How to handle unprofessional SEO treatment: tips and guidelines
Learn how to handle unprofessional treatment at various online and offline SEO events, including conferences, webinars and social media.
Topic: Eric Ward
‘SEO: The Movie’ aims to trace the rise of internet marketing
Documentary features stories from the early days of SEO, as told by some of the industry's well-known pioneers.
Beyond authority: guiding metrics for lasting links
Aside from technical metrics related to web page authority, what factors should be used to inform your link building efforts? Columnist Andrew Dennis shares his ideas and those of other industry experts.
Hiding From That Google Penalty? It May Find You At Your New Home
Did you know that even if you try to run away from your Google penalty, it might end up finding you anyway? In a recent Google Webmaster Hangout, hosted by Google’s John Mueller, John said that even if you move your penalized site to a new domain name and don’t redirect the penalized site, Google […]
SEO Smackdown Round 2: Old Vs. New Search Engine Optimization
Has SEO really changed? Search engine algoholics might say "Yes!" Experienced practitioners might say, "Not really." Instead of keywords, site architecture, and link development, maybe we should understand aboutness, information scent, and validation.
Whole Lotta Link Love In 2012: Our Best Link Building Posts Of The Year
Link building certainly was a hot topic in 2012 – maybe it’s because Penguins are so gosh darn cute that we just can’t help ourselves, right? Outside of the penalties dished out by cute black and white animals and search engine algorithms alike, our team of veteran link builders kept doling out solid advice for […]
What Is Your SEO Archiving Plan?
If the answer to this question is stunned silence, your website could lose long-term search engine visibility. Archiving has always been an important part of the SEO process.
3 Common Link Building Questions Answered By 4 Experts
I’m a forum rat, I visit several on a daily basis as a way to keep up with what’s going on. If there’s an update, cool new tool or SEO controversy brewing, chances are I’ll read about it on one of the forums before anywhere else. Conversely, if I have a question or want to bounce a theory […]
15 Link Building Predictions & Recommendations For 2011
Happy New Year and welcome to the first Link Week of 2011! Just like last year, Julie Joyce, Eric Ward and I have compiled our link building predictions, recommendations, tips and trends for 2011. As you’ll see, our thoughts are as different as we are and cover a wide range of topics and sites. When […]
How To Generate Links Through Media Relations
One of the tactics I use to generate new links is to review a site’s stats and create a media promotion based on the trends I find. This strategy is not an easy, turn-key linking program but if you’re serious about growing your business as well as your links, it’s one of the best ways to attract […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 28, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google To Phase Out Old Keyword Tool In Exchange For New Version If you try to access Google’s external keyword tool, you may notice that you are sent to the new […]
Eric Ward Moves To AdGooroo
Few people have been building links professionally as long as Eric Ward. Long an independent, Eric is now joining AdGooroo as a “link evangelist.” From today’s press release: In his role as link evangelist, Ward will continue to improve Link Insight’s feature set and also interact with agencies and Link Insight subscribers. As he has […]
Link Building Trends For 2010
Happy New Year and welcome to the first Link Week of 2010! Eric, Julie, Garrett and I wanted to share our thoughts and recommendations on what we think will “work” in regards to link building in 2010. Last year was one of the most algorithmically significant years our industry has seen in awhile and we […]
Golden Twitter Nuggets & Takeaways From SMX East
I took a lot of notes at SMX Toronto earlier this year and posted them in this column as Golden Nuggets From SMX Search Analytics. Looking back at them now, the evidence undeniably reinforces my memory of how much I learned, and I’m glad to say that three days at SMX East this week was […]
How A Twitter Reputation Algorithm Needs To Work
Big news last week: Twitter Search to dive deeper, rank results. Twitter’s @Santosh Jayaram has indicated Twitter Search, which currently searches only Twitter post text, will begin crawling links and indexing the content of pages posted in tweets. To help with search result ranking, Twitter is creating a “reputation” ranking system that among other things […]
Cool New Link Tools And… SEO Discounts!
I’ve come across some cool tools to use in your link building efforts and have a handful of discounts I wanted to share so let’s get right to it! Groundswell profile tool All link building tactics have one thing in common—they need relevant pages to secure the links from. Notice I didn’t say “authority pages” […]
Now Is The Winter of Linking’s Discontent
Everywhere you look right now, there's another headline pointing to another story that in either a direct or subtle way affects link building.
Linked, Tagged, Tweeted, and Feeded – Three Real Time Link Trackers
One challenge we all have is showing our clients evidence that our work is having the effect we said it would. What would make this part of the process easier is if there was one single universal tool that could identify every single instance when a site is mentioned, linked, tagged, tweeted, or feeded. That perfect tool doesn't exist, but a few weeks ago Delicious unveiled a relaunch, and what was once really a pain is now a breeze.
What If It Isn’t Linkworthy?
Some client scenarios can be uncomfortable. Among them is when the client has worked especially hard to create a content area that they feel is linkworthy, and thus should attract links, but you, as the person who has to go get those links, aren’t quite as enthusiastic about the potential for success. The Scenario: A […]
Link Development Realities Versus What We Tell Our Clients
This week I’m seeking some feedback for a future column with a working title of “Link Development Realities Versus What We Tell Our Clients” The idea for this column came from a client conference call I participated in this past week. As the call progressed, it became more and more evident that several of the […]
Need More Link Building Advice? Here Are 12 Experts
Pole Positioning Marketing has compiled yet another link building advice article. This one is very good — it asks 12 link building experts to provide a link building tip that you might not find elsewhere. The advice comes in both short and long form from Patrick Altoft, Hamlet Batista, Jim Boykin, Rand Fishkin, Peter van […]
When Linking Experts Go Underground
For years I’ve seen a free and flowing stream of information and advice about how to build links, and as the engines have improved detection of the junk, the better link builders continued to thrive while those who sold crappy services to crappy content ran for cover. At least three of the most dependable link […]
Search Engine Land Celebrates Its First Birthday!
Happy Birthday to us! Today, Search Engine Land officially turns one year old. Below, I wanted to share some thanks to all those who’ve helped make it such a successful year, and I’m going to save the in-depth "what have we achieved" statistics for sharing for January, when the entire 2007 calendar year has passed. […]
Five Ways Link Builders Hurt Themselves
In the wake of the mass hysteria over Google’s recent PageRank decreases, devaluing of certain links, and the resulting rankings drop many people experienced, I’d like to offer some perspective and advice. First, my rankings at EricWard.com didn’t drop one spot. And remember that my site is 100% devoted to link building, so I have […]
Fall Cornucopia Of Linking News
Here we go again… The Associated Press (AP) is suing news aggregation site Moreover and parent company VeriSign, claiming copyright infringement for, among other things, linking to the AP news without permission (here’s the complaint in PDF format). In an awesome bit of newsbot irony, you can read all the gory details via Reuters.
Attention Shopping Sites! Generic Content Means Generic Links
I had the pleasure of participating on a Link Building Clinic at the Shop.org conference in Las Vegas last week. This conference attracts a different crowd than the SEO/SEM related shows in that practically every attendee at a Shop.org show is running a web site that sells something. Now, link building for a shopping site […]
The Link Saboteurs, And Why They Will Ultimately Fail
There’s an interesting thread over at SEOmoz about how some unscrupulous marketers will try to sabotage a competitor’s web site by engaging in social media communications and link seeding/spamming tactics that they hope will spark a rash of bad publicity and maybe even trigger some sort of rankings and/or reputational search penalty against their competitor. […]
Link Analysis Beyond Search Rank
I’m an extreme believer in linking analysis and competitive linking intelligence. I have tools that analyze millions of links every week. I have scripts that compare, contrast, group, separate, divide and categorize links to a degree that would make your eyes cross. As I type this one of my competitive link audit scripts is in […]
When Google Goes Temporarily Insane
The recent Google update, known to some of us as the “Google shuffle”, had a number of people freaked out. Seeing your site’s ranking suddenly change is a reality we all face. Sometimes the changes are legitimate, reflecting a shift in the algorithm, or in the inbound link profile of your site or your competitor’s […]
Addicted to Link Research?
It’s been a little over a week since MS Live Search disabled linking related advanced queries. The post itself announcing the decision was short, but the commentary that followed it was anything but. What’s the big deal? The search engines never had to give us this data in the first place. The actual operator, link: […]
Q&A With Link Building Experts
Rae Hoffman posted a group interview with not just one link building expert but five. Rae asks Eric Ward (a columnist here), Rand Fishkin, Roger Montti, Todd Malicoat and herself ten questions where each expert gives their opinion. Here are the ten questions. For the answers, you’ll have to check out the post.
Link Building Webcast Next Week
You’re invited to join Search Engine Land columnist Eric Ward when he presents Online Publicity and Link-Building 2007, a free webcast from our sister site Search Marketing Now. The webcast is Thursday, February 15 at1:00 PM Eastern (6:00 PM GMT), and will last 45-50 minutes including a live Q+A session with Eric. If you haven’t […]
Beyond Google: Social Media Engines First, Other Search Engines Second
I’ve never encouraged a "Google First" or "Google Only" mentality for search marketers to follow. This is where you focus only on Google, figuring the other major search engines don’t matter. Instead, I’ve said that all the search engines are important traffic channels to pursue. Don’t forget the search engines beyond Google! But over the […]
Linkbait Articles & Is It Linkbait Or Link Bait?
Eric Ward mentioned link baiting in his Link Week column this week, which first got me thinking, is it better to say linkbait or link bait? To answer, I did some searches, which in turn brought up some good articles on the topic. And now another good one has come out from Todd Malicoat. So […]
Link Week: New Column From Search Engine Land
I’d like to welcome Eric Ward who kicks off Link Week today, a regular weekly column from Search Engine Land. Eric’s has been both building links as a professional over the past 14 years and educating people about the space over that time. We’re thrilled to have him writing for us. Link Week is the […]