Posted by great scott!Link building sucks.  You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. It can be slow, tedious, and exhausting. It’s also one of the most crucial aspects of complete search engine optimization.  So what do you do when faced with the intimidating challenge of building links? Once upon a time, you could’ve just submitted your site to a few hundred cheap directories (or a few thousand like so many of the $99 "SEO" shops offer), arrange for a few dozen reciprocal links from sites with decent PageRank, and maybe even negotiate a nice, keyword-targeted footer link from a reasonably popular blog. Bing-bang-boom, you’ve got several hundred good links with super-optimized anchor text…hellooooo rankings!

Those of you who’ve been playing this game for a while are probably thinking, "ahh, 2004, those were the days!" Everyone else is either looking at the screen incredulously or laughing hysterically, "this stuff doesn’t work at all anymore!" Oh really? Doesn’t it?  Sitewide, Reciprocal, and Directory links often have a bad rap because in the last several years they’ve largely become synonymous with cheap, spammy, dishonest, and largely useless scam SEO offers. But here’s the catch: if you’re careful, reasonable, and practical, these oft-maligned practices can still be effective.  Don’t go screaming black hat on me, watch this week’s video to learn the how, when, and why of what can make these black sheep of the link building world viable tactics.
 

 
As discussed in the video there are times when these strategies can be legitimate.  Rand covered these in a lot of detail in our recent PRO Webinar on Advanced Competitive Link Building, so if you’re a PRO Member, be sure to watch the recording. For now, let’s look at some situations where these strategies can still work.
Sitewide Links  The early oughties (aka 2000’s) were the like Studio 54 for sitewide links: shady links were snorting coke off of hookers in the dark recesses of footer navigation across the web. Then Google raided the joint looking for manipulative link patterns like the IRS looking for cooked books–the jig was up for footer and sidebar sitewide nav links.  To this day you can occasioanlly stumble across a rogue footer containing a few links out to ridiculously unrelated content (one local theater here in Seattle has links out to branded baby care products), but by-and-large this practice is no longer used…except for when it is.  Does Disney link to other sites in its content network? Does Lulu link to their SEOmoz and PC magazine awards? Does SEOmoz link to service partners like Distilled and Exact Target? Yes, they/we do and we do so in sitewide footers. These are legitimate and natural relationships. There’s nothing strange or fishy here. In fact, if any of these links were paid, they’d be better off on one or two strong pages rather than on a sitewide navigational element. Basically, you should consider these bad if/when they seem unnatural and/or they’re done alongside other shady stuff.
Reciprocal Links  First things first: within niche industries, natural reciprocal links are compeletely natural. In fact they’re often difficult to avoid. Think about the SEO space; SEOmoz, SEOBook, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, and all the others…we’re constantly linking to each other, but do we ever call up Aaron or Loren or Matt and say, "hey, I’ll link to your page if you link back to mine with this exact anchor text"? No, that’d be ridiculous. ‘Reciprocal’ becomes a four-letter word when it becomes clear that your site has an unusually high proportion of 1-to-1 links (you and other sites link to each other only once), often with suspiciously consistent anchor text. Those are the phenomena that start to look shady and draw attention.
Directory Links Here’s the litmus test for a directory: Do they care who you are? Good directories endeavour to actually create a high-value resource by excercising editorial control and restricting listings to sites and businesses that will be of value to their users. Bad directories endeavour to maximize the number of people willing to pay them money to be listed next to Der International Haus of Spamcakes because, hey, it’s a PR3 link! It’s really that simple. Directory links of the good variety can be really solid link sources (they’re often niche or local), but the bad kind (of which you can probably find 20,000 for $99) ain’t gonna do a damn bit of good for you.
When it comes down to it, you simply need to use good judgement with your link efforts. Is this a link someone would not be surprised to find on this site and in this location? Is the link from a site you could or would legitimately link to in a blog post? Would your site or page be a good resource for someone visiting a particularly directory? What about the rest of the content and links, do they seem legitimate?  A little honest evaluation and some common sense is really all you need to avoid engaging in bad linking practices.Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by great scott!May Day, Roodmas, Walpurgis Night, Beltane…regardless of the name, it’s a time for dancing around the maypole, enjoying the bounties of Spring, recalling the battle for worker’s rights, and lots of other fun things. But for many a search marketer, May 1st (ish) of this year will be remembered as the day the long tail died (bye-bye Misses High ROI…apologies to Don McLean). 

Old-Timey Folks Gettin’ Their Maypole On
Okay, okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but the search world (including Search Engine Roundtable and Webmaster World) definitely did notice the effects of Google’s so-called "May Day Update".  Sure, Google makes minor algo tweaks like this all the time, but around April 28th-May 3rd a lot of sites (SEOmoz included) noticed a sudden loss of 5-15% of their normal long tail traffic.  Watch this week’s video to learn more about what may have happened, and what you should do about it, or continue reading below for a summary.
 

 
What happened here? Why did you (or someone you love) lose their precious long tail search referrals? There are a lot of theories out there: Google reduced the size and depth of the primary index to keep Caffeine fast; there was broad link devaluation; there was a shift in how phrase match is performed; increased bias was given to authority/brand sites; etc. Some, all, or none of these may be true, the important thing is DON’T PANIC! If you saw a drop in traffic, you need to figure out why…don’t start blindly changing things lest you care to break what may not be broken.
How do you know if you were affected? Well, start by checking your search referral traffic between April 28th and May 3rd; do you see a drop? If so, is the change in the number of referrals, or the number of pages getting traffic?  A drop in traffic to your big terms isn’t likely May Day, but a drop in pages getting search referrals (long tail traffic) could be. If you monitor rankings for a handful of obscure tail terms (which you should do specifically for this reason), did your rankings suddenly plummet? Did your indexation or crawl stats change suddenly (you can use Webmaster Tools, site: searches, etc. to check)? These could indicate you were hit by the update.
What to do? Run! Hide! Grab your anti-zombie defensive shotgun that you keep on-hand at all times in case of a Zombie Apocalypse! Just kidding; that would be bad.  First, look at your links and give yourself a quality check: have you been a little shady lately? If so, maybe you should spend some effort getting a few high-quality links to spruce up the place (Spring cleaning, natch). Can you spare a bit of link juice from a strong page to give those weaker, but targeted long tail pages a little boost? It might help.  Again, most importantly of all, don’t panic…the engines make little changes to the algos all the time. Google made more than 500 changes last year–more than one per day–and 99% of the time you won’t even notice. Even if May Day did impact your site, it could change back next week, so take a deep breath and try to relax. Keep practicing high-quality, fundamental SEO and you’ll be okay.
 
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Posted by great scott!It’s true you can do a lot of work on a site to optimize your rankings, but eventually you’re going to need some links.  While they make small changes all the time, the search algorithms are still based primarily on links. But here’s what you may not consider when you’re devising your link building strategy or working to acquire the links you need: links can accomplish very different things.
Depending on your situation–your site, your link profile, your competition–the kinds of links you need and the things you need them to do for you can vary significantly.  Learning how to determine the kinds of links you should pursue, and what they need to accomplish can save you a ton of time, money, and frustration.  Watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday to learn how to segment your link strategy and focus on areas of weakness.
 

 
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Posted by great scott!Earlier this week Facebook announced its ‘Open Graph’ at F8. There was all sorts of hubbub (much of it the bye-product of well-orchestrated buzz) about Facebook finally making strides to kill Google’s dominance of the web.  So should you hangup your white hat, your black hat, your grey hat, and trade it all in for a blue hat?  Much as we love Facebook, the answer, dear reader, is no: SEO is not dead. 
Watch this week’s video to hear Rand’s take on how Facebook’s ‘Open Graph’ will impact web marketing and all the ways it won’t.  There are all sorts of opportunities that will likely emerge out of this new technology, so you should pay attention. So go ahead and keep an eye out for a nice fitting blue hat in the near future, but don’t plan to throw away your white hat anytime soon.
 
 

 
 

The sticker we received
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Posted by great scott!Anyone who’s been in internet marketing long knows the feeling: you go to check your rankings one day and something’s different. Your pulse quickens, a cold sweat spreads across your brow, your eyes widen…they’re gone. Your precious rankings are gone! Where did they go? What happened?
Penalties. They can bring the strongest of us to tears. But sometimes we can be too quick to blame a penalty on sudden changes in our rankings.  There are lots of things that can cause fluctuations (even major ones) in the SERPs and it’s importnat to know how to figure out why you’ve dropped.  This week, we’ll look at how to identify whether or not you’ve been penalized, as well as what to do if you have been smacked down by our Google-y overlords.
Check out this week’s Whiteboard Friday and next time you’re struck with a moment of SERP Shock, you’ll know how to handle it in a cool and strategic manner.
 

 
 
If you want more information on penalties, here’s a slide deck Rand presented at a recent conference….
 
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Posted by great scott!You see an amazing story somewhere in the vastness of  the web and you think to yourself: "Man, that would be perfect for my readers! It’d get great traffic and my customers/advertisers would love it!"
Now, how do you syndicate that content on your site (fairly and legally) without running into the traditional problems of duplicate content, link-back requirements, etc…all things that can really hamper the likelihood of SEO traffic for the content?  Watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday to learn some great strategies for getting maximum impact out of content you license (and watch this older one if you have content you want to license out). There are lots of options and it’s important you know your options if you want to achieve your goals.
 

 
 
PS – The folks over at Market Motive put out some great online marketing training courses and have kindly offered SEOmoz readers a discount for the next Master Certification which starts Monday April 19.

The courses are 100% online and include 90-days of  lessons with some top people including Avinash Kaushik, Todd Malicoat, Bryan Eisenberg and more.  SEOmoz readers can use corporate access code "CERT30SEOMZ" to save $500 off the Master Certification course.Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by great scott!Is it better to practically force your users to make the desired conversion action, or is it better to give them a choice? How about a choice between two desired conversion actions?  How about giving them choice, but making the more preferred one easier as well as anchoring it in social proof that makes it still more compelling?  It’s a powerful way to increase conversion rates and funnel users on your sites, and it’s a concept covered in the book Nudge, by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein.
Will Critchlow covered Nudge in detail on the blog last year, but we’ve recently seen some interesting examples of how you can use this theory effectively in your on-page and social marketing efforts. Watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday to learn more about how you can implement these tactics yourself.
 

 
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Posted by great scott!Real-time search is all the rage right now, but how can you turn your real-time content into SEO-Friendly material for your sites?  All of those tweets, chats, feebs (that’s short for facebook status updates–let’s make it happen, people), etc. add up to a lot of content…unique content that belongs to you.
For instance, if you don’t somehow reclaim those couple thousand tweets you’ve made, all of that content stays with Twitter and gets lost in their archives (which don’t rank) . However, if you figure out how to turn that content into topic-related pages on yoru own site, then it becomes useful to you.  Watch this week’s video to learn some strategies for taking your real-time content and making it work for you.
 

 
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Posted by great scott!If a lot of people click on my listing in the search results, I’ll rank better, right?
Wrong.
This week’s Whiteboard Friday explores the common myth that the engines use click-through as a ranking signal for organic results.  Unlike paid traffic–in which the engines are incentivized to promote the most click-worthy results–click through is simply far too gameable to use reliably in organic search.  Watch the video for a more complete explanation of why it’s not worth your time to go madly click the crap out of your own results.
 

 
 
Can’t get enough SEO in video format?  Check out our brand new Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2. It’s a killer 8-disc set and you can save a ton with special release pricing available until April 3rd.Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by great scott!If a lot of people click on my listing in the search results, I’ll rank better, right?
Wrong.
This week’s Whiteboard Friday explores the common myth that the engines use click-through as a ranking signal for organic results.  Unlike paid traffic–in which the engines are incentivized to promote the most click-worthy results–click through is simply far too gameable to use reliably in organic search.  Watch the video for a more complete explanation of why it’s not worth your time to go madly click the crap out of your own results.

Can’t get enough SEO in video format?  Check out our brand new Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2. It’s a killer 8-disc set and you can save a ton with special release pricing available until April 3rd.Do you like this post? Yes No