I haven’t seen too much banter lately on the Google “Note This” feature within the search listings so I thought I’d see what you guys had to say. I’ve been noting my stuff and other sites for the past 6 months, unfortunately there really isn’t a way to tell if it has had any effect. I have no doubt in my mind this data will be used within Google’s ranking algorithm, just when is the question. How many of you have been using the Note This feature?
I want to introduce the few of you who haven’t heard of these most amazing set of SEO tools I’ve ever got my hands on to this date. I’m going to be playing around with Raven SEO Tools this weekend and report back next monday, hopefully with the first episode of the Link Building Podcast. I’m going to be working on a new project of mine and using it as the demo website for my initial tests. I’d like to thank Matt and Jon from Sitening for getting in touch and giving me the opportunity to play around with their amazing software. Sitening, for those that don’t know, are the creators of Raven among other things. They are a very well respected Internet Marketing company as well do some very fine Web Application Development.
One thing I haven’t noticed a lot of people talk about is building links to your social media content which can do wonders for both your flow of link juice, but also within the top 10 rankings. I offer this to my clients during a link building campaign and I’ll tell you what I tell them. Unless they have unique and quality content this won’t work out so well, or will look badly. Keep in mind that all the content in forms of words you put out there on social media sites, make sure it’s unique to avoid the ever so dreaded dupe content penalty.
Most social media sites will rank for most long tail keywords, and even for a highly competitive keyword if done right. This can be a powerful method because if you’re launching a new service or product within a tough niche, you can at least start grabbing some top search engine spots with your social media while you wait for your main site to develop some trust. A lot of these sites allow you to obtain a one way link which helps in the long run greatly. If you think about it you’re getting that link within content that’s on topic and coming from an authorative site.
Gain More Than One Top 10 Ranking:
There are so many social media sites out there I suggest you stick with the best to begin with, then venture out into the web 2.0 web and find more social sites that perhaps are designed around your niche. When I’m working with clients on a contract basis it usually involves me using social media to get information about them or their product within the top 10-20 spots in Google. This can be as simple as creating a Youtube video and naming it after the keyword you’re targeting, hell, make a few videos even. Another method is getting a Flickr picture ranked well by again titling it with the proper keywords and then doing things like sharing the picture with Flickr groups and other social photography sites. There are so many other posibilites such as the ever popular Squidoo and Hubpages which if done right can rank easily.
Facebook has recently allow business’s to create pages which I’ve seen starting to rank well for a lot of keywords. Getting your business listed with the Yellow Pages can also get your company listed in the business listings that show up at the top of a Google search page, as well within Google Maps. I’ve even seen a lot of people target their Craigslist ads with the right title and keywords which ranked very well for a lot of juicy keywords.
So you can see that the benefit of having quality content up on these sites for not only links but exposure. Now not all of the social media content you create will make it within the top 10 or even 20 spots in Google. So this is where some well crafted and cautious link building can be done to push the already weighted link up in the SERPs. Depending on where and what type of media you’re pushing you’ll want to approach the link building in a smart manor. Lets go over a few of the social media sites in the next bit here.
Building Links To Your Social Media:
Youtube – Youtube usually has little to no trouble ranking for most long tail keywords and hard to rank for terms. It’s no secret that Google loves video, owns Youtube, and it’s starting to have the same love as Wikipedia once did. Youtube videos ranks are also influenced by the rating on Youtube, and Google can tell when a video is quality and original. You can do a few simple things like social bookmarking your video to give it an extra link juice boost. Incorporating your video within your Squidoo pages, Hubpages and other social media will help bring up its quality as well give it a few links.
Squidoo – Squidoo pages are great because you can create a content rich page with not only articles, but with other forms of social media all tied in. Link Building for your Squidoo Lens is worth the time and has an abundance of different options. First off you can submit your Lens to a number of sites designed to promote Squidoo Len’s which I’ve already blogged about. This alone will greatly help with the ranking of your Lens.
Flickr – Flickr is an amazing site that is love by Google and Yahoo(I wonder why :) and provides a great way to bring some targeted traffic. Make sure to appropriatly name your photos and then join related Flickr groups to share your pictures. There are several photo sharing sites and blogs, and if you can create some photography that is not only showing off your business or product, but viral in nature. A great picture can go a long way and attract visitors from places a lot of businesses are not tapping into. A client of mine managed to attract a lot of business by taking a lot of great photo sets of a conference he went to which lead to that album ranking well and attracting a lot of search traffic. This is just one great example of how this can work for you. And if all else fails throw a few social bookmarks to the picture page to speed up the indexing process.
RSS Feed Sites – RSS feed sites have been popping up all over the place and RSS Link Building has become a great tool to gain more exposure and links. A lot of the more popular feed sites like RSS Hugger and MillionRSS are great places to have your feed profile ranked within the search engines. This is an added bonus because you’re already getting links and feed subscribers from these sites! There are also RSS based news sites that also provide another way for your media to sneak up in the search engines. Two great examples of sites like this are Aide RSS and Toluu which both give you links and their feed profile pages rank well in the search engines.
Well I hope this has given you folks some more to think about and I know I’m doing nothing but creating 10x the work load for you. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments on what you think or especially from anyone doing this in their link building campaigns.
I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with a full time link builder and cartoonist extroidanaire. He goes online by the name of SEOKevin and can be seen here in the comments. He is responsible for my now favorite comic strip of all time(sorry Calvin & Hobbes), Kevin & the Googlebots. The comic is based around many hilarious scenarious mixed with real life mixed in with a whole lot of well thought out SEO humor. I know if I showed this to my normal friends they would most likely not enjoy this as much as you folks. IF anyone from one of the bigger SEO sites such as Search Engine Journal see’s this comic then I’d urge you to get it on as a weekly feature…this is one form of comedy not to be missed. Here’s a taste of Kevin’s work and if you like what you see, get in contact and let him know you enjoyed it so he keeps putting them out!
Well folks I’ve been slacking and you all know it! But I’m back and settled into my new place which is still a mess. I’ll get some pictures up this week hopefully…once it’s cleaned up. I’ve been doing some research on new techniques, watching a bunch of authoritative websites for new and interesting methods and have managed to snag a few really good ideas. I’m going to be testing them out before I disclose them just quite yet, but this is a good time to remind you to keep your eye on sites in hot niches for ways to build links. It’s almost impossible not to find a hidden gem after a few hours of close inspection.
The link building front has been decently quiet over the past few weeks, with me moving and Collin starting college and the Link Building Bible being sold. I’ve still managed to slap together enough information for everyone to stay busy for the next week while I get the new link building resources for the public eye.
Way back at the beginning of the month I wrote about link building by being a guest blogger. There are a ton of blogs out there who already offer to exchange guest blog posts, and it also doesn’t hurt to go around asking. You can use good old Google to rely on to find us some great blogs to apply to. I’m sure most of my readers here are familiar with Google commands and can hack their way around with little or no problems. This opens up a whole bunch of possibilites in finding blogs to post on, it is as easy as just searching for things like “write a guest blog post” or “guest blogger“. You can even get more specific by using Google’s inurl command to try and narrow it down by niche. Even though this method is still not that popular, you should be able to find a few places to write for within your niche.
Pikter is a web 2.0 Flickr clone that is pretty well setup and brand spanking new. Since the site is so new there isn’t much PR being passed around, but Pikter is a site to keep your eye on. They allow photo comments which includes two simple forms to fill out. Since the two forms are only your name and your web address, you can easily nab a do follow link on the photo page. I’m going to be using Pikter in the future for some viral testing, and what do I mean by that? Well I want to try and get some photos going viral on the web, and if possible I’ll be able to benefit from the link on the page
Well we all know that buying paid links is a no-no in Google, but we also know that it’s banned for a reason. If you want a quiet and great way to buy one-way links with no worries then it’s time to check out Backlinks.com. They allow you to either buy, sell or trade achnored links within your content, blogroll or pretty much anywhere you can muster. There is a large list of sites signed up with Backlinks.com so you should have no trouble finding relevant sites within your niche to obtain links from. If you’re skeptical buying links this way your best bet is to try it out on a test site to see the results for yourself.
I’ve been working on a Canadian clients blog for the past couple of weeks and I’ve been putting together a list of places to link build for Canadian sites. In this day and age you’re going to need relevant links to boost your site within a certain country. So Canada is our target country and the land of good beer, hot women and strong weed is relatively untapped. Ranking within Google.ca wasn’t too hard for my clients target niche, and it didn’t take more than a couple hundred backlinks to dominate every keyword they wanted. Keep in mind the lists I’m making public are not quite the one I’ve got in its entirety, but it should give you enough work to do for a few days as well give you what you need to look for.
Monkiri is a user friendly tool that enables a web user to capture and share interesting web pages or part of a web page with others. Monkiri lets you grab any part of the web page and instantly publish it either on your Monikri blog or send it to your Blogger or WordPress blog. Literally Monkiri means the Japanese art of paper cutting. Newspaper clippings are always a means amongst any knowledge enthusiasts to store a piece of information. In the web world Monkiri meets the same need. Monkiri lets one read and write blogs about any item published on a website.
MyBlogJournal’s project born in June 2006 from a Erc Investiment Company. It has begun to develop a revolutionary project to create a new relationship between media and consumers, with the intention of making the consumer from passive to active. Our thoughts and our philosophy embrace the “web 2.0” and “open source”. MyBlogJournal is a really cool service to blog socially and become a part of the community that can manage the blogosphere in a “Wikipedia” like manor. The site is already populated with millions of articles from thousand of internet magazines and blogs and every kind of images, videos and podcasts according to your interests.
Ann Smarty from search engine journal of course didn’t dissapoint you all like I did this month. She was busy writing great article after article. If you don’t follow her I highly recommend her over almost anyone in the link building industry, even over myself lolz. Her recent article touched on my post about link building with your resume, and took it even further! Ann dropped a few different types of sites not just for your resume, but also for your online reputation management. You can read her post here called Build Links and Manage Reputation with your Resume.
Luna from BloomSEO wrote an interesting post on link building with games, and yes she means online web games. She discusses ways to use free games to submit around to game sites which provide a link back, as well having a new game created to get a little buzz going. This is the kind of thinking I like to see, so hopefully it gives you folks some good ideas.
One of the contributing members from SEOmoz has put together an amazing list of link building tips from all the great posts on SEOmoz. This was put together from a beginners point of view, and should give you a good read on the last couple of years link building methods. You can go here to read Link Building Notes Of A SEO Kindergartner.
That should wrap up this weeks edition, but if anyone has anything to add you know the drill. The comments are do follow and I welcome you to post links to your blog post as long as it’s relevant. I’ll hopefully have a good bunch of links for next week so send them in to make my life easier!
Monkiri is a user friendly tool that enables a web user to capture and share interesting web pages or part of a web page with others. Monkiri lets you grab any part of the web page and instantly publish it either on your Monikri blog or send it to your Blogger or WordPress blog. Literally Monkiri means the Japanese art of paper cutting. Newspaper clippings are always a means amongst any knowledge enthusiasts to store a piece of information. In the web world Monkiri meets the same need. Monkiri lets one read and write blogs about any item published on a website.
So the good part about this really cool web 2.0 bookmarking site is that you can obtain a do follow link only on your profile page with achnor text, and a do follow link from the clippet you put up on your profile. I like that because you can’t abuse their service with massive link dropping, and you will actually get some traffic because this is a really cool tool for bookmarking. I’ve been loving the fresh ideas people are coming up with these days to do social media sharing and this is the latest and greatest example. If you’re done reading and want to start clipping, then go ahead and sign up to Monkiri.
AideRSS is a really slick interface that parses your favorite feeds by its own rating system called the PostRank. This system takes in many variables of the blog post such as amount of comments, rating and inbound links to the post to determine which ones you should most likely be reading. I’ve been using the software for a while now out of pure personal enjoyment, so take your time and check the site out. This site is put together by a cool group of people that really take an interest in the site so please don’t abuse the services they provide.
You can watch a screencast which shows you the basics of AideRSS and what it is for, and how to use it. They introduce the concept of PostRank, the core technology behind AideRSS, and how it can help you find and read what matters. Within the system you can enter your blog(s) and as you’ll see upon viewing my AideRSS page how your backlinks are produced. They also take in effect your posts “rippel effect” in the social media world such as Digg, Delicious and others. They have managed to hold a Goolge page rank 7, so that means they’re doing something right in the 2.0 world. The more feeds you pump into their system the better AideRSS gets.
Our company
Based in Waterloo, Canada, AideRSS Inc. is a privately held company created to help deal with daily information overload, and our overwhelmed feed readers. Utilizing the latest cloud computing technologies, and distributed algorithms we created the PostRank™ filtering process. With a great mix of strong technical and creative talents, our team continues to innovate on finding new information management solutions.
The folks at AideRSS have been featured on Leo Laporte’s TWiT and all the major blogs such as Mashable and Life Hacker. The entire team’s bio is online as well a look into their office life on Flickr. They also happen to be hiring, so if anyone has some programming skills give them a shout.
I was scouring Youtube for link building videos, and while having a good chuckle at some, there was a pretty good video series from the folks at Themematic. A lot of people have blogged and discussed methods of using social media websites such as Squidoo, Hubpages(etc etc etc) for the purpose of providing quality one-way links to your main websites. There’s almost no need to exchange links anymore with websites because there are so many one-way link building options out there, why bother?
So the folks at Themematic have put together a formula as well as a product to teach people how they go about constructing this network to gain top ranks. I thought the video was well put together and it is worth the watch if you’re currently not doing something like this.
About ThemeMatic Software
ThemeMatic Software was designed specifically to take advantage of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques taught by Charles Heflin’s ‘The Master Plan’ and in conjuction with the team at Theme Zoom. After modifying an existing e-commerce site and creating another content site from scratch in accordance with ‘The Master Plan’, top ranking in Google was achieved very quickly. The need for a tool like ThemeMatic became blindingly obvious to us when top site rankings in highly-competitive markets became possible given the correct ‘Theme Density’, ‘Silo Site Structure’, ‘Internal Linking’, and removal of elements that cause ‘Theme Bleeding’. At the time that the ThemeMatic Software was being developed, there did not exist a single tool on the market that could achieve the above without massive manual effort on every page of one’s site (believe us, we tried it!)
