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Readers and e-mailers ask me pretty frequently what makes a link a good link.

 

I am talking here about external links (back-links), not internal ones. This does not mean in any way that internal link building is unimportant or easy. Au contraire. But the hectic yet hazy world of back-link building has always been the subject of much more scrutiny and bigger hype than the one of internal links  (Most likely because successful external link building is so much more dependent on other parties, i.e. on potential link partners).

 

Whenever the topic of external link building comes up, I sometimes pull an old analogy of mine out of the sock drawer. (Those of you who know it, please stop yawning and scroll down until you see uncharted territory).

 

All others might be interested to hear that I like to compare external link building to social interactions which happen in real life.

 

How so?  Well, simply imagine 2 people, we’ll call them Jamie and Terry (both unisex names …). They live on the same block but that’s all they have in common. Let’s compare:

 

 

	Jamie	Terry
Disposition	Relaxed	Hectic
Lifestyle	Quiet	Hyper
Letters received	A few bills	Lots of friend mail
e-mail received	Some (1 address)	Tons (6 addresses)
Phone calls	A few	Phone rings off the hook
Party Invitations	Some	Tons
Visitors	Few	Lots
Being talked about	Little	Much

Which of the two is more popular ?  A no-brainer, isn’t it ?

 

I am not suggesting that a quiet life is inferior to an active one, or that a phone that rings off the hook is a good thing. Also, being hyper isn’t necessarily being happy, and a low e-mail count doesn’t mean Jamie is a nerd. We are not labeling, just recording facts.

 

And the fact is that Terry is more popular, in the sense of getting much more attention by friends and other humans than Jamie does. If you were to assign a value to Terry’s level of popularity, you would say, for example, Level 5, while Jamie’s might be Level 1.

 

The practical consequence is that to be at Level 5, Terry doesn’t have to actively search for friends and to reach out to a great extent (some effort is of course needed to actually keep all those friends), while Jamie would need to work very hard to reach it. The corollary is of course that to reach, say, Level 7 (even more contacts), Terry would need to put in some work - but Jamie would have to make superhuman efforts to ever get there - if he ever gets there. 

 

A similar situation applies to websites. Here, your “friends” are your inbound links, and popularity is measured in Google Page Rankings. The difference between people and businesses is that while in social life some people like it less hectic, I have yet to see a business website that’s satisfied with getting just the occasional visit.

 

We all know that inbound links to your site are an expression of recognition, of wanting to be connected to you. But what are the most important characteristics of a good link?

 

Let’s first use common sense. Would Jamie or Terry like to receive unimportant mail, or befriend unwanted, unpopular people? I don’t think so. How about getting “sorry, wrong number” phone calls, mistaken invitations, or other irrelevant contacts? No. Finally, would they like to be called names or titles which make it impossible to identify them? No way.

 

Our analogy is back again:

 

  Importance of friends / contacts = Quality / importance (=PR) of linking site

 

  Relevance of mail or calls          = Topical relevance of links

 

  Correct Name                           = Keyword-rich text links (anchors)

 

These 3 factors are generally considered to be the most important components of any good inbound link.

 

Some SEO colleagues and link building specialists advocated other factors in recent interviews. Link expert Eric Ward attaches importance to the identity of the linking site, the intent of the link, and the linking site’s own back-link pedigree. Another link expert, Debra Mastaler, says the age of the page which hosts the link is significant.

 

In my own humble opinion, Eric’s and Debra’s points are, while well-taken, essentially variations on the main theme: the quality of the site from which a link points to you.

 

So, get to work. Build link relationships that will give you relevant, quality links, tagged on your link partners’ sites with keyword-rich text. Google will reward you.

 

Any questions? You are welcome to contact me via my SEO Consultant site for free tips.

 

 

 

In the search engine optimization industry, Black Hat refers to techniques that are against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Some spamming gimmicks do provide short-lived gains for keyword rankings, but the rogues get penalized eventually, just like they used to in those old-fashioned movies. A decent SEO consultant will stay away from unethical tricks even when a clients impatiently itches to cut corners and thinks he can outsmart the search engines.

At the same time, however, our SEO industry would be boring without Black Hat, just like a John Wayne movie without a bad guy. I actually enjoy studying some rogue incidents in a clinical fashion ; here are some thoughts.

I have to say some Black Hatters are quite smart and creative in trying to get where they want without incurring penalties ; sometimes they can even win the hide-and-seek game, albeit temporarily. Unethical SEO means experimenting, and exploring uncharted territories. It also takes an enterprising spirit to try to outsmart Big Brother, and some good acting to manage that wide-eyed, innocent stare after being caught red-handed and black-hatted.

Some cases can be quite entertaining. You can find many on Google Webmaster Help Forum . I came across one thread by a webmaster named, let’s say, Jane Doe, and trust me, you’ll soon see why I changed her name (who needs a lawsuit?). Jane complained that Google had delisted many dozens of her sites for no obvious reason. She claimed she couldn’t figure out why she was “mistreated” because all those sites were manually built, not auto-generated, and provided content on a variety of topics.

She listed several of the penalized sites for analysis. There seemed nothing wrong with them. If you took her story uncritically and at face value, it really seemed that Google  had wrongly accused poor Calamity Jane of unethical practices.

Comments from helpful users poured in. One pointed out that many of the sites in question looked like they had been created primarily for the purpose of link exchange. In response to that, the webmaster explained that she hadn’t done it intentionally for PR or link popularity reasons since she “would have known that excessive link exchanges on the same IP block would be flagged.”

Wow. Was she really unaware ?

A reader “proved” Jane could not be White Hat because nobody could build, upload, let alone manage so many sites. And while such evidence would be inadmissible in a Court of Law as speculative (Lawyers, anyone?), it certainly sounds logical. With more people joining the thread and providing analyses, it became even clearer what happened: most of the sites were single-page or few-page affairs with nothing but several paragraphs of duplicate text, AdSense ads, affiliate promotions and exchanged links. That’s a serious breach of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, especially when we are looking at dozens of such sites. Black Hat wholesalers, as it were.

For a proof reader or a decent SEO person the mystery was not difficult to reconstruct: Our friend Jane had simply shuffled and reshuffled the paragraphs on corresponding pages of the different sites, with only minor changes within the text itself. She thought Google’s machines wouldn’t uncover the plot. A human might find out, she figured. But who cared about humans as long as Google was fooled ?

But, alas, Google wasn’t. (Hey, it had slapped even stolid, solid BMW not so long ago).

However, Jane still believes she’s innocent and wonders if she can visit Google and talk to the engineers in person to resolve the penalty issue. An amusing piece of wide-eyed chutzpah, reminiscent of the proverbial guy who killed his parents and then in court pleaded for clemency on grounds of being an orphan.

Who says SEO can’t be fun?

· Create unique and detailed descriptions for each product

The site’s original product pages had almost no product description. So I asked the florist and her store manager to create detailed descriptions for all products.

Tip: avoid using the same description for similar products. Unique product profiles that are rich in keyword and phrases not only increase traffic from searches, but also improve conversion rates. They enhance user experience because the more information you provide, the more your customers will know about your products, and the easier it is for them to make a decision. Sounds logical, doesn’t it?

· Use keywords and phrases in URLs

Most e-commerce sites are using dynamic scripts because manually updating dozens or hundreds of product pages is a huge task. The problem is that database-driven pages (dynamic URLs) contain strings that are disliked by search engines. Furthermore, keyword-rich URLs can dramatically boost a site’s rankings for those specific keywords and phrases. So, here was my solution for this flower site: since it was running on an Apache server, I used the Mod_Rewrite Module to redirect dynamic URLs to optimized ones. That helped the site achieve coveted rankings for several long-tail phrases.

· Optimize product images

No one can deny the increasing importance of image results on SERPs because it’s estimated that by now, 15% of all searches are for images. That’s why many retail sites have developed strategies for image optimization. The step I took was simply adding keywords including locations (the florist’s area and the main areas bordering it) with hyphens in Alt Tags. Then I used robots.txt to eliminate possible duplicate content issues caused by different versions (thumbnail and full-size) of the same images. Remember: search engines cannot read images, so Alt Tags are a good way of image optimization. (By the way, Alt Tags are also useful when added to links).

· Try Google Base

Google’s Product Base is a free tool to publish products. I logged in, chose the matching type, created and registered data feed and submitted it. Done! Currently only a small percentage of this client’s referrals are coming from Google base searches, but she actually likes this tool because it’s quite easy to handle and updates can be completed in minutes.

For the past several months, we have received a flurry of inquiries from retailers. That’s not surprising because, in today’s tough economy, more and more brick and mortar shops shake in their traditional foundations and are increasingly turning to the internet (and a good thing, too). Every e-tailer wants to set itself apart from his competitors, but most are not able to make money the turbo way due to fierce competition – unless their site is well optimized and thus visible against that fierce competition, and can attract the kind of attention needed to haul in new customers.

So, try these tips and if you apply them on each product page, your store will definitely benefit from noticeably higher visibility.

As an SEO consultant and blogger, I enjoy sharing case analyses with my clients and readers. Here’s a recent one. A flower shop owner in the Midwest found SEO Trump on Google two months ago and contacted me. Her story: frustrated about sagging sales, she had hired an SEO company to optimize her web site. More than $ 3,000 later, SERPs had barely improved and traffic was still stagnant. She was disappointed and asked me to check what was wrong.

Was she on the right track when she looked for an SEO consultant in the first place?  Sure. The question was only why the SEO efforts hadn’t succeeded. So, after a good look at the website, we had a lengthy discussion and she asked me to take over the job.

Now a thorough diagnosis was indicated. I don’t want to cover all the problem areas and will single out only one which is quite typical of e-tailers: while some important pages were decently (though not exceptionally well) optimized, all product pages were literally devoid of optimization. Unfortunately, the SEO professional she had hired failed to address that mistake.

So after some detailed SEO work on the index and other key pages (you won’t believe this, but there were key spelling mistakes!), I focused on revamping the product pages. The results came surprisingly fast: within a month, many of those pages began to show substantially higher SERPs. We aren’t yet where we want to be (remember: the name of the game is Patience!), but the trend is most encouraging. Currently, the site has Page 1 and 2 Google rankings for several highly competitive keywords and longer-tail phrases and I am confident we’ll go higher yet.

Here’s how I helped this e-tailer achieve it:

· Don’t neglect Meta Tags

I’m not trying to beat the same old drum, but in my (pretty solid) experience, Meta tags, while not as crucial as content or titles, are more important than many of my colleagues realize. Just check relevant SEO tips and articles.

Meta tags got a bad reputation mainly via the Meta keywords concept which had been used to death, abused beyond recognition and was consequently trashed by Google. But good Meta descriptions can be very helpful, especially as they provide the first impression about your page.

By the way, if your items have brand names, product names or serial numbers, don’t forget to include those, because specific model searches could be a big bonus for you with little competition and a high conversion rate.

· Use Breadcrumb Navigation

This trick is quite helpful. It’s called breadcrumb trail and shows where the current page is located in site hierarchy. Generically, a florist’s page trail could look like this: “Home > Products > Roses > Sweet Dreams Bouquet” This is more or less generic, but try to use a keyword-rich trail which is both user-friendly and good from an SEO point of view!

So far Part 1 of this article.

By the way, we are planning to have a fuller article or a series of tips about Breadcrumb Trails on our tips page  http://www.seotrump.com/seo_consultants.php soon.

You are encouraged to come back for the second part within a week or so. Meanwhile, how about bookmarking this page ?

As the probably most important off-page SEO factor, back links (aka inbound links) pointing to your site are generally weighted by number and relevance. The more links a site has from authoritative and related sites / pages, the better ranking potential it has. In addition, proper use of anchor text can also boost your SERPs (remember the Google Bombing Story?)

Today we’ll discuss a different aspect of link building – what is the optimal rate (and speed!) for link building, and will a site be penalized if it gets too many links over a very short period? This deserves some discussion because there is still confusion out there.

Let’s use a fictitious scenario to illustrate my point. Let’s say I have some, ah, rare and, ah, very interesting celebrity photos that have never been seen before and are therefore guaranteed to create a huge buzz . I put them on my website and they are picked up by CNN and some other major news outlets. Soon, all major social networking sites and forums are talking about these photos, thus creating links to the site. Then, millions of visitors hit my site for a peek and start referring the photos to each other, thereby creating tens of thousands of additional links to my site (OK, daydreaming stops here).

Will I get red-flagged by search engines for getting a huge number of links overnight? I don’t think so. I am basing this opinion on the axiom that search engines are smart enough to recognize these links as coming from all kinds of sources (news, social networking, blogs, forums, images, and so on). After all, in this fictitious case study I did not launch a link campaign ; all those websites spontaneously linked to me. My site’s popularity may have mushroomed quickly, but it did so naturally, not artificially.

Of course, the above scenario is very much the exception and was only used for illustrative purposes. In real life, if you have a new site or are using mainly link farms (which, as we all know, are frowned upon by search engines) or directories to direct traffic to you, I suggest you slow down and get more focused on link quality and relevance to avoid setting off alarm bells with Google.

We should all be so lucky.