SEO Blog - Internet Marketing News

More and more conventional link building methods, like directory submission are of less and less value, Google does not even recommend high quality paid directories any more. In fact soon we’ll see a situation where all artificial ways of link building will be frowned upon.

On the other hand former SEOptimise writer and renowned UK search marketing blogger Patrick Altoft reported a few days ago about companies which spend thousands on link buying budgets per month. This way of link acquisition is not allowed by Google for a long time by now and many high profile sites have been penalized already.

While the urge of spending money on links comes as no surprise it is met by an often low quality shady part of the SEO industry. Getting links naturally requires also an investment, an allocation of time and resources combined with know how in some Internet industries like web design or development but not solely.

The money gets spend not on the links directly but on a web venture that gets links naturally and sustainably over time. The allure of “free” is in most cases the key to get links but also altruism leads to a direct ROI in terms of links. So think twice before spending money directly on low quality links.

Stop link building artificially and use one or several of the following 30 ways to get links naturally:

1. Create a timeless or regularly updated resource list, example Web developer’s Handbook
2. Program a free tool or software everybody needs in a particular niche but not everybody offers yet (compare the query font tester vs color picker)
3. Develop a high quality theme or template for a well known platform like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla that gets updated along the software
4. Program a WordPress or other popular blog platform plugin, in the best case a platform independent one like Akismet
5. Develop a Firefox plugin for a recurring task or dealing with a widely spread annoyance like BugMeNot
6. Organize a genuine yearly recurring competition like the Web 2.0 awards
7. Organize a Recurring charitable event like the Blog Action Day
8. Forge a lasting partnership with a similar service provider, like a graphic design agency joining forces with a PSD2XHTML provider
9. Build a community like 9Rules where people “proudly” are part of and display on it on their sites
10. Support artists with free or cheaper web hosting (or anything else they need) like MediaTemple does
11. Mirror a high traffic site, for instance an open source software or an activist site
12. Offer a rebate for a particular group, especially students but also workers class families, veterans or whatever disadvantaged group
13. Offer free music or other audio downloads. or at least a way to listen to the audio online, that’s the secret of success of MySpace
14. Offer free ebook or better free ebooks (more than one) like O’Reilly for instance
15. Maintain a business blog updated regularly with high value resources, best example is Inside CRM
16. Get your content translated and republished in multiple languages and countries
17. Join a community and become one of the most valuable members like Maki of DoshDosh did on Sphinn and Digg
18. Offer high quality free icons for download and free use
19. Offer background patterns for free for web designers
20. Offer free wallpapers for download and invite artist to modify them
21. Create a Facebook application and maintain it over time
22. Create a CSS solutions for common tasks or CSS problems or even better are whole set of solutions
23. Offer free scripts and “chunks code” (like CSS as it’s not a script) for webmasters to use freely
24. Create a highly useful and visually appealing Flash application like SimpleViewer
25. Give away images using a creative commons license on your website
26. Publish recipes for healthy, Italian, French, Chinese or any other kind of desirable food not everybody can buy
27. Offer fundamental self improvement advice like hackyourself does
28. Start a green initiative, whatever it might be, there are thousands of ways to do that, carbon free websites is great example
29. Educate children, especially from poor families be it in the West or down in the “global south”, e.g. the 100 Dollar laptop gained huge recognition
30. Help animals and boast about it displaying images of them you don’t have to as obnoxious as PETA

As you see many of these ways of getting links naturally are projects based on market forces or in other words on what many or most people need. The best thing on the Web is additionally that even free things normally not provided by the market can be offered in a profitable way as by gaining links the investment is made profitable at last.

Of course all these ways of getting links also get you reputation and fans and thus traction in social media too. People hate companies and busineses overselling but they love free stuff and those who offer it. When everybody loves you also those who are willing to spend money will find you.

In case you wonder now “how can I achieve that, I’m no programmer, designer, content creator, artist, activist” you don’t need to be, there are plenty out there are they’re short on money especially those from India. Sometimes even 100$ are enough.

Most website owners rely on quick website tweaks and the right tools for measurable website success. That’s not wrong but that’s also not enough. Being serious about business, a webmaster must get links to get additional exposure via search engines, of course predominantly Google.

Google still judges a website mostly based on the number and quality of links pointing to it (backlinks). So even today you got to get links, be it via outstanding content, viral campaigns or just conventional link building. Still most people do not take all the measures easily available on the Web today. Some have been around for ages, others just popped up recently. Check the 30 easiest ways to get links and exposure.

Instant Link Building
1. Submit to paid web directories free ones are often low quality lately
2. Submit to a few quality article directories
3. Send out a press releases via a few online services
4. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers etc. and in forums
5. Add resources to user generated content sites like Zimbio, Associated Content or others
6. Ask your friends, family, employees to link to you
7. Add your link to your profiles on Web 2.0 services like MySpace, Twitter (in the Bio) or Propeller

Common Linking Incentives

8. Get a Delicious badge, and display the number of bookmarks as well as the tags
9. Offer a badge of honor, something like “a carbon neutral site”
10. Offer a button for voting to install on other websites & blogs
11. Offer a widget for bloggers, something useful that will spread by itself
12. Stage a contest, it should be fun and the prizes should be worth it
13. Organize a blog carnival choosing a topic that matters for many people
14. Link out plenty, especially to bloggers, some will link back others will bookmark, some links will appear directly as ping and trackbacks
15. Contact people who might link to you (I do not mean a reciprocal link request)
16. Mirror a popular high traffic site, all the webhosters do it that way
17. Give away content with a creative commons license, especially if you can offer images or music (or other audio)
18. Let people translate your content and republish it for free

Link Bait Ideas and Practices

19. Praise experts in your area who have blogs
20. “Pull a Calacanis” - Say something stupid to stir controversy (like “SEO is bullshit” or “Web directories are Web 3.0″)
21. Be the first to break a story, indeed check original sources first before just recycling news
22. Write a useful list, “100 ways of something” always get linked
23. Give away a real freebie, a fee version of your product, should be valuable for users
24. Use images of barely clad ladies, sorry I mean beautiful women to illustrate your point
25. Support a cause, like Blogcatalog does
26. Write something unbelievable, intriguing or that “strikes a chord”
27. Do something useful for the Linkerati, a list of Digg users who blog for instance
28. Create something for the lowest common denominator, best topic is cute cats
29. Declare something alive and kicking dead but in a way it makes sense
30. Say something funny like “SEO is Dad”

Please not that I intentionally did not include some not entirely ethical grey hat methodes like “submit to social bookmarking sites” or “comment on dofollow blogs” as these tend to become spammy in the wrong hands.

Along with the “no future” fable in recent days we have seen another talk of the town or rather the global village: Spreading false information as SEO tactic of link baiting. Now I’m really glad! Finally Google will ban Jason Calacanis for spreading false information about SEO (”SEO is bullshit”) and his web directory Mahalo. Now let me explain the situation.

Matt Cutts in a discussion made clear that using such methods is fraudulent and can lead to a penalty by Google. Why did he say that in the first place? A hugely popular made up link bait article was disclosed as a hoax by the author of it, Lyndon Antcliff of Cornwall SEO. It was too late for Fox News and other news outlets on the British Aisles though, they reported the story as true without checking the facts or sources.

The implications of spreading hoaxes via the press is not my main focus here. It’s really a sign of low quality of major news outlets. That said let’s take a look at the Jason Calacanis case which is very similar to the undisclosed satire piece at Money.co.uk: He repeatedly stated that “SEO is bullshit”. Also he used at least one other version of this statement by saying “affiliate marketing is bullshit”. His “argument” was debunked dozens of times already so I won’t add another one of these SEO primers. I want to stress the undisclosed satire aspect of this infamous link bait.

Mr. Calacanis also is the man behind Mahalo. What is Mahalo according to it’s own definition?

“What is Mahalo? Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine”

When you take a closer look at the “engine” you quickly realize that it’s a not a revolutionary Web 3.0 concept it’s sold as but basically a web directory like any web directory we know since the early nineties. There are no robots or spiders and the algorithm seems to be rather a simple CMS that allows to publish a few thousands of pages.

Now is Mahalo a human-powered search engine? No, it’s not, it’s clearly a static website provided by editors (aka guides) and augmented with some user input. I’m sure the new, yet to be established Ministry of Truth, led by Mr. Cutts, truth expert of Google will quickly find out about that and ban Mahalo.

Also it is obvious that SEO is no “bullshit”. I even did some research on agriculture in this context. Livestock breeding experts agree that bullshit at least stinks. Now as SEO is purely virtual and limited to the Internet it can’t stink, so it can’t be bullshit either. Unfortunately this link bait tactic based on this false information has already spread and other people are using it. Now as Matt Cutts truthfully has spoken out about this problem I’m sure they all get banned. I’m glad. Please Google, ban them all. We really need a Ministry of Truth.

While conducting some link analysis recently I started thinking about the process that Google would carry out to see if a site was building links against their guidelines.
The key issue is that if a site has 100,000 natural links thanks to some tools or articles on the site it is very hard for Google to flag the site as being unnatural if they spot a thousand paid links.

On the other hand if a site has 2000 links and 1000 of them are clearly paid then Google might take a much harsher view.

Having a largely natural link profile allows you to be much more aggressive with your on page optimisation and to use paid links to build your rankings without appearing to be gaming the system.

Just checking through today’s top stories on the Digg homepage and I noticed that Engadget’s story from today’s Apple event in London was followed 2 hours and 50 minutes later with a summary post focusing on the main news from the event; Apple iPhone hits O2 in the UK on November 9th.

While it’s unlikely this is intentional it is a very clever linkbaiting tactic and goes to show the power of a title headline in Digg. Engadget have essentially split the same story into two articles both with a different angle to give the Digg audience what they wanted to read twice, getting double the amount of homepage coverage, traffic and possibly links too!

Lyndon Antcliff has started an interesting (and slightly heated) discussion about how social voting beats directories for link building. In my opinion there are still some good arguments for submitting to quality directories, but I totally agree that linkbaiting is the way to go and if successful the benefits are far greater than submitting to directories. It’s also far more enjoyable to watch how many people vote or link to your content then it is submitting to directories for hours, so that helps!

Linkbaiting may not suit everyone however as it requires a certain degree of creativity and understanding about how the social media systems work and how to manipulate what the audience likes to see, whereas anyone can submit to a directory. I wouldn’t completely disregard submitting to directories as a link building technique just yet and probably wouldn’t go as far to say directories are dead, but perhaps Google’s recent efforts to find paid links could suggest it is dying a slow death! It’s unclear about how Google’s algorithm values paid directories, but I think it’s fair to say that if you are paying for a listing in a directory which will accept anyone, the value will be much lower than that of a listing in a trusted and more selective directory such as Business.com or the Yahoo Directory.

Overall I would suggest gaining a small number of paid listings from quality directories and then concentrating on developing the content of your website, promoting this within the social media websites. The potential gain of incoming links from social media optimisation is much higher, a great piece of content can be rewarded with hundreds of natural, relevant one-way links which would be pretty much impossible to gain using any other method, plus there are tons of social media sites out there now where it’s possible to promote most topics. If it fails the chances are you’ll learn something and if it’s successful you’ll have a nice traffic boost and hopefully a large number of new inbound links to show for your efforts, so why not give it go?

You can’t goto an SEO blog today without reading about Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and Social Media Marketing, definitely well worth a read and I’ve used one tip already with my post title!

Here is the slideshow from Rand Fishkin’s 7 steps to linkbait presentation at PubCon in Las Vegas this week.

There are many effective methods of linkbaiting such as creating quality content people can’t help but link to, causing controversy, or as I found this week being the quickest with the latest news. My post last Thursday was the first to report the new Google AdWords account snapshot dashboard, prompting many blogs, such as Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Roundtable, to link to the story. Some of the blog links can be found on Technorati and MSN and the large spike in the Alexa stats graph below shows the increase in traffic from this story.

The Linkbait Traffic Effect

This also seems to have already had a positive effect on search rankings with top 10 Google results for Google AdWords manager, AdWords manager, Google AdWords account manager, Google AdWords account, Google AdWords blog, AdWords Blog, PPC Blog and Google AdWords promotional code.

I find linkbaiting very interesting as it’s a great method of gaining large quantities of relevant inbound links for very little effort, in this case a 10 minute blog post and a couple of forum threads to promote the story. SEO has evolved a lot over the last few years and thankfully linkbaiting seems to have replaced the laborious task of submitting to directories. For this reason alone linkbait is a better use of time, but the quality of links can also be much greater with lots of related inbound links embedded within a blog post as opposed to one link amongst many on a directory listing page which may not be as relevant. Of course there are still some such as DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory which are worth submitting to, but maybe the days of submitting to hundreds of directories for hours is over with the use of linkbait and article writing becoming more common.

With a bit more practice and a few more successes I might be able to offer my linkbait services sooner than I expected!

My post from last week about link bait services has now been cached and is currently ranking at #1 in Google for linkbait services searches. I’m hoping this post will help to strengthen that position with another link and also start to rank itself for link bait services searches once the Googlebot revisits!