Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Inlinks & Keywords COPYRIGHT: Melius Weideman 2014 d-WebVisSE-7-Content This presentation should be treated as a set of notes – it contains lots of text! Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za + _ Remember the Weideman models?... Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za First step… Check whether or not you are INDEXED at all! Can you find a domain that is NOT indexed? Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za How many Inlinks? 2 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnFuHtWwFCA Also view Part 2: The principles of inlinks Getting Inlinks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOXTAZszho4 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Link Building... Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it's still the trump card for higher rankings Link building is likely to remain one of the main strategies for SEO in the foreseeable future Don’t hold your breath for search engine algorithms to place less importance on link popularity until the Semantic Web arrives, or maybe when HTTP gets replaced by a new protocol. This is since links are still the basic connector, the basic relationship on the Web. And for the forseeable future they're going to be the easiest way for a computer program to judge the importance and trustworthiness of a Web page What will happen to the way search algorithms score links is already happening. The Google algo has become much more elegant and advanced, devaluing staggering amount of links that shouldn't count, and placing more emphasis on trusted links. And the trust and juice given by those links is then verified by elements like user data, domain age, and other relatively hard-to-spoof factors Link Building Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za White Hat? Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Link Building Tool Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za 1) Submitting your site or blog to Directories: This is the one link building tactics which you can have full control on integrating anchor text for your keywords, but submitting to Directories may not get that much authority for your website, but it’s best for the start ups. 2) Content Development or said to be Link bait: This is one of the powerful link building strategy, producing high quality content that engages other people, forces readers to share on their blog and leads to natural link building, in other words it is said to be link bait. 3) Building relationship using a different medium: In real life, Building a relationship with others is said to increase in your contacts. The same way, the world of the Internet is so vast that you can build link relationship from company networks. Make a list of Industry expert blogs, website and communities that relate to your niche and ask them for exchanging links with your website. 4) Guest Blogging: This is an effective way to build quality inbound links. Make a list of blogs that accept guest blog posts; write for them on a regular basis and link to your website on your blog post. 5) Creating Viral Content: Developing and Producing viral content such as Videos, Presentations, Photos, Running contests and Providing badges are the one of the most powerful and natural link building strategy that search engine love. How do I build Links? 1 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Doing a link wheel black hat style is just too much work. As Google catches on to the black hat linking activities of one of your link wheel sites, it bans that page and you have to create another. You're basically in a constant foot race against Google. Doing things this way means that you have to stay one step ahead of Google, creating these junk, spammy sites faster than the search engine can find them and delist them. Let's face it, Google is in the business of NOT ranking sites with useless content that have a ton of forum and blog spam links to them. So as Google finds these sites, new ones have to be created, each one as spammy as the previous site. I hope you aren't in the business of spamming people, blogs, forums, or the search engines. Further, do you really want your business associated with junk content and blog spam? Not only that, but that seems like an awfully large amount of work, especially since there is a much better way to go about it. On the surface, everything might make it seem as if this strategy isn't useful for a real business. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Link wheels, implemented properly and "above board," don't have to put you in a position of fighting Google. You can implement them in a way that not only won't put you in a foot race against the Google machine, but also helps to build your credibility in your market place (instead of destroying it the way a black hat link wheel could). Building a link wheel this way actually assists in a more complete and total domination of Google against any competition that you may have. How do I build Links? 2 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Black Hat? Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za How to NOT build Links 1 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za 30 Bad Ways to Build Links Here are a few link buiding methods that may destroy your brand or get your site banned/penalized/filtered from major search engines, or both. Directories 72. Submit your site to 200 cheesy paid directories (averaging $15 a pop) that send zero traffic and sell offtopic run-of-site links. Forum Spam 73. List 100 Web sites in your signature file. 77. As a new member to various forums, ask the same question at 20 different forums on the same day. 78. Post on forum threads that are years outdated exclusively to link to your semi-related website. 79. Sign up for profiles on forums you never intend on commenting on. Blog Spam 80. Instead of signing blog comments with your real name, sign them with spammy keywords. 82. Say nothing unique or relevant to the post at hand. Make them assume an automated bot hit their comments. 83. Better yet, use automated bots to hit their comments. List at least 30 links in each post. Try to see if you can hit any servers hard enough to make them crash. Garbage Link Exchanges 87. Send link exchange emails which look like an automated bot sent them (little or no customization, no personal names, etc.). 88. Send link exchange requests to Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer, Tim Converse, Google, and Yahoo!. 89. Get links from nearly-hidden sections of websites listing hundreds or thousands of off topic sites. Spam People in Person 90. Go to webmaster conferences and rave about how rich you are, and how your affiliates make millions doing nothing. Be Persistant 92. Send a webmaster an alert to every post you make on your website. 93. Send a webmaster an email every single day asking for them to link to your website. Getting Links by Being a Jerk 97. Steal content published by well known names. Strip out any attribution. Aggregate many popular channels and just wait for them to start talking about you. 98. Send thousands of fake referrals at every top ranking Web site, guaranteeing larger boobs, a 14-inch penis (is that length or girth?), or millions of dollars in free, unclaimed money. 99. Wear your URL on your t-shirt. Walk or drive your car while talking on a cell phone or reading a book. When you run into other people say "excuse you, jerk". 100. Spill coffee on people or find creative ways to insult people to coax them into linking at your site. How to NOT build Links 2 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za The Link Wheel 1 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za The principles of link building The Link Wheel 2 http://youtu.be/gKc-05M-OGk Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Many people have heard of link wheels. These are a somewhat old (and sometimes black hat) technique for getting ranked well. The problem is that all too often the advice that I see given regarding how to build them is either poor advice (such as doing it the black hat way) or just plain wrong. Fortunately, there's a way to do them that doesn't require you to go over to the dark side and risk Google penalties.Often, as I stated above, link wheels are used as a black hat strategy. Now, Google doesn't like spammy manipulation of their search results. So if you're going to follow the black hat approach, you've got to know that Google's algorithm is designed to try and find you and delist you. That's not really a great way to put together a long term business, in my opinion. For those that don't know what a black hat style link wheel is, allow me to explain. There are plenty of "user generated content sites" on the Internet that can rank quite well on Google for a variety of reasons (domain age, # of inbound links, etc). These are sites like Squidoo, Tumblr, Blogger, and Wordpress.com. The idea behind a "link wheel" the way the black hats do it is that you can throw a ton of junk content onto these sites, then add a ton of junk links to them. Because there are already so many links to these sites, Google won't find it strange that there's more, and even though the content is junk, it's still content and Google can't (yet) determine the difference between good content and junk. The huge number of spam links, combined with the junk content, does (for a short while) increase the page rank of those sites, which you then link to your main site. Each of the user content sites has some decent PR, which is then passed down to your main site. The Link Wheel 3 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Building A Link Wheel Is A Waste Of Time by Michael on January 27, 2010 6 months ago, I wrote the article “The Benefit Of Building A Link Wheel Is Bogus“. Since writing the article, I have had significant search engine traffic for the term “link wheel” without any other self-created content pointing back to it. Over the past month, it is the third most popular page on this blog behind the home page and the first and possibly only Smoking Hot Board Game Deal. Also since then, I have had a lot of time to think about this strategy for increasing rankings in search engines. If you boil the idea down to its essentials, then it is not an inherently bad idea. It is however still a waste of time as I will show you. http://michaelmindes.com/link-wheel-waste-of-time The Essentials Search engine rankings significantly improve with incoming links from trustworthy sources. Additionally, for any infrequently used phrase there will be few if any trustworthy sources. So, what a linkwheel does is create trustworthy sources which can then link to your target page. Example: We have 6 wheel spokes and 5 referring sites per spoke. The 5 referring sites on the spoke point to each other in a circle (so each has one incoming and one outgoing link) and all have links that point to the spoke. The 6 wheel spokes operate in the same manner, pointing to each other in a circle (one incoming and one outgoing link) and also point to the target page. The result is that some unlikely search phrase like “win free board games email signup” now has 6 trustworthy referring sources. Additionally, those 6 trustworthy referring sources are point at page XYZ. Therefore, when somebody search in Google for “win free board games email signup” they will be shown the target page. Beautiful! Everybody does not agree… 1 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Still A Waste Of Time The problem relies in all of the effort required. First, you need to do keyword research to make sure you have a search phrase that is not currently well covered and that you have a search phrase that has sufficient searches. Second, you need to create the target page. Third, you need to create the wheel spoke pages. Fourth, you need to create the referring authority pages for the spokes. Wow! I wonder how long all of that effort would actually take. Certainly it would take at least 3 hours to do right, possibly longer. Instead of wasting 3 hours on creating a link wheel, I could make at least one, possibly 2 really good guest blog posts. These guest blog posts could be used by a related blog containing multiple links back to your content. Instead of what you did, you get instant authority for an unlikely search phrase coupled with real human interest from the readers of the blog. Additionally you get to build up a relationship with a blogger in a related field which may begin reading your blog and occasionally linking back to your content. Conclusion Don’t waste your time with link wheels. It pollutes the Internet with trash throw away content in an effort to get additional search traffic. Instead concentrate on what you can do to build a lasting presence and build a business that is looking to a future with its customers. Would it make sense to pay somebody to make a link wheel? Once again, I say it is a waste of time and small business owners cannot be spending money on time wasting projects. That needs to wait until you are running a large bureaucratic corporation. Everybody does not agree… 2 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords – What? Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords – Where? Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords – Why? Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords – How? 1 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords – How? 2 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords – How? 3 Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords – How? 4 KEYPHRASES are better than KEY WORDS! Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords – Good example Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Keywords – Bad example Now write some copy for this ad to be more like the previous one, even using imaginary content Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za So, what do I do? 1. Build those Links … 2. … while focussing on keyphrases … 3. … and always producing good, original content … 4. … while steering clear from spamdexing!!! Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za A careless word may kindle strife. A cruel word may wreck a life. A timely word may level stress. But a loving word may heal and bless. Melius Weideman web-visibility.co.za web-usability.co.za Takeaway Actions Check indexing of, and inlinks to any domain Start working on the LINK WHEEL PROJECT!