Author Archives: Ryan Clark

About Ryan Clark

I'm the CEO of Linkbuildr Marketing and the brains behind our branding and blog content. I specialize in effective marketing strategies for hotels, luxury brands and real estate. If your brand is in need of a boost then don't hesitate to contact me for a free proposal. Follow me on Google+: +Ryan Clark Twitter: @Linkbuildr on Twitter. You can also come ask me a question on our Facebook Page.  

Can I Get 5000 Links Please?

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November 11  |  Black Hat  |   Ryan Clark

I’ve been meaning to start up a more humorous themed post once a month and finally I found my first bit of bait. I have the link building keyword as one of my main columns in Hootsuite, and I always see the strangest freelancer jobs. This one stood out because it perplexed me, as well made me chuckle quite a bit. I also like how he wants 5000 links within a few days but requests no blackhat methods! I for one do not know many legit ways to get that many links quickly, nor would I want to. I thought you readers might get a kick from the list of demands needed to get this “job” done;

GUIDELINES:

– Absolutely no black hat or Grey hat tactics. We require white hat techniques only.
– NO ARTICLE or Directory Sites, No Comments,
– Sites have to be 4 Years old at least. And no registration modification of the domain in the last 2 years.
– Links must be strictly from: Google PR5+ pages (home page page rank, iframes, other page ranks do NOT count)
– Back link pages must relate to our site topic(diet, hCG diet)
– URLs must be live as soon as you create them
– Free one-way manual links.
– No subdomains, back links must be on a www.
– Links must be from English, languages websites only.
– Links must be permanent and static HTML. You agree to replace any links which are removed within 6 months after placement.
– Link pages and our text links must be visible, readable, indexable and do-follow.
– Linked sites must be search engine friendly, established and fully active.
– Pages must be indexed and cached by Google, Yahoo and Bing within last 60-80 days
– Domains must be from different IP addresses and different Class-C IP addresses.
– Only these domains .com/.co.uk / com.au /.gov/.edu/,de,.eu,org,.net
– Prefer high ranking Alexa sites.
– No article directories, link farms, forums, spam sites, web rings, gambling, or adult sites, or link directories.
– We reserve the right to cancel any link if not found suitable.
– Links that are not approved will have to be replaced by service provider.
– Reports must be submitted to us daily.

NOT ALLOWED
– No directory submissions, forum posts, article submissions, links from guest books, within newsgroups, yahoo groups, CL sites.
– No black hat and other unethical SEO. spam techniques. Only ethical work will be accepted.
– No links from rel=”nofollow” or “noindex” tag for pages themselves and for anchor text
– No robots.txt blocking, fake PR, banned by Google, Yahoo, Bing sites
– No use of automated software or bots.
– NO PING SITES.
– No links from under construction pages.
– No java links, jump scripts, framed pages, redirects, cloaking, CSS redirects, 301 redirects, dynamic links, flash sites/pages, hidden links, no string parameters, session ID’s, etc.
– No link farms and link exchange programs or web rings such as backlinks.com, Gotlinks.com, Linkpartners.com, LinksToYou.com etc., no rented links, FFA sites, illegal websites, hate-based websites, violent websites, cracking or hacking websites, no blacklisted or spam sites, links from “bad neighborhood” sites (e.g. link farms, porn and so on), ping sites, etc.
– No scraped content, mirror sites, orphaned link pages, link schemes and sites overrun with contextual ads, popups, ads, sponsored links, intrusive advertising, classified sites, labeled links, etc.
– No adult websites or with illegal content.
-Domain page and its URL must not contain words links and sponsor.
– No classified ads
– No dynamic links

So we can see here they’re either insane or really dumb to think this task will be completed properly. This also goes to show you why legit companies need to stay away from freelancer sites when it comes to hiring a consultant. This also goes to show you why Google has implemented anchor text filters within the last few years, and I can bet you this person will end up getting caught.

Anyone have any stories to tell about freelancer site link building?

Google Adds Rich Snippets For Ecommerce Sites

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November 7  |  Ecommerce SEO  |   Ryan Clark

One of our main areas of consulting we handle is Ecommerce which is, and has been the craziest area of marketing in the past couple of years…in my opinion of course. Times are changing fast within Google and it’s a completely different game as of late. With the Caffeine updates, more branding coming into play and all sorts of SERP tweaks how’s a webmaster to stay sane? To help grab some extra attention within the listings, especially if your shop has had some rough times in the past 6 months, Google has introduced rich snippets. I’ve just been getting clients to dive in and start playing with the feature, so I don’t have much of my own data to go on just yet. I’ve changed my shops so I’ll definitely take a deeper look into things after I’ve had a few more months of data.

All you have to do to get your product review information in your rich snippets is submit your product ratings directly in your feed. You can also work with one of Google’s reviews partners to submit your rich information. If you work with a partner, your reviews information will appear in rich snippets, and shoppers on Google Product Search will be able to see your full-length reviews on your relevant product pages, and they’re even branded with your logo. This is also another hint, in my mind, to get more of a focus on branding.

 

 

Antoine Dodson’s Sex Offender App Commercial

2 Comments
October 28  |  Brand Building  |   Ryan Clark

While I’m all over the map when it comes to branding your business, I’m trying to keep up with all the tactics going on these days. Youtube “sensation” Antoine Dodson has somehow become famous, and I’m sure you’ve seen his face at one point in time within the past month.While this guy somehow is still popular is beyond me…I even saw him on TMZ the other day although I don’t like to publicly admit I watch the show from time to time. The company behind The Sex Offender Tracker App pulled a good move by hiring Antoine because it will entertain the fans, and it will annoy the hell out of everyone else! Any press is good press, so when Forbes.com started bitching away they helped sealed the success of this app for now, as well as a little help from me of course. This is another great example of branding that brings in all sorts of citations from Twitter mentions, thousands of links from blogs and of course links from the biggest and most authoritative news sites on the web….bravo! If you’re company is still just trying to build anchor text link after anchor text link then wake up and realize more needs to be done.

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BOTW Discount/Coupon 3 Days Left!

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October 28  |  Link Directories  |   Ryan Clark

My favorite web directory, Best Of The Web, has yet another discount in the works and it’s about to expire. I know a lot of people like to take advantage of a quality link from a reputable source, so now’s your chance on the cheap. The coupon code is SAVE20 and it will knock off %20 of the regular price which turns out to be a nice chunk of change. There are only three days left to act on this deal so decide quick or wait it out for the next discount run they usually do a few times per year.

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Atomic Tom Performs With iPhones On The NYC Subway

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October 26  |  Brand Building  |   Ryan Clark

The phone wars are taking it to the streets these days and while this isn’t the first impromptu subway concert, nor will it be the last, its still an amazing marketing ploy. I’m a huge fan of this style of advertising mainly because there is a lot of focus on the art, but still trying to sell you something in the end. We will no doubt see a lot more of this across other cities in North America, but NYC is obviously the best place to try this out. Atomic Tom apparently had their gear stolen so rocked out on their iPhones instead. Both parties involved in this should stand to make a good ROI on this video just from Youtube alone. The hype has also stirred up a lot of Twitter chatter, and tons of links from blogs within the entertainment and tech industries. Moral of the story? Do something different!

 

 

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Let Your Customers Do Your Marketing

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October 26  |  Brand Building  |   Ryan Clark

In a world of unstoppable social media you have to sometimes sit back and let your brand take off. For large corporations, this can be an easy task due to the amount of fans out there armed with a video camera and some wifi. In this case, McDonald’s got some free advertising from the The LOL Boys in form of a little rap track parody of Rick Ross’s “Hustlin“. While the song is slightly NSFW due to language, this shouldn’t matter anymore….at all! This is something the corporation would most likely never do( in North America anyway) in this current day an age, so sit back and enjoy the free PR. I know McDonald’s is heavily geared towards children, but what’s worse…a little swearing and a large black man naked in a tub of cheeseburgers, or the actual content the food is made of? By the end of the week this video might see a million views, so listen up McDonald’s and send these boys some Bic Mac coupons!

 

 

Yahoo Site Explorer Not Working Properly

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October 24  |  Link Building Tools  |   Ryan Clark

I was just experiences then reading about recent issues with Yahoo’s Site Explorer not reporting the correct amount of backlinks (as if that exists lol). I still use it quite a bit, especially with a quick SEO Quake fix, so it’s good to know that the Yahoo team is working with the Bing team to bring it all back to working order. The good folks at Webmaster World definitely have a thread going, and Vanessa Fox already blogged about it so I won’t go into too much detail.

Basically, you can bet that Bing is working on integrating the data into their Webmaster center, and hopefully it gets a sprucing up. We all know Google’s tool is garbage for the most part…no surprise there though really. For now I always recommend Link Diagnosis to pull Yahoo’s data since the API version is still working normal. You can of course try out SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer or try out Majestic SEO. Here’s what the Yahoo team had to say officially;

We are working with the Microsoft team to ensure that webmasters can continue to use Yahoo! Site Explorer to view inlinks (a.k.a backlinks) to a given webpage or a website and to further be able to export them as CSV if desired.

Please note that this functionality will be available only through the Site Explorer UI and not through the Webservices API.

Hemant Minocha
Product Manager, Y! Site Explorer

Read more: http://suggestions.yahoo.com/detail/?prop=SiteExplorer&fid=217076

Promote Yourself With Superscout.com

3 Comments
October 24  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

For those of you running your own consulting business online, here’s a tip to help bring in some more business, do a little more branding and even bring yourself a nice link. We of all people know that when you start to get really busy with clients, the less time you have to market your services to new potential businesses. This can eventually catch up to you so hopefully this site helps keeps things flowing and pushes a little extra branding for your services, and the company.

Superscout.com provides both employers and employees a social network for brand and job growth. While you can get a company link, that shouldn`t be the main focus of use. Remember that I`ve toned down my public link releases just because the majority of people on the interwebs spam. So put the site to good use by taking advantage by putting up your company profile, add your latest jobs and keep in touch with job applicants who you connect with.

For consultants like myself, you can get quick and easy access to all the jobs and employers all the while keeping track of what`s going on. The one really interesting factor from an employee`s end of things is the real contact with companies I`ve experienced on here. Superscout.com does a great job and keeping companies coming back and active, so take advantage while the getting is good!