based in Greenock G (neaar Glasgow) inn Scotland in tthe UK.

 

keyword phrase in the actual link i.e.seo scotland (feel free to link to me with that!) instead of “click here” or something. My thinking is, I’m not trying to rank for “click here” am I? 3. Link within text, surrounded by text Google can easily spot a long list of links (like navigation arrays etc) so I would always try and get a link from within the actual text on a page so it looks more “natural”. Ideally the surrounding text would also be relevant to my page. Sometimes the only sure way of generating these links is to write good content on your site to “force” people to link to you (unless you own the other site of course). These types of links are in my opinion the crème de la crème of links (which is why some seo’s actually buy these types of links (I don’t)! 4. Trust / Authority Trusted sites pass “trust factor”. Basically the thinking is, trusted sites rank well in Google, because they are, well, trusted! (Stop me if this gets too complicated!). Trusted authority sites rarely link to spammy sites – they only link to quality, probably related, sites. If you can manage to get a link from a trusted site in your niche, this could be worth its weight in Gold. How do you tell if a website (or page within a website) is trusted? Well that’s the question that’s on the lips of every seo! How do I determine it? Well, if you think simply, if it’s all about HTML links, then trust would be calculated by Google by the number and quality of links to that site / web page. Simply, Get Links from Pages with Links! 5. Relevance / Relationship / Theme How relevant is the page that is linking to you? I mean, if you have a seo site, are you trying to get links from search engine optimization related websites? Where possible, I’ll try and get a link on a page that is actually about the same subject matter as the web page I want a link to. 6. Hub / Neighbourhood Every niche has an authority hub, an inner network of sites every other site in the niche links to. This is the “neighbourhood” a (remarkably!) few seo’s, including myself, harp on about. Getting a link from these sites has got to be a good idea in any campaign, as these sites that Google already trusts and rates, pass along a portion of this “trust” thingy Google calculates. Linking out to these sites is also thought to be useful, as these links determine the online neighbourhood your site resides within.

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7. Any old link! Don’t get g me wronng, I’ll take a link from m anyone! Feeel Free! Buut links varyy in everyth hing from quuality and trrust etc – I just spend my m time tryiing to get quuality links where posssible, and at least from reelevant pagees. It’s these kinds of links that wiill help you in Google. d all thhis up myseelf. I read a lot of seo blogs on the subject and d try and And don’t think I dreamt take a subjective s view on whaat’s best for my purposees and whatt mood I’m in that day and what soounds “intelligent” to me, m and I’m always exp perimenting with everyy option! It’s alw ways a good idea to varyy your link building strrategies, so you’re not susceptible to massivee ranking allgorithm chaanges whenn one strateg gy is devaluued. Bonus Tip T Reciproocal Linkingg – Should you y bother?? I think reciprocal linkking is someewhat naturaal, especially betweenn hub sites inn the same neighbourh hood, and inn this case, w where relevant, they woon’t hurt youu. The bigggest risk yoou lay your site open too in reciproccal linking is i eventuallyy linking en nough out to a “bad neighhbourhood” (basically a neighbourrhood of weebsites Googgle doesn’t like) could seee your sitee devalued inn Google Search Engin ne Results Pages P (serpss). The besst piece of advice a I cann give you iss to vary yo our linking strategy. M Mix it up! Itt’s the only waay to be suree you’ll achhieve good rankings, r an nd keep them m. Remembber that whaat works today might m not woork “tomorrrow” – so itt’s worth ex xperimentingg while all tthe time hun nting for thosse “quality” links. While you’re y mixinng it up, you’ll also maake it harder for others to reverse engineer yo our hard work, creating c “nooise” in the search s enginnes. Oh, didd I say, get plenty! p

Related d Articles Why Vaary Anchorr Text In Linnkbuilding Campaigns C Someonne asked mee why they should varyy anchor teexts in linkbbuilding. Imaginee you couldd see Googleebot record your links as a it finds thhem by spiddering sites in real time.

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Even, consider, c thaat’s your linnk profile reecently geneerated. Hmmm m. I wonder how hard it is for thee brainiest people in search s to piick out you ur naturall links and ignore / devvalue the rest -but caan you spot the worthw while manuffactured link thaat might slipp past? Unnaturral mass linnk acquisitioon might weell be discou unted or be totally ignoored. I think k it totally depends on n the site yoou are gettiing the link ks from thoough. 5 trussted sites? Hell, H don’t boother mixinng that anchor text up at a all. Most tim mes you need a gun at a gun fight, but you haave to do it smarter thann the abovee in 2009. Note – This is a vissualisation I use. I don’t know if th his is the way w it actuallly works off course, nobodyy does. (Cheeck out our beginner’s b g guide to seaarch engine optimisatioon for more)). Originaally Publisheed on: Jan 15, 2009 @ 13:00 Republiished as parrt of Hobo Link L Buildinng For Begiinners Monnth

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Bad Neeighbourhoood = Googlee Penalty – Do You Lin nk To One?? As if we need any affirmationn that linkingg to “bad neeighbourhoods” can caause your raankings in Googgle to noseddive, but herre’s an interresting quotte from the Official Gooogle Webm master Blog ; u but will Google pennalize me iff the hacker linked to anny bad Q: I’ve cleaned it up, neighboourhoods? A: We’ll try not too. We’re prretty good att making su ure good sitees don’t gett penalized by b actions of hackers and spamm mers. To be safe, s completely removve any linkss the hackerrs may have addded. Bad neiighbourhoods, to Googgle, are typiccally identiffied by spam mmy on-pagge ‘seo' tech hniques and dubbious backliink and inteerlink profiles. You do not want too link to thesse neighbou urhoods, becausee who you link to matteers. You seee search enggine spam sites s more often than no ot link out to other spam m sites. Spaammers and Craackers, intellligent if som mewhat unsscrupulous, know that these t spam networks (o or neighboourhoods) need n links frrom trusted sites to valiidate their existence. e L Links from trrusted sites traansfer trust and a votes of relevance (Google Ju uice, whatevver) to the reeceiving sittes, allowinng these sites into Googgle’s index. So, they haack your sitee, place hiddden links in n the code, annd leave you none the wiser. w Google hates hiddeen links andd spam netw works. Ratheer than let your y site “heeat” up and validatee a spam neighbourhoood so that it can start receiving visiitors from G Google, it might m just rem move your site from thee index, by classing c you ur site as paart of that baad neighboourhood. Determ mining if a siite is in a baad neighbouurhood can take t some experience, e but using th his quirky tool, t you caan actually spot s some of o the most obvious o infr fractions, likke hidden lin nks in articles. I ran the teest on the Hobo H site and was surprrised to see one of my ffriends had indeed been the victim of a hidden linnk injectionn to casino sites s and loaan brokers. y seen your rankinngs bomb, there t are Have yoou been haccked? If youu’ve spottedd it before you’ve measurees you can take t (apart from f deleting the offen nsive links im mmediatelyy!). This hass happeneed to me beefore, and ass long as yoou take actio on immediaately, you’ll probably be OK. Check out o this site about Wordpress secuurity for morre on how to secure yoour blog from m hackerss. I’ve not im mplementedd all the meaasures I would like to yet, y but vigiilance is stilll a good foorm of securrity. If you’vve been pennalised by Google G (i.e. removed r fro om the searrch engine inndex) becau use you now linnk to a bad neighbourho n ood, you should read Google’s G offficial advicee if you’ve been b hacked.. My theoory is that Google G will crawl yourr site a numb ber of timess to check iff you still haave these linnks to spam m sites. If yoou remove thhem, no pro oblem. If they survive m multiple craawls, Page 58  Copyrighht © 2009 Thee Hobo SEO Company C VAT T No. 880 513 35 26 • No. SC C299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote q / cost estimate. e Hoboo is based in Greenock G (neaar Glasgow) inn Scotland in tthe UK.

 

your site may suffer some kind of Google ranking penalty based on a violation of Google guidelines for inclusion or as part of bad neighbourhood identification. UPDATE – Google now helps you with notifications you’re hacked, and how – http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/fetch-as-googlebot- and-malwaredetails.html

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Beginners Guides • • • • •

Quick SEO Tutorial Website Design Tips Web Project Checklist Social Media Help Robots.txt Tutorial

SEO News • • •

Search Engine Land Sphinn Search Engine Watch

Hot Articles • •

Stumbleupon Faves Top Delicious Tags

Forums • • • •

Webmasterworld Cre8asite Accessify High Rankings

Great SEO Articles • • • • • • • • •

Ranking Factors Link Factors Google Authority Geek Ranking Factors Link Building Tactics Link Development SEO Success Pyramid SEO Domination Local Search Ranking Factors

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SEO Blogs I've learned a lot from reading SEO blogs and other sites. I'm going to list places you can dig for a more comprehensive seo education. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Hobo Sebastian's Pamphlets Bill Slawski Aaron Wall Rand Fishkin Edward Lewis Andy Beard Half’s SEO Notebook Michael VanDeMar David Naylor Search Engine Journal Blumenthals Daily SEO Tips Tim Nash Jim Boykin Matt Cutts Weip Knoll David Harry SERoundtable Search Engine People Tad Chef Kalena Jordan Patrick Altoft Hamlet Batista Michael Martinez Seoptimise Lyndon Antcliff Fantomaster SEO Black Hat Slightly Shady SEO Joost de Valk Donna Fontenot Rae Hoffman Eric Ward Matt McGee Michael Gray

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SEO Tools • • • • • • •

Google Webmaster Tools Backlink Analyzer Backlink Watch Link Diagnosis Xenu Link Sleuth Hittail PageRankBot

More DIY SEO Resources Wikipedia What Is SEO SEO Fast Start SEOmoz Beginner Guide

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Contact Us @ Hobo We’re a crazy-passionate professional full service marketing company in Scotland, specialising in graphic design, print planning and buying, standards based website design and online marketing including Google Adwords PPC management and expert search engine optimisation. Our website is visited by over 60,000 people every month – and we’ve never spent a penny promoting it. If you would like to contact us regarding this e-book or would like to hire Hobo-Web for SEO or Website design projects then please contact us by any method detailed below:

Hobo-Web LTD, The Stables, 24 Patrick Street, Greenock PA16 8NB Scotland UK TEL: FAX:

0845 094 0839 0845 868 8946

Skype: AIM:

Hobo-Shaun HoboShaun

 

Page 63  Copyright © 2009 The Hobo SEO Company VAT No. 880 5135 26 • No. SC299002 | Contact us and request a free seo quote / cost estimate. Hobo is based in Greenock (near Glasgow) in Scotland in the UK.