Stephan Miller » Linking

What “Sandra Bullok” Taught Me About Building Links Through Email

admin — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:01:34 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

This is a guest post by Brandon Hopkins

When I first got the email from “Sandra Bullok” I was excited. Did she want me opinion on Jesse James? Was she looking for a movie recommendation? Did she want my opinion on Beiber??

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the real Sandra Bullock, just a spammer. However, for the record I think Beiber gets a bad rap!

Just like anyone who owns a website, I get emails from “professional” link building companies every day. As we all know, they’re scraping email addresses, filling out comment forms and generally spamming in any way possible. Since it’s obvious that these emails are completely spam, we can use them to as a “What Not To Do When Building Links” guide. Here are some observations about building links through email.

1. Don’t be Generic.

If you don’t use my name, I won’t be reading your email. You will earn extra points and probably even a contact back if you use some other personal piece of information beside just my first name or email address. All you would have to do is read the “About Me” page to find that piece of info. Anything from a hobby to children would work.

Sandra’s Email Fail: Dear Webmaster,

2. Use a Company Name.

“SEO Company” isn’t actually a company. Instead use either your own name or a company name to make your email a little unique.

Sandra’s Email Fail: I am Sandra from SEO Company

3. Use Correct Capitalization and Punctuation.

Certain words, no matter how important they are, should be capitalized. Here is an easy to understand guide of capitalization instructions.

Sandra’s Email Fail: We are looking as a long term Link Exchange Partner with your team of link builders.

4. Features and Benefits

Since you’re essentially “selling” yourself and your website, you should know something about the sales process. One of the strongest sales tactics is showing the features then benefits of your product or service. In this case, the feature would be “You will be providing your website visitors with a website that will help them with XYZ.” The benefit would be “This will help them remember that your website gave them exactly what they were looking for, so they’re more likely to remember your website in the future”.

Sandra’s Email Feature Fail: I am excited to offer you a very good back link (no site or page was listed, we all know it’s going to be on a links.html page buried on some junk .info site registered yesterday)

Sandra’s Email Benefit Fail: none.

So how do you write a good email asking to either buy a link, or get a free link? Here is a template you can follow.

Hey Brandon, (never use “Dear Brandon,” or “Dear Mr. Hopkins,” or “Sir”, only spammers use those terms)
I wanted to let you know that I really liked your latest post about Twitter. I really liked the part about building a strong twitter following. That’s much more important that the total number of followers.
The reason I was emailing you was to see if you wanted to sell some advertising on the page, http://www.example.com. I have a website that would fit nicely and give your readers some additional information about Twitter resources.
My budget is fairly small, I’m just a guy with a website .
Let me know what you think.
Thanks!
Alexander Dombroff (don’t use a celeb’s name…)
p.s. your daughter is really cute! How old is she in that picture on your site? My daughter just turned 3 last week, they look about the same age.

There is a reason that buying links under the radar is so expensive, it takes a lot of time! All of this doesn’t include the actual cost of paying for the link, which is generally $20-$50 depending on the site. That is the same reason that people don’t mind spending money on a few high quality web directories like BOTW, Ezilon, and Yahoo! Directory.

Brandon Hopkins runs a team of freelance link builders with the one goal of getting your website to rank #1 for your terms. Contact Brandon at brandonchopkins@gmail.com to discuss link building!

Link Building – Creating Encyclopedic Content (wolf-howl.com)
Simple Link Building Mistakes You Should Avoid (pctechmojo.com)

A Few Updates to My Lists for Building Backlinks

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:40:00 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

I haven’t been posting for a couple weeks but I have been working on things. Here are some updates to my lists. There may still be some sites that don’t belong, but all are valid urls now. And they all have PageRank and Alexa Rank numbers now. The increase of sites in each is approximate since I really wasn’t paying attention:

I added about 70 free blog hosts to my free blog host list
I added about 300 bookmarking sites to my bookmarking site list
I added about 60 press release sites to my press release site list
I added about 500 classified sites to my classified site list

I plan on updating more of my lists and adding more lists in the upcoming weeks. I need the data for software I have just finally decided to write myself.

And now since they are on Google Docs, they will update automatically and you can submit your own sites with a form below the lists.

Have fun and build links!

Compare Google Pagerank and Alexa Rank Of Webpages From Search Results (techie-buzz.com)
Top 12 Web 2.0 Sites & Top 25 Article Sites – Resource (tokitover.com)
Linkextend: Display Alexa Rank And Google PageRank With Search Results (shoutmeloud.com)

Building Links Through DoFollow Forum Signatures

admin — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:01:43 +0000

I haven’t written a link building post in a while, because for the most part, I was off investigating other things. And getting way too complex. When I realized it’s the things I think are simple and run-of-the-mill that people really are looking to learn about. So as people ask me questions, I note them and try to write a post. I used to hate questions. Taking someone from “What’s a signature?” to viewing browser source in one sitting may be hard, but hopefully, it’s not impossible. Now I realize these questions are the master key to the type of traffic I want at this blog. So off we go.

Forums are basically where “social networks” started.

I talk to a lot of people who want to get traffic to their site. And they usually think I can tell them how in 10-15 minutes. So I try. Rarely do people listen. And out of those that listen, very few actually use what I tell them. I am not sure why this happens. Maybe they are lazy. Maybe they think, “How can something like that help me?”. But one guy I talked to I told to use forum signatures to build links. That was about all. I thought it was simple enough to get someone started. I told him to sign up for forums, add a signature file, forget about it and just converse. Put in your two cents where ever you can add something to the conversation. I did not list specific forums.

I told him that and I was thinking, yet another person not taking my advice. But I was wrong. A few weeks later, he came back to me and we checked the site. He has a micro business and is outranking local corporations here in Kansas City. He is doing this with a site built from templates. He doesn’t even know HTML. And what he used to do it, local business directories and forums. It blew my mind. One, for getting through to someone in 10 minutes. Two, for the results.

And since most people understand forums, I think it may be the best place for the average non-tech person to build links to his site, especially if you have the gift of gab. They have been around since they were called bulletin boards and some still are. You can find multiple forums on just about any topic you want.

How Forums Work to Boost Your Site’s Position in the Search Engines

There are many ways to get links to your site and links are votes. That is about the simplest way to think of them. Think of them as another site voting for your site to rank higher than other sites for a specific keyword. He who has the most votes, all else being the same, will rank the highest. It is not that simple and not the whole story, but if you are new to this, it is a good place to start.

Most other ways of getting links will get you one link from one site. You comment on a blog that uses dofollow and you get one link back from that post. You submit an article to an article directory and you get one link, most of the time. Run down the list of link building methods and it takes a lot of work to get one link. With forums, once you create a signature, that signature will now be under every post you add to a forum thread.

Detecting if the Forum Will Pass Rank to Your Site

Remember that the links to your site count as “votes”. Well, in the early days of blogs, getting a link to your site was as easy as commenting on any random blog you happen to find. It was not long before spammers caught onto this.

To prevent spam, the “nofollow” tag was created. A normal link in html looks like this: This is your link text and a “nofollow” link looks like this: This is your link text . That rel=”nofollow” does a lot. What it does is tell the search engines that happen to spider that page this link is not a vote for your site. In other words, the link is worthless for your rank in search engines like Google.

There are some people that say this link still counts as a vote with a lesser value, but if you are new to this, we will stick to this rule: if there is a rel=”nofollow” around your link, it is worthless for building your rank in the search engine results. If it is a high traffic forum, people may click on your link but it is not helping you anywhere else. It’s value is limited to those clickthroughs.

Okay, let’s see if a forum is passing rank. Browse to a thread in the forum of your choice and make sure there are some signature showing. To detect if a forum is using nofollow tags, first right click in the middle of your browser’s window. On a Mac, this would be Control and your normal mouse click. After doing that, a menu should pop up for you. Now depending on your browser, you should see something like “View Page Source” or just “View Source”. Click that.

Now that you are looking at a bunch of html code, the easiest way to determine if a forum is dofollow is just search the whole page for “nofollow”. Ctrl+F usually brings up a search menu on most browsers and you can do this with source code. So push Control and F at the same time, type “nofollow” and hit enter. If nothing comes up, you are at a dofollow forum.

If your search does turn up a “nofollow”, check it to see if it is around one of the signature links. People nofollow links on their site for various reasons and some other links on the page may be nofollow. To make that a bit easier, go back to the real page, copying one of the signature links, search for that on the html source (the page we got by right clicking) and determine if the signature link itself has a nofollow tag.

And there are Firefox extensions that make this easier. But if you are not using Firefox and are not used to addons, showing you how to use them would have made this post a lot longer and involved, so I skipped that process.

And most forums I have run into are dofollow, so the manual process of right clicking and viewing the source may be overkill, but it helps to know before you invest in creating a profile there and fleshing it out.

Creating Your Forum Signature

This will be a general tutorial and some forums are set up differently then others, so you may have to do some looking around to edit your forum profile.

Usually on a bar, across the top of a forum, you will see various links like Forum Jump, FAQ, Search, Tools. There should also be a “Sign Up” or “Register” link. Obviously, this is where you sign up. Do that first. Most are basic forms and most will send an email to the email address you used to sign up. You will have to click on this link before your forum membership is activated.

Once you have determined that the forum will follow signature links, you have signed up and you have activated your account, it is now time to add your signature and flesh out your profile. Look around on that top bar for something that says “Edit Signature”, “Edit Profile”, “Control Panel” or something similar. While you are in there, you might as well fill out your whole profile, because it will get some traffic from other forum users especially if you are active and on most forums, every post you make will also link back to your forum profile.

In your signature, put your links or your links and a small blurb. Some forums limit the amount of links and text and a whole bunch of links there looks a bit spammy, so use good judgement when creating your signature. And here are the basics of your link:

This is your anchor text and should have important keywords

Or, if the forum uses BB code, which many do: [link=http://www.thesiteyouarelinkingto]Your Anchor Text[/link]

Finding Forums

Before the critical mass of blogs, if you searched for a very specific question on just about any topic, forums showed on the first page of results at Google. Now, chances are that blogs have taken that place in search engine results. But forums are out there and some still outrank the blogs.

Should you find forums related to your niche? Yes. That will give your most valuable backlinks because the content on both the forum and the site you are linking to in your forum signature are related. But if you find that this limits the amount of forums you can be active on, branch out to other forums and use them also. For example, if you only found 3 or 4 forums on “window and door repairs”, make sure you are active at those forums.

But if you have more time, go to unrelated forums and add your signature. And if you do, you might as well find ones on topics you like and can gab about for days. Most webmaster forums are full of members with signatures that have nothing to do with being a webmaster. The members still talk about webmaster things. But their signature point to unrelated sites.

One of the easiest ways to find forums is to use a keyword related to your niche and add forum to the end of it. Then search Google for that phrase, i.e “webmaster forum”. Basic and simple.

Another way is to use a forum search site. These sites search only forums. Just enter niche related terms and these search engines will search a bunch of forums at once and give you specific forum threads as results. Here are a couple:

Some DoFollow Forum Lists

I was going to build my own and still might, but there is a lot of forums out there and it is rare to run into one that does not give you a dofollow link. So instead I will lead you to other blogs. Use this list if you are lazy. These forums have already been checked for dofollow links.

How Not to Spam

Just don’t. That’s about it. The beauty of your signature at a forum is that you can forget about it. Do so. And start conversing. It may take a while. It’s like driving. At first, you stress out, thinking Step 1, Step2, Step3. But eventually, you’re a natural.

Don’t look for opportunities to get links. Just about any forum you land on will have hundreds of active threads. Browse them until something strikes you. Answer questions. Ask questions. Post tips. And mainly watch the other forum members. Learn from them.

The Web Search Engine Ranking Friendly Website (marketersdaily.com)
Top Firefox Seo Plugins (mfinch.ca)
Google Searches Deeper with DeeperWeb – A Search Engine Extension (seomashup.blogspot.com)
On Semantic Web: What It Is, And What It Will Never Be (mashable.com)
OneRiot Keeps The Pulse On Web Searches (techcrunchit.com)

The Ultimate DoFollow Blog List

admin — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:18:23 +0000

I figured I had to go over the top with this one. Not quite sure if I have. You tell me.

I have been using Fast Blog Finder to find dofollow blog posts for me. It helps and then it doesn’t. I don’t spam. I like getting beneficial links back to my site. I use tools like this because they simplify the process. But sometimes the posts are a little bit old. And I am not quite sure of the etiquette involved. Is an older post OK to comment on? I could see refering to it from a blog post. But after a post has 20 comments, how much do you really add to the conversation if it has ended?

But I have used the software often enough to build a long list of dofollow blogs, 516 to be exact. There may be some doubles. And there may be some nofollow blogs that slipped through the cracks, but it’s pretty clean.

I have seen the blog lists. Useful in some ways. I have seen the search engines. Useful but there is usually no way to favor more recent posts. I built a dofollow river of posts out of this list of feeds, but it’s slow and incomplete. So I figured I’d give out the OPML file.

This is a file you should be able to import into any feed reader. If you can’t, you need to find a better feed reader. I highly recommend NewsGator. To filter out just topics you want to comment on, use watches.

But I also did a quick install of the Optimal OPML browser plugin for WordPress. The results of that are below. And if any of you happen to clean up the file of duplicates or add your own favorites, just pass the new file back to me and I’ll put a new version up.

The OPML of KeywordLuv and CommentLuv Blogs

I haven’t picked up the blogs who have installed these plugins in the last month or so, but here is what I have now: 562 feeds. Same disclaimer. There may be duplicates. Some blogs may have uninstalled the plugins. Etc.

Here is the file.

Update 3/25/2010

The opml files are still there. If you know how to use them go ahead. But blog comments based on dofollow should not be a priority in your link building any more. Rather make useful, meaty or controversial comments on high traffic blogs and use social media to drive traffic to those posts. In other words, contribute.

And then there is this:

Over 300,000 Dofollow Spam Comments On This Blog Alone

Different Spam Filters For Blog Comments – Which One is Best? :How … (howtostartmyblog.com)
Best Way to Have Quality Comments Only? (problogdesign.com)
Are Sinister Sites Stealing Your Link Juice? (famousbloggers.net)

The Importance of Knowing What You Want to Write

admin — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:18:26 +0000

There are times I have had pretty good luck with just taking off with a topic and coming out on the other side with a post. This morning was not one of those times. But I knew. I could feel it.

Even though that is my favorite way to right a post, it didn’t work. I didn’t feel my juices flowing and I tackled a subject I had been thinking about for a while, but not quite enough. When the post was around 750 words long and I wasn’t sure I was halfway done, I knew I was in over my head. But I still tried to force it.

It was a good thing that I eventually gave up and left it as a draft. I will get back to it. It would have been stupid to go on. The post was expanding at an alarming rate and was probably better off as a series of posts.

But it got me to write this post.

I use Windows Live Writer to write posts for storage, when I know I will not be finishing it in one sitting. I use ScribeFire to write quick posts that need some research work, because I can flip through tabs on my browser as I write. And I use DarkRoom to write posts off the cuff. Unfortunately, this morning I used the off the cuff method to write a post that still needed research.

As far as research goes, I have taken a whole day before to write a post that required research, off and on, here and there, until it was finished. Those posts have turned out quite well. They started without a full plan of action, but having a whole day where I alternated between research, writing, percolating, and not even thinking about the post helped.

But when I need a post for the day, it doesn’t quite work. There is not that time available. So the post goes back to the drawing board for some more notetaking, mindmapping and weird moments of clarity that happen in the middle of unconnected chaotic situations. Hey, I don’t know how it works. It just does.

And while that post came slow as I tried to beat it out, this one was easy. I take what comes.

Fixed Costs and Fixed Time

admin — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:53:40 +0000

Time is money. It may be something we all agree on, but what does it really mean.

Fixed costs are nice. One of my fixed costs is hosting. When I make $4000 in a month, my hosting is $125. If I triple that, it will still cost me the same and the ROI triples.

On the other hand, PPC advertising moves with the income. If I make more through PPC this month, chances are I spent more too. Yes, I can increase ROI. But for the most part, I have to spend more money to make more. And it doesn’t help that the amount of money I spend on ads is limited by my credit.

Now there are a few campaigns that I currently have running that have not been tweaked for months. But for the most part, I have to babysit. Not much now. But if I were to increase my Adwords spending to the point it replaced all the other sources of income, I would have no time to do anything else and I would be stuck in the same rat race I am trying to remove myself from.

I ran into a similar problem with the direction my blogging was going. A post a day may be recommended for a lot of bloggers. It isn’t going to work for me any more. Don’t get me wrong, I most likely write a post or more a day, but not on every blog. And this blog, which is mainly a journal of my journey makes no real money. And I like it that way for now. I am not looking for money here yet.

Building links is like hosting and social media marketing is like PPC advertising. Both have their place, but my time is limited, so I had to work out a balance.

A link I get to a site today will most likely be there tomorrow, next month, and next year and since I know a little SEO, the traffic results of that link may be less volume than I would expect from a Stumble but the quality of that traffic will be much greater.

Don’t get me wrong. You can’t just build some links and then go take a nap for the rest of the year. But here is what I know. I made $25,000 in the last 12 months from the results of links that were already there. Not John Chow money but it beats being a 24/7 internet hustler.

And all links are not created the same. Some take more time to build. A directory links takes a minute. If you want to release software to promote a site, it’s going to take some time but that time will come back to you once the ball is rolling.

I am writing this post to beat something into my head. I have a weird relationship with money. I spend in the range of $100 in Adwords a day and have to pry my wallet open to buy software and hire people to speed up the link building process. Money spent there will free up time and possibly lower the need for so much advertising. It is basically a fixed cost. Spend the money and see the results for months or even years. You cannot say that for PPC advertising.

This has also forced a weird relationship with time. If I am doing my own grunt work because I refuse to hire someone than I am basically paying myself what I would pay the other guy to do it for me. So if I refuse to pay $10/hour, that is what I am paying myself. If I buy software that speeds up a process, than I am effectively raising my hourly rate. If a job that took 3 hours now only needs my guidance for 20 minutes, I just gave myself a 900% raise for that time period.

It’s a way to look at things and a way to start putting money and time in balance. Hopefully it works.

Some WordPress SEO Thoughts

admin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:01:25 +0000

I lay awake at night thinking of things like this. Not long. A few minutes or so. Sometimes I get an idea when I am driving. Sometimes I write the ideas down. Sometimes I see if they will pop back up on their own. The ones that do get focus. But I always give them a little freedom. That way they can tell their friends that I am a good home. And then I wait on the friends.

Here are some random ones on SEO in general and WordPress in particular. My blog seems to have focus bands like the power band in a dirt bike, following the hats I constantly change to keep this internet machine going. Welcome to an SEO focus band. It took a few months of dealing with WordPress, but I think I’m on a roll now. I am the type of person who tears a car apart piece by piece to see how it works, puts it back together, and then goes to the manual for the technical terms to explain what I found. It takes a while, but it is well worth it and only makes your mind stronger.

Once I can write a post that covers everything blogging and fits my vision, it’s time for me to start my other blogs up, because that means all the bits and pieces of ideas came together into a blueprint. A very adaptable blueprint, because change is the only common denominator in progress, but a blueprint nonetheless. This isn’t a blueprint but it’s signs of one to come and that makes me happy.

Get a WordPress SEO Theme

Get One

Build One

How to SEO Your WordPress Theme

Some WordPress SEO Plugins

All in One SEO Pack – Set Titles and Meta Tags in your posts.
HeadSpace2 – Meta-data manager on steroids, allowing complete control over all SEO needs such as keywords/tags, titles, description, stylesheets, and many other goodies
Dagon Sitemap Generator – Generate sitemaps for your blog
Simple Tags – I hated the whole switchover to integrated WordPress tags. The plugin developers did a better job. Then I finally found this plugin. Sweet
Related Posts – There are so many versions of this one that I am not even sure which I have active on my blog. But the Simple Tags plugin above has this fucntionality built it.
Landing Sites – Not sure if this would qualify as an SEO plugin, but it takes the query from search engine hits and presents the visitor with a list of posts they may be interested in, based on that.
Homepage Excerpts – It depends on how paranoid you are about the duplicate content penalty. It allows you to set the length of each post on your home page. On my blog, I have the whole content of the last post on the front page and excerpts of all the rest.
One Click Installer – Not an SEO plugin, but it makes installing plugins easier.
Permalink Redirect – Makes sure all links to a post go to the same place.
Alinks – Helps a lot with internal linking. Automatically links keywords and phrases in your post
WP-PageNavi – Adds a better navigation menu (not just next and previous). Allows for deeper linking to older posts.

Random Widget Links for Varied Anchor Text

This could work for a Featured Post plugin or a Blogroll.

I looked at my blog as if it were the whole of the internet. My own little private internet here has 450 or so pages indexed by Google. That means that the links in my Featured Posts widget (which is really a Blogroll to begin with) link to the same pages with the same anchor 450 times.

Anchor text should vary. For one, it will help you rank for a bigger variety of key phrases. For another, if you don’t vary your anchor text, you could end up like John Chow.

Whether or not I have to worry about the second reason, I’m not sure. The first is good enough to have me take a look at things. I figured out two options, still using a Blogroll category as Featured Posts.

Have a bunch of featured links. I am not sure if I have enough to do this yet. But have about 50 featured links and only display 10 at a time, using the random function and the PHP executable widget or by using this widget.
Or if the variety of featured posts you have is limited, you could recreate the same blogroll in seperate blogroll categories but use different anchor text each time. Then, using the PHP executable widget, randomly pick one of these category sets programmatically when the page loads.
Or do both. Mix up your anchor variety. Have random posts to prevent sitewide link issues. It should help keep visitors on your site too if you featured posts are different every time they come to your blog.

Random Anything for Longtail Phrases

I didn’t have this section in the original draft. But I thought of it while I was researching the last section. I ran into this post on random WordPress widgets. I like a little bit of randomness. I don’t think you can have everything so planned that a random seed thrown in every once and a while will totally mess things up.

A percentage of my search engine hits on every site that I have dealt with have been on subject matter I have never covered. They are the result of the different elements on the page blending together. For example, Google will pick up one word from a title on my widget and one word from a comment and one word from the title of the post itself and I will get hits for the phrase built from those three words. I get a lot of hits daily that work like this.

Can I do anything with those hits? Not when they are occurring. But I could get an idea for another post, especially since I ranked high for the phrase without trying. You can never really guess every longtail key phrase. Let randomness do it for you. You’d be amazed.

Encourage Comments

Comments add content. Content that you could not have created yourself. Encourage them in any way you can.

Use Your Google History

If you used a phrase to find something, someone else will. But this doesn’t mean you found the answer you were looking for the first try. I have received a steady stream of hits based on posts I geared around the phrases in my Google history, especially after long research session. I get a lot of "newbie" geek hits because I use less than technical language. So not knowing the correct terminology does pay off. People that do use the correct terminology probably already know about the stuff you are writing.

Conditional NoFollow for Sculpting Pagerank

Some pages on my site have higher Pagerank than others. If I wanted to funnel the Pagerank of that page and direct it like a laser to another page, I could use WordPress conditionals to nofollow almost everything on that page except the link I am funneling the Pagerank to while leaving the rest of the site dofollow. On a blog, the pages that rank high are not necessarily the ones you want to rank high. I am not sure of the feasibility of doing this on WordPress, but it’s an idea. And it works. I have used this tactic on non-Wordpress sites.

CommentLuv and "query" for Super Targeted Backlinks

If you haven’t learned this one you should. I am not talking about spamming. If you write a post on "Google Adsense", wouldn’t it be great to get a backlink with anchor text from a page that focuses on "Google Adsense". By searching Google Adsense "CommentLuv", you can find these pages. You will be getting a link back plus adding a related link to the blog you are commenting on, thus adding to the conversation.

Infrequently Updated Blogs and the Top Commenter Plugin

This I found out by accident and it probably does skate over the line a bit. If a blog gets few comments and is barely updated, it may still have some Pagerank because high Pagerank doesn’t necessarily indicate high traffic. One comment will get you a sitewide link for a while depending on how they have the plugin setup. Some change monthly. Some use "all time" top commenters. Like I said, it was an accident. I am not hunting for these blogs specifically and probably not worth the effort anyway but it’s grist for the mill.

DoFollow

I don’t really look specifically for DoFollow blogs much any more. I did at one time. But the lists and custom search engines for DoFollow blogs are not updated enough and I spent more time looking than commenting. But if I am reading a post and notice the comments are DoFollow, I do dig deeper and look for ways I can add to the material presented.

Find the flagship articles on your blog. Do a Google search using terms you think someone would be using to find your article. Find other blog posts that show for the terms you used. Leave useful comments at these blogs. Instead of linking to your home page, link to that article.

Find the keyphrases you rank high for through your stats software. Replicate the search. See what position you are in. If it is less than #1, check if there are other blogs in the results. If so, do the same as in the paragraph above.

Keeping Your Archives Page Open While Writing

Remind yourself to link to your other posts. Just keep your archives page open in another tab. When you are done with your post, browse through your post for phrases and keywords that you can link to other posts. When I write posts in longhand, I circle the phrases because I know I have covered the subject matter before.

Silo Sites

This I have yet to look into enough to write about it, so I will direct you elsewhere. The basic concept in to break your site up into vertical topics so that post in each topic benefit from being around like posts. Great if you have a blog that covers a wide spectrum of ideas.

Silo Website Design

Silo Structure SEO and WordPress

Silo Web Design

Trackbacking Top Google Results

Okay, so you can’t rank high for the post you are going to write. But you can piggyback off of other posts. And since you just wrote something related, you should be able to contribute. So pick blogs with top Google results for the keywords you are targeting every once and while and link them from your post. Bloggers travel the blogosphere. Regular people use Google.

Optimizing Through Images

Yes, you can go this far, but you don’t have to. If you get a change, name your images with keywords related to your post. Also, do the same with the Alt tag. It takes less than a minute and could help you out.

Excerpts Instead of NoFollow for Duplicate Content Issues

Your category pages and the like duplicate the content of your blog. Google doesn’t like this. And of course, since Google owns the internet, we have to change this or else they will act like a five year old and take their search engine home. I call it an information delivery monopoly similar to what the church had before the printing press. Some say to use nofollow tags on links to these pages. Some say use excerpts of posts on these pages. I go with the second option.

NoFollow Unimportant Pages

Pages like "About Me", "Privacy Policy", and "Advertise" usually get a link from every page on your blog. They don’t need any search engine ranking. Don’t give it to them. Nofollow the suckers.

Use BloggingZoom

Not sure when this one is going to go in the Google crapper, but for now, one submission to BloggingZoom equals a backlink for each tag you use from a highly targeted page based on that tag. You can’t beat that. Now I only pick and choose. I don’t submit everything. In fact, only about 4 or 5 posts so far. I don’t want to create a lopsided link profile that will take part of my site down when another one goes down. Time spent getting links is best spent a little a time in as many places as you can. Know of other sites like this, leave me a comment.

Don’t Try to Reinvent the Wheel

Just get to know it better. Search engine algorithms are based on sound ideas. On page, search engine algorithms are based on the way emphasis is given in a written work and off page, search engine algorithms are based on the way ideas spread through society. SEO is reverse engineering the search engines algorithm. But the algorithm itself was reverse engineered from the way we process information. Why not go to the source?

Think of your post as an article in a magazine. The main heading or title states the main idea of the article. Heading below that state the main ideas of each section. Search engines put a premium on the keywords in your H1 tags with a lowered premium on headings that are smaller. Just creating a good structure for your post is good SEO.

More WordPress SEO Tips

These were just random thoughts. Here are some more posts to take you further:

On my blog:

On other blogs:

SEO as an Afterthought

I never write a post specifically for the search engines. I write without them in mind. After I am done, I go back and see how I can pump up the rankings for the post. That was just the disclaimer for any claims of me being a robot.

Some of these are utopian based on the fact you actually have the time. For me, the post is most important. After that, I use the time I have to do what I can. But it’s good to have the tools available. That was just the disclaimer for "But you didn’t do that here."

Many of these tactics can be use wrongly or artificially. That is not the point of this post. Guns don’t kill people. People do. Use your ammunition correctly and none of this could be even construed as Gray Hat. That was just the disclaimer for the fact that I didn’t used to care what hat I was wearing, but I do now.

A few of these ideas I haven’t used yet and were doomed to the notebook. I figured a post would put them to better use. That was just the disclaimer for "That won’t work."

And I am well aware that each one of these sections could have been a post. They just seemed to fit together quite nicely. And sometimes fleshing something out with filler until it’s the size of a post is not good. That was just the disclaimer for "God damn, the scroll wheel doesn’t work on my mouse." I have one at home like that.

Viral Linkathon

admin — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:15:42 +0000

Yet another viral link meme to brighten up your Sunday!

The benefits of Viral Linking:
1. One of the fastest ways to see your Technorati Authority explode!
2. Increase your Google PageRank fast
3. Attract large volume of new traffic to your site
4. Build your community
5. Make new friends!
I have randomly selected 5 of you below to be tagged and I hope that you will similarly publish this post in your blog. Thanks to Wangbu who brought me to this. You have to tag 5 other bloggers and just keep adding on to the list. (Do not replace, just keep on adding! Yes let’s hope a long list!) It’s real easy! Tag others and see your Technorati Authority increase exponentially!

And these are the people who already took part on this tag:Blognation, Pinoytek, Reyna, Bluep, Kotsengkuba, Buraot, Iris, Banco De Reyna, Manilenya, Mitch, Melai, Malen, Beng, Sasha, Foolsville, Lloyd Lopez, Hulag, Stephan Miller

I tagged these bloggers:

Let the games begin.

Priests of Blog

admin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:02:16 +0000

Most people don’t give a second thought to how the search engines work. When I explain that part of my job, I have to say something along the lines of, "You know, when you are searching for Athlete’s Foot Cream online. That first link you click on. Well, someone worked hard to get their site there out of the thousands available."

"But what if I’m not searching for Athlete’s Foot Cream?"

"Okay, Donkey Shows then."

"I don’t have much interest in Donkeys."

"Nobody does. I’m just lying. Really, I just screw around on the computer all day. I was just making that part up. God picks the top search results and we humans just accept the choices as his will. I just pray a lot."

I have to play to the locals, who are a mix of Baptists, Mormons, and Pentecostals. Yet another group who believes I print money out of air or maybe think I’m a drug dealer because I don’t "work" that much.

In the old days, before blogs and content management systems, we would hop on one foot through the snow to get our pages ranked in the SERP’s. What’s an SERP? I don’t know, half of a snake maybe? (Search Engine Results P…, too lazy to look up P).

But then the software came. The software made our job much easier. We could work our magic more quickly. But it became harder at the same time. Footprint.

Take one standard installation of a WordPress blog and from the outside, disregarding the content, it looks just like another. This makes it great for cookie cutter sites and MFA article quilts. Post after Post underneath Category after Category. Flat earth technology. A post received a week of fame before it was swallowed by Blog.

Yes, you could link to other Posts, but you would have to remember that. Blog was no help with that.

Along came Plugin to breath life into the flatness in the land of Blog. Plugin and his minion Widget gave us the option to single out certain Pages and Posts for greatness. Greatness now, a week from now or a year from now.

This greatness was achieved on the back of lesser Posts. They bowed to the mighty Great Posts with Popular Posts, Recent Comments, Recommended Posts and other Widgets that emphasized certain Posts over others by spreading their word across all Pages of Blog. The royalty of the Great Posts was further highlighted with Plugins like Alinks which became one with the content of Blog.

These spells and sacrifices are necessary for Posts to be ready for the SERPs. Only some Posts make it. That is the way of Blog. The SERPs are brutal. Sending your whole army of Posts out will result in slaughter.

Therefore, we continue, as Priests and Priestesses of Blog to nurture those posts with sidebar spells and interlink concoctions, because we know that there is more than one Blog, constantly searching for new Widgets to bring light of the SERPs to the denizens of the one true Blog, our own.

Just to let you know, I’m agnostic. And that sure beat writing a normal old post about using Widgets and Plugins to emphasize posts. Plus it fits with the name "Blog".

I actually started with a "Sacrificing Pawns" analogy. All of your posts won’t be great and all of them won’t face the competition. So pick ones that will and give them a shot. And use a Top Posts and/or Recent Comments plugin to allow some "visitors to Blog" cast their own lots, although Top Posts can sometimes become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Funtagged

admin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:36:17 +0000

I was tagged a few days By Nickoo Shore. I got involved in one of these a while back. It helped with my Technorati rank, but it seemed kind of a sneaky way to do it. What other value does it provide. So I left it for today. It’s Easter. It’s a quick post to fill in the week. Both the kids are taking naps, a miracle.

That was the paragraph this post started with. Miracles don’t last that long. It is Monday now.

And any way I need to stop taking myself so seriously. One way to do it is not reject this idea

But this one has an interesting twist any way and it looks like a lot of great blogs have signed up. There are only 26 links, one for each of the letters of the alphabet. If a blog is hosted on it’s own domain, it’s listed after the letter the domain begins with. If it is a WordPress.org or blogger blog, it can be listed after the name of the blog (i.e. mysuperblog.blogspot.com can be listed after M).

When you decide to join the game, you’ll have to follow these 3 simple rules:

Copy all the links and replace a single link under the appropriate letter of the alphabet with yours – see an example above about the correct way to choose the letter. An explanation in your post about how to change the links will be nice as well!
Put at the bottom of the list the replaced link and the full link to the tagger (meaning the link to the actual post where you got the list) – this ensures that you complied with the rule #1!
You now have to “tag” at least five people and encourage them to take part of the game – tag blogs only and only those without bad rated material like pornographic, violence, racism etc.

My List:

A acowboyswife.com
B bloggingcents.com
C chatbugkaren.com
D delusionsofgrandeur.org
E everythingandanythingblog.com
F –
G GeekMomMashup.com
H hoysater.no
I ipentimento.com
J juliesjournal.com
K kabalyero.com
L ladylike4.com
M michaelpark.net
N nicusor.com
O originalmx5.net
P peapodsquadstuff.com
Q qweddings.com
R rowdigrl.com
S stephanmiller.com
T TenaciousCreations.com
U utada-online.net
V valmg.com
W wickedbabylon.com
X xaviermedia.com
Y yimto.com
Z zbudapest.com

Replaced link: shirleysdelight.com

Previous tagger: nicusor.com

And here are the blogs I’m tagging and hopefully not putting on the spot. Don’t take it that way.