Six months ago, Google's Matt Cutts confirmed that NoFollowed tags no longer work as a tool for sculpting PageRank and that he would not recommend PageRank sculpting in general. Despite the passage of time and much discussion in forums and on blogs, many website owners are still confused about the importance of optimizing how PageRank flows throughout their site. My personal opinion, based on experience we've had working with client sites, is that it can still be important to optimize PageRank flow through a site. In this article, I'll explain why, along with recommendations on how to do [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | How To: Links | How To: SEO

What is it about your website (or your organization) that is truly linkable? What's the most effective way to structure a link building campaign? What is the most effective first task for a link builder? By creating an inventory of link building assets, you lay the foundation for a sustainable link building campaign, whether you're a one person business or leading a link building team at an organization with thousands of employees, and hundreds of thousands of website pages. The most effective way to structure a link building campaign is based on the organization's linkable assets, and the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building | Link Building: General | Link Week

What are your link building plans for 2010? Me? I'll be making some significant changes to my business model for the first time in fourteen years. I'll be training more clients to become their own link builders. I've earned 100% of my living by providing link building tactics, strategies and services since 1994. While the methods I use have changed, the core principals that drive my strategy selections are the same as they were when I started. Here are my top tips for successful link building in 2010. Respect for people The "Interweb" is not a bunch of tubes and wires created for sell [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Week

Advanced link building queries, for the link builders who use them extensively, remain a closely guarded secret. It's easy to understand why. For one, they want to protect a valued link source from getting flooded with link requests from the general link-seeking public. Secondly, there are some choice opportunities out there that would lose their value if the entire SEO community happened to learn about them. Another complication with discussing and sharing link building queries is that they're often tailored towards the linkable and shareable assets of a particular organization. Further, t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building | Link Building: General | Link Week

Without an ordered approach, careful research and custom tools it can be difficult for link builders, writers and content strategists to know what content will attract links in a target market. This article provides a process and tools for developing and distributing linkable content based on the content that’s proven to attract links in your target keyword space.

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Week

This article walks you through the tools, processes and strategies for identifying the most powerful players in your keyword space and then analyzing their link sources and link building tactics.

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Week

What exactly is the long tail? Individually unimportant, but collectively significant according to Chris Anderson, who coined the term in 2004. Why is the idea of the long-tailed keyphrase so critical to your link building campaign? (Besides the obvious reason that is its very definition, of course.) It's mainly because these keyphrases (which have been quite well tested in both PPC and SEO) tend to be niche enough that they can give you more conversions. When people get very specific, they mean business. Before I move on, let it be said that when we're talking about long-tailed phra [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Week

“Get More Links” is not an effective goal, even if it’s the directive you’ve received from clients or management. This article proposes ten different goals for your link building efforts, along with suggestions on tactics and ways to find and qualify link prospects for each.

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building: General

The core problem of link building – assuming you’ve maximized your site’s linkability – is not prospecting for sites that may potentially link to yours. The problem lies in rapidly identifying – within 1,000+++ lists the link prospects whose links will provide the fastest and largest impact on your search marketing goals… We wrote this article – and created a free, downloadable worksheet – to enable motivated link builders to quickly identify the most relevant, valuable and likely-to-link prospects from thousands of potential link targets.

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From time-to-time, issues about how domain names can impact Google rankings come up. Is it true that if you buy a name, all the "link equity" that name has gained is lost? Below, a look at this and some related questions. Several years ago, Google sparked some concerns when it said that buying an established domain name meant that links to that domain before the purchase were effectively lost. In other words, say someone bought a domain today that was registered in 2003 and which had built up hundreds of links over the years. All those links were effectively slapped with an invisible [...]

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You can get more than just links from social media. You can also get really great content. And one of the best places to find free content is on Flickr. There are tons of ways to use Flickr. If you can take a great photo, you can use Flickr to build inbound links and get your photos showing up in places like Consumerist and Epicenter. You can use Flickr's comment area to build links that drive traffic and exposure. However, one of my favorite ways to use the site is to follow a link AND content development strategy. And that's what this article is about helping you learn to do. I'll sta [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Social Media Marketing | Top News | Yahoo: Flickr

One of the problems with Twitter is knowing who to follow in particular areas. Now Kevin Rose has launched WeFollow, a nice directory of people organized into categories. It's not perfect, but it's a great start and well worth visiting. At the site, you'll see the top five people in popular categories such as celebrity, music and news. You can also drill-down into any category to see all the people listed in them. On the right-hand side of the home page, there's also a list of more popular categories: That list of popular categories (or tags) is dynamic and has already changed si [...]

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Ask any link builder what link issues they're consistently asked about and one of them will be linking tools. Link building is such a time consuming and detailed process that it's only natural people look for tools and techniques to maximize their time. Those who spend a lot of time link building are familiar with standard linking tools, but a number of non-commercial tools, resource sites, and "find me" tricks aren't as well known. Below, some tools and resources you may not know about that can streamline your link building campaigns. When to use each tool While linking tactics var [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building: General | Link Week

Elvis Presley is credited with being one of the first pioneers of rock and roll. He launched his career in 1955 by popularizing black and bluegrass music and scandalized many with his suggestive pelvis moves. A lot of musicians have become famous since then, but none have defined rock and roll like Elvis. When you say "the King of Rock and Roll," it's Elvis that immediately comes to mind. His reputation in this field is unchallenged. Building a top-of-mind reputation that attracts links isn't easy in any industry and doubly hard if you're a small guy fighting for space and links on the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building: General | Link Week

For a lot of people, link building is a drag. It's like going to the dentist or writing that tax check every quarter... you don't really want to do it but you know you have to. It's that drag factor that makes a lot of people look for short cuts and easy methods to hurry the process along and get maximum bang for the shortest buck. Unfortunately, if this is how you feel about linking, it will be difficult to communicate the kind of enthusiasm you need to entice customers and industry experts to link to you. Some people think marketing means being cute or creating sizzle to attract atte [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building: General | Link Week

The idea of using your competition to build links, trust and reputation and benefit from the knock on effect of better search engine rankings as a result may seem alien to many. Savvy web marketers have been doing this for years, however. Bloggers often do it without even realizing it due to the inherent social functionality of the medium. Today, I'm going to show you three simple ways to become the center of focus within your niche, gain highly targeted link traffic and boost your search engine rankings. 1. Aggregating Your Competition Presuming that blogs exist within your nich [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building: General