I’ve been researching the new and interesting blog tool called Psolenoid. So what is it? Well it is a tool to link related blog posts at the bottom of your written post. You can define a set of trusted blogs, and works kind of like the related posts plugin I have here at the bottom of my articles. I’m going to be using this on here for a bit and seeing how well it does in terms of traffic. I hope Google takes kindly to this system, but I’m sure it will be fine because it’s about getting traffic from related sites and not influencing the SERPs. Here’s a short and to the point video which graphically shows you how this tool works;
Link Building
Check Backlinks With Linkdiagnosis.com
December 16 | Link Building Tools | Ryan Clark
I’ve been playing around with Link Diagnosis for the past few days and I like what I’m seeing so far. So what is it? Well thus far it is a free link analyzing tool that digs out a whole bunch of data on the backlinks of any given domain. So far you cannot analyze a “deep link”, and only the main url at the moment, but from what I gathered on the Link Diagnosis Blog, that will be coming in the near future. This web based tool requires a Firefox plugin in order to calculate the anchor text used when linking, as well as other data it gathers. I highly recommend playing around with it yourself because you’ll quickly see what a nifty tool this is for seeing the data you need in a visual way.
So as for what does this tool all do? To start it analyzes all your backlinks via Yahoo’s Site Explorer, so no finicky Google reporting. The beauty of this tool is that it doesn’t count all the dozens, sometimes hundreds, of backlinks from a single domain which really don’t count. This makes for viewing everything much cleaner and faster! This tool also reports back with what anchor text you were linked from, and then makes a top list of all the anchor texts so you know what you need to work on. Link Diagnosis also uses a formula to give each page you are linked on a certain strength, quality score, trust rank…whatever you’d like to call it. The formula used for this is;
How is strength calculated?
PR=5 , 10 outgoing links
Power(5+1,3) / 10 = (6 power 3 ) / 10 = 216 / 10 = 22
Strength is calculated as follows:
\n Strength = Power(PR + 1,3) * 4 / links
Link Diagnosis also reports on what your top linked pages are as well as the strength of those pages. I’ve been really watching my anchor text distribution for good measure and this has made my life a lot easier. To top it all off you also get a couple of nice graphs that show you your pagerank distribution as well what percentage of links you are getting…as in good, meh and crap. I’ve taken a screenshot of a report on Linkbuildr.
So all in all I can’t wait for more from the folks who make this tool! I hope they come leave us all some comments on what’s going on lately. As I write this they are working on an updated free version, as well as a paid version which will have a bunch more features…none that I’m aware of. They’re looking for feedback so if you’d like to give them any, you can drop your comments at this blog post.
Link Building & Social Media Marketing For Women
I’ve just finished helping a client with her site that was selling products geared towards women, and I’ve learned quite a bit. I’ve learned that women are very savvy when it comes to researching and buying online, and they love to social network. In the past I’ve based a lot of my niche blogs after shopping for my girlfriend mainly because I know a lot of men do affiliate marketing, and it gave me a different perspective. I may be going out on a limb here when I say this, but I think women follow trends a little more then us men which can provide a good avenue for making money online. I’ve dabbled into such niche’s as handbags, diet products, cosmetics and shoes. So after doing a bunch of link building and SMM for my latest client I thought I would put up this post.
Social Networks & Media Sites For Women:
iVillage.com is on of the most authoritative and oldest social networking sites for women and it’s a must if you’re writing content. This site has pretty much everything including forums, articles and blogs on just about every topic that matters. This is a great place to create content and if you’re promoting a brand this is the place to be. I haven’t spent much time to see where you can build links, but so far the only place I can see is in the forums.
Glam.com is the place to be for fashion, style and beauty and is a very large network. The site gets over 40 million readers a month which should be plenty of potential for marketing. With Glam you can setup your own profile, blog and join the forums. You can get a dofollow link on your profile as well in your blog posts which is great if you’re a writer. There are so many users on here you should have 0 problem networking with like minded people. If you write something good you stand a chance to be featured on the front page with a link to your blog…expect traffic and a strong link!
Youronramp.com is a social networking and media site for professional women from all areas of business and life. This is a great place to network with professionals, promote your resume and business through blogs, forums and articles. Among all this you can get dofollow links within your blog posts and profile which makes it an added bonus. This is a place for great content so please join only if you have something worthy to contribute to the community.
Cafemom.com is pretty much the Myspace for moms! If you want to connect with other mothers from around the world and share photos, blog entries and products you can do all of this here. The site has a ton of members and you can keep a journal or write a blog all included with dofollow links within that, as well as your profile. I have a new project I’ve been working on which includes a few baby products, so I’ll be fully testing this one out later.
Parentsconnect.com is a social network for parents that’s funded by Nickelodeon and features mostly articles and tips for parents. The user profiles are viewed only when signed in so there’s no SEO benefit there, but this is a powerful place to promote content. You are encouraged to write about products and tips for parents which you can include a link to, but they are all nofollow. But when it comes to marketing you have to think past the link and focus on great content to attract the user.
Kaboose.com is another very active social network for parents, but mainly moms. This is a great place to get your content out as well link to products or your blog. Keep in mind this site is nofollow but still a great place to promote your content. If you write something good enough you can be featured on the main page which drives a lot of quality traffic, so make sure to write something great. This is another place I’ll be marketing a few baby products with and I’ll let you all know how it goes.
TeamSugar.com is a social networkin and media site geared towards the teens and young 20 somethings. This site features everything you can imagine from user profiles to blogs, forums, videos, chat and so much more. This is a great place to blog about your products and tips for teens, and if you’ve done your research, you’ll know that this age demographic is a very productive one. Influencing this generation will result in sales galore! The user profiles are for signed in members only, but you can get dofollow links within your blog posts which do get indexed.
Minti.com is a growing social network for moms and parents but is heavily dominated by active moms. This site has all the features like blogs, microblogging, question & answers, forums and advice. This is a great place to connect with like minded people and you can get dofollow links from a couple of ways. To start you get a blog which provides dofollow links within the content, or you can submit your external blog’s RSS feed right into your profile. You can also add a link to the advice section of your own posts or someone elses by using the “add external link” feature at the bottom of the post.
Gut-Women.com is a social news portal site that looks like it runs on Pligg and is set to nofollow, but is a great place to get traffic. It is 100% community driven and works the same as you’d expect most of the other sites out there. Not too sure about the name though….seems a little strange.
Mothersclick.com is another social networking and media site for Mom’s that has all the features you could need. This site is not as big as some of the others but has more than enough users to reach out to. One of the features they have over others is a decently active classifieds section, so if you’re selling something you can make use of it without getting in trouble. It seems you can get dofollow links within your blog posts and they can be pushed to the frontpage for extra exposure.
Kirtsy.com is a social news portal that delivers on topics like style, health and parenting for women. Kirtsy is a very active social site that although nofollow’s its links, still provides a burst of targeted traffic to your site. If you can make the front page you’re in for a treat, and a decent amount of traffic that will be 99% women.
PrettySocial.net is another digg clone for women that is the only one I could find that provides a dofollow link to your website. PrettySocial is free to join and you’ll be pleased to hear has a lot of user activity so if you submit something good, you stand a great chance of hitting the front page. By the looks of its Alexa ranking, you should expect a few hundred hits to your submitted content if it goes viral.
Tagged Link Building, marketing, social media marketing, women
Link Building With IntenseDebate.com
December 8 | Link Building | Ryan Clark
Intense Debate is a cool and effective system for inspiring people to comment. Blog comments haven’t had much innovation in the past couple of years except maybe for the likes of Commentluv, so I welcomed this cool new app when I discovered it searching through someones backlinks. Intense Debate keeps track of your comments and can track your commenting across the web, so long as those blogs have the plugin installed.
There are many features that intensify your commenting experiencing, and with it installed I only noticed it interfere with one other plugin, Commentluv. Other than that my theme integrated well and I didn’t notice a problem with any other plugin on the blog. Intense Debate adds comment threading which allows your an easier read, especially on a heated topic. You can also reply to comments right from your email which works great with your mobile phone on the go. Since it is all run through a plugin back to the main site you get tracking for all your users as well as detailed stats like top commenters, most commented post and so on. The importing feature worked great as well, as soon as I intalled the plugin I had all my comments formatted into Intense Debate within minutes.
So now on to the link building aspect…your user profile on the Intense Debate site will get indexed on its own or, or with a little help, so with the power of dofollow this is a great way to build legit links from an authoritative website. When you setup your profile you’ll be able to add in your blog, and if you name it properly you’ll get an anchor text friendly link to your site as well to your RSS feed. This is great because it’s one simple link and there is little room for spammers to abuse this site which I like, and makes it easier to write about without worrying the folks at Intense Debate. Check out my awesome GIMP editing skills to demonstrate where you get a link;
So I hope I can get a bunch of you to sign up and perhaps get this system going on your blogs to liven things up a bit. If you like you can add me as a friend and we can keep track of our online chitter chatter, or perhaps future flame wars :)
Linking Secrets for Professional Real Estate Websites
This is my first guest post I’ve had on the blog and I’d like to thank the author Patric Herber from Real Estate License Direct for writing this post while I’ve been quite sick with the flu. Patric has been link building in the real estate niche for quite some time and knows what it takes to stand out in a really tough niche.
Quick, if you can’t handle the truth cover your ears for this first bit. Are you ready? Real estate is one of the most difficult niches to build links in, period. Why? Because the industry has a bad name! Ninety percent of all real estate websites are little more than spam infested hubs for low-life wanna be webmasters that can’t compete in niches with more tech savvy competition.
So what does this bad reputation mean for a professional real estate website? Well, it means:
- There is less “natural linking” among real estate webmasters due to a lack of trust within the niche itself.
- There are fewer authority links available because a lot of authority websites have closed their doors to anything real estate related. I have seen a lot of segregation here for our industry, it is quite unfortunate.
- There will be more work involved in obtaining enough links to rank for anything competitive.
- That basically you can expect less links, less love and a whole lot more work but the end result is truly a wonderful thing, because online, the real estate industry gets a great deal of quality traffic that can easily convert to quality clients.
So now that you know what problems you’re likely to face, you can begin to create a solution that will separate you from the rest of the real estate industry. You should know that I am not going to preach about writing great content and networking within the industry, chances are you probably already know and do that(hint, hint). But rather I want to direct your thoughts towards the real muscle behind a successful real estate website, quality inbound links from related websites.
Let me give you some methods that I use to build real estate links, but first I want you to remember one thing, “Anyone can build a million low quality backlinks from un-related websites, but how well do you think those links will make you rank?” So here are some link building methods I use, in no specific order:
- Guest Writing – In any niche, but especially real estate, we find that the best quality links come from providing quality content. Now I know that sounds a little cliche’ but it works. I have seen sites with a hundred backlinks out rank older websites with thousands of links using this method, I highly recommend you try it out. Finding guest writing opportunities is really pretty easy, try a few of these searches:
“real estate” +”write for us”
“real estate” +”our contributors”
“real estate” +”submit an article”
“real estate” +”guest bloggers”
inurl:real estate “guest bloggers”
inurl:real estate “write for us”
“real estate” +”guest posts” - Visit news websites – What I really like about news websites are that they are often considered authority sites and they can just about go with any niche. In the past, I have found a lot of news services such as CNN and similar sites that offer community services where you can strategically place links to your site. For instance, MSN has community forums with dofollow signature links, some other services allow you to create profiles, profile pages are often great places to place links. Just do a search for news, and start running through each service one by one, you will be amazed at how many opportunities you can find.
- Utilize the Industry Leaders – Some times to find the best opportunities(ie. the best links) you need to visit the authorities within the industry. But don’t stop there, there is much more to real estate than just real estate, it is a business which means that you can combine the two for valuable links. Here are a few of the websites on my routine, all of which allow for dofollow links in one form or another:
Active Rain – Real estate community that allows you to publish blog posts with links in them.
Work.com – One of the leading business resource sites, you can publish how-to guides on virtually any subject with links to your site.
Inman News – Popular real estate news site that has dofollow comments.
BizJournals – Another business resource that will allow you to setup an account and write business articles and news stories. - Build out your website – Some of the best links come from within your own website. A website that is inner-linked very well and has a lot of rich pages will naturally have more link authority. I was able to drastically increase my rankings using this very method, so I know it works well. Give it a shot and see for yourself.
So when it comes to marketing a real estate website, you really need to change your mind set from link builder to opportunist, because as you can see above, great real estate links are all about hard work and opportunity. In fact, when I am building links for our real estate projects, I never “look for links”, I look for opportunities to provide value and build back the reputation that has been lost among the community.
Link Building With Google Code(Nofollow)
December 4 | Link Building | Ryan Clark
Before I write this post I’m warning everyone that the potential to spam this resource is here and I urge you to only make use of Google Code if you have software that’s open source and Google API related. You don’t want to end up spamming this resource which is owned by Google….I can’t imagine it would go well for you. I’ve been doing some link building for a client that has software and noticed his competitor had a very authitative back link from code.google.com which was nofollow but anchor text friendly. This is a resource for Google API developers and also offers hosting that provides revision control using Subversion.
So this was taken from the project AIMlbot4glider and you can see how a page is layed out for a project. So I know this is a nofollow link, but I’m a firm believer that it’s still beneficial from authitative sites….and this Google we’re talking about. So if you are programming something with the Google API be sure to setup a project page which should be done if the resource is there right?
Tagged google code, Link Building, nofollow
Link Fish Media
December 2 | Uncategorized | Ryan Clark
I’ve got my plate full this month with clients and I wanted to start blogging about other companies that have got my respect, as well most of the industries as well. I am kicking off the new section to this blog entitled Link Building Companies, and it will showcase other great people who can get the job done right. First up is no stranger to the SEO and link building world and they go by the name of Link Fish Media. I always like to mention that this post was in no way paid for or suggested by Link Fish Media and is written out of respect for industry leaders who I think would be great to handle your campaign.
I first heard about the company through one of the owners, Julie Joyce, whom articles can be seen all over the web including Search Engine Land. It’s always good to familiarize yourself with a company before making the plunge, and going with people who are loud in the community gives you the opportunity to make a smart decision. The other half of Link Fish Media brings another well respected member to the table…I’m sure most of you have heard of Jay Young. You may have seen him speak at SES London, or read something on the SEO Blokes Blog.
Link Fish Media handles all aspects of link building from the initial building blocks right up to getting your viral content linked all over the web. Remember that these two have years of experience and what I like most is they take a unique approach to your link building campaign, and not just some cookie cutter directory submission and social bookmarking. So if you’re looking for professional link building then please get in touch with Link Fish Media.
Link Building With Blogoculars.com
December 2 | Link Building | Ryan Clark
Blogoculars.com is a free news source that takes its content from blogs from all walks of life. I’ll mention right out front that 99% of the links with this service are nofollow, but it’s a great place to attract new readers within your niche. Blogoculars has a great user interface and you can submit your blog within seconds which gets you your own Blogoculars Page. The only dofollow link you get is on the right panel under your user bio, although it isn’t anchor text friendly.If you’re done reading and ready to sign up you can add your blog.
What is Blogoculars about?
Blogoculars is a live blogging directory powered by news feeds. Designed for blog writers and readers, we aim to help people find blogs which interest them and help bloggers promote their place on the web. We index a wide variety of blogs which are submitted by users themselves. To add your blog to the site please sign up.
Tagged blog directory, blogoculars, Link Building, nofollow
