All Entries in the "Link Building" Category
10 Factors That Determine the Value of Inbound Links
In a world where inbound links are often crucial in complimenting an on-page SEO effort, determining the value of those links can be equally important. This is especially true if you are making any kind of “investment” in those links whether that involve time, money or both.
Following is a simple checklist of what to look for in a valuable inbound link.
SponsoredReviews.com Announces New Feature – LinkSets™
SponsoredReviews.com, a service that connects advertisers with bloggers willing to write honest reviews about their products and services, has added a new feature to their program – LinkSets.
LinkSets allow you to create an unlimited number of URL/Link Text combinations inside of your opportunities. The LinkSets system will then automatically handle assigning those links to bloggers as you purchase reviews.
Link Building Via Blog Comments
There is absolutely nothing wrong with earning a link from a blog post you decide to comment on. In fact, if you comment often on blogs, it is a good way to increase the amount of inbound links pointing to your site’s pages. However, there is a “right” way and a “wrong” way to go about accomplishing this.
SBM Unleashed: Link Building
Need links? Of course you do! In order to rank well and successfully promote your online business, you need an effective link building program as part of your over-all SEO strategy. Link guru Debra O’Neil Mastaler, Owner of Alliance Link walks attendees through the world of links. Find out why search engines rely so heavily on links, where to find links and why a good link can send sales through the roof.
Do You Report Paid Links? What Goes Around Comes Around!
I could have also placed “people that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” in the title of this post. The question is, “Are you a search marketer that reports paid links?” Your answer would be either a definite yes, a definite no, or a sometimes, but for competing sites. Patrick Altoft asked the same question in a post at Blogstorm and admitted that he had reported them in the past, but only when the site buying or selling them was a direct competitor and ranked higher than him.
Why Can’t Google Be More Like Ask.com?
Anyone who is into link building knows that Google has declared a war of sorts on paid links, looking to punish both those who buy and sell them. Vanessa Fox has put together an excellent review of the “paid links war” as it unfolded in 2007. With that review, she wanted to learn how the other three major search engines felt about paid links. At the writing of her post, Yahoo and MSN failed to comment. Ask did and their response was quite refreshing.
Trading In My White Hat For a Black One
While I did not expect much in the way of news here in the U.S. due to the Thanksgiving holiday, it appears that Google took the opportunity to update their web master guidelines regarding paid links. The changes essentially reveal that buying or selling links that pass PageRank can penalize a site not only in its Google Toolbar PageRank status, but also in Google search results. What does this mean for those that consider themselves “white hat SEOs?” Better go shopping for a new hat – a nice black one.
Sites Selling Text Links Get Google-Slapped, Should They Worry?
It is all over the blogosphere – sites known for selling text link ads or Google PageRank have been slapped with a PageRank reduction for their own sites by the almighty Google itself. Is this a worldwide PR update with a possible algorithm change or is it more along the line of a hand job? Seeing that a couple of sites we launched several months ago are still at a “0″ PageRank, even though they have a good amount of links pointing to them, I’d have to say the latter. The question that remains to be answered is, “should publishers and those buying links be worried?”
Guidelines for Link Building With Blog Reviews
Loren Baker has put together some guidelines in using blog reviews as an effective link building tactic. What I like best about Loren’s post is that he provides sound advice without revealing any specifics such as blogs that sell reviews or even companies that actually provide this as a service. With the war that Google has waged against paid links, it is comforting to see posts such as these that provide useful information without helping Google to identify those who are buying or selling the reviews. It fits right in with my previous plea for the entire paid links industry to go underground.
The Paid Links Industry Needs To Go Underground
If Danny Sullivan’s report over the weekend that Google is in fact reducing the PageRank for sites that are suspected of selling paid links isn’t enough to send the entire paid links industry underground, then I don’t know what is. Add to this the storm of controversy that recently occurred over Rand Fishkin outing sites that sell paid links. Now I don’t sell paid links for the sake of ranking better in the organic search results, however, as one who buys paid links for client sites, I have been a proponent for some time now of the entire industry, those who buy links, those who sell them and everyone in between, working to make it more difficult for Google and other search engines to identify paid link strategies. Currently we are making their job way to easy.
