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After exercising much patience and performing research over the course of the past months since my last post, I have decided that today is the day to share my secret!  or maybe it will wait even longer?  We’ll see…

What I will say is that I have discovered a secret to getting my sites listed in the Bing index; a sort of “back door” if you may.  But whether I am willing to disclose this secret (hell, it may not even be a secret?) with the possibility that people will abuse it and ruin the back door method remains uncertain at this time.  This is because a few of my online networking associates (Griz) have fallen victim to the repercussions of sharing secrets and it ended up doing more damage than good…  Nevertheless, what I do know is that this method works, although in some cases the submission takes days, while in others it takes weeks before the site is listed in the index.

The back door to Bing?

Whether or not this “secret” back door truly works or not may be entirely based upon whether my sites fall within the criteria that the latest Bing search engine algorithm employs?  I’ve found numerous sources which seem to believe the following are relevant to getting your sit(s) indexed quickly:

Bing pays more attention to the authority of the site

If this is true, this is bad news for bloggers and small sites because it means that search results are distorted in favor of older sites and/or sites of authoritative organizations. Age of domain is also very important with Bing – even more than with Google.

Inbound anchor text matters more

The quantity of quality inbound links might be of less importance for Bing but the anchor text certainly matters more. Actually, since anchor text is one of the measurements of the quality of inbound links, it isn’t much different. Get quality anchor text and you will do well in both Bing and Google.

Backlinks are of less importance

If you compare the first 10 results in Bing and Google, it is noticeable that all equal, the winners in Bing have less backlinks than the winners in Google. It is unclear if no-follow matters with Bing.

Page Rank matters less

When you perform a search for a competitive keyword and you see a couple of PR2 or even PR1 sites among the top 10 results, this might make you wonder. On Google this is hardly possible but on Bing it looks quite normal.

Onpage factors matter more than with Google

This is one of the most controversial points. Many SEO experts disagree but many also think that onpage factors matter more with Bing than with Google. Still, it has nothing to do with the 90s, when onpage factors were definitive.

Fresh content matters less with Bing

Bing looks a bit conservative – or maybe it just can’t index sites that quickly – but it seems that fresh content is not so vital as with Google. This is related to the age of domain specifics and as a result you will see ancient pages rank high (but these ancient pages are relevant to the search query).

Bing is more Flash-friendly

Optimizing a Flash site for Google is a SEO nightmare! It appears as though Bing is more Flash-friendly, which is good news to all sites where Flash is heavily employed.

Okay.  For today at least I have decided against sharing the secret.  But if you are smart and really want to figure it out on your own like I did, a little bit of “Google” search (hint) just might help you to do so   Perhaps Google is more apt to expose the Bing index secret than Bing themselves, but that remains to be unseen.  The truth is that if you build your sites with the above-mentioned criteria and tips in mind it won’t be long before you see you pages getting listed in the Bing index.

Nothing is written in stone!  Nothing is guaranteed either…  Oh!  One thing is guaranteed, and that is one day soon I will reveal my secret!  Maybe tomorrow?  We’ll see?

Update: 08/20/2010

Here’s the secret — lets see how long it will be before too many people utilize this resource and its ruined…

LINK: “ Sites Not In The Index “

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This will be short and sweet…

Ever since I saw a post in a forum that I frequently visit that asked whether other webmasters were having difficulties getting their site(s) indexed in Bing, I have been paying extra close attention to the Bing search engine results in my SeoQuake toolbar.  More often than not I see that the numbers for indexed pages in Bing are substantially LESS than Google and Yahoo!  Why this is I yet to really know or understand…  However, I heard from a reputable source that the way to the Bing index heart is through LOTS of backlinks; which necessarily means — at least in my thinking, anyway — is that I would prefer as many backlinks from sites that are indexed well in Bing.  It only makes sense, right?

The Bing Search Engine

Now in the course of my website development scrutiny, just as in attaining backlinks from any other site, I pay very close attention to the content of the site, as well as the co-citation that may negatively affect my site.  Some people say its no big deal, just get your backlinks!  But its not too long before you don’t hear from them any more.  They’re probably busy trying to dig themselves out of the Google sandbox?  That could be the price you pay and that’s where I believe that Bing focuses its primary algorithm calibration that makes it difficult to attain a lot of indexed pages in the Bing search engine.  I can’t say this as a matter of fact, but I have reasonable suspicions that will either be confirmed or completely dismissed based upon the results of this post.

So for now I will leave it at that and I will let things propagate, churn, and materialize before I continue further on this suspicion of mine.  But remember, build those backlinks, and try to get as backlinks as you can from sites that index well in Bing and PLEASE let me know what your results are.

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This morning I invested some time researching information on backlinks (as I typically do at least once or twice a week) and I was looking into the topic of guest posts on blogs.  Guest posts can be very useful to achieve both page visits, as well as relevant content for a website or blog.  In turn a backlink is included within the post to the authors site — a tit for a tat, if you may.  As such, if you know of a decent site that has good page and trust rank associated with it,  oftentimes it is a worthwhile investment to contact the owner/webmaster of that site and ask if you could publish a guest post on their site for the purpose of attaining a desirable backlink to your site.  This is a practice that is permissible under Google policy.  Anyhow, what I stumbled across was an interesting brand marketing practice known as sponsored blog posts.

Sponsored Blog Posts

Sponsored blog posting is a marketing practice whereby sponsors compensate bloggers who provide comments or reviews on a topic which links to the sponsor’s site.  Although this is a common practice of manipulating a litany of backlinks to a given sponsor site, Google has a very strict policy about these kinds of practices.  Google wants bloggers to adhere to its “no follow” tag policy when posting on the blog if the post links to the sponsor’s site paying to have the brand mentioned in the post.  Unfortunately Kmart found out about the consequences of violating this policy.

The Kmart Blog and Izea

Back in December of 2008 the social media agency Izea launched a “Sponsored Conversations” campaign for Kmart through its Social Spark blogging site, which matches brands with bloggers, and has offered this sponsored conversation blogging service in one form or another for years.

The way it works is that Social Spark bloggers typically receive cash compensation. In this Kmart campaign, a few bloggers received Kmart gift cards for six of the 800 posts written for Kmart’s campaign.  Ultimately Forrester Research shared Kmart’s creative marketing endeavors and expressed that marketers should take advantage of this form of “sponsored conversation”, and ultimately Google got wind of the fact that the backlinks to the sponsor site DID NOT implement the “nofollow” rule as mandated by their policy.  Matt Cutts,  the head of Google’s Webspam team, gave his opinion on sponsored conversations reported by Forrester Research and reiterated the clear policy that is enforced by Google.  And although I was unable to discover any data that shows that Kmart was penalized by Google for not complying with Google policy in this regard, when I utilized my Firefox SEO tool it was patently obvious that the Kmart blog has paid the consequences for something…  None of the Kmart blog posts are indexed by Google – period!

So my take on this whole this is pretty simple.  Even one year after the fact, Kmart’s blog has essentially been banned from being indexed by Google.  Whether it was their own actions, or that of some marketing company promoting them, its in cyberspace oblivion!  I only know through hearsay that there are many services out there which offer good backlinks for a cost.  My advise?  DON’T GET CAUGHT!  Better yet:

DON’T DO IT!

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Backlinks Maintenance

I religiously awake at 3AM every day, fire-up the coffee pot, brush my teeth, log into the computer, smoke a few drags of a cigarette, pour a cup of coffee, and grab a seat at the computer.  Every Day!  Now some, if not most of you may think I’m nuts — my fiance surely thinks that I am!  But average people do not understand the maintenance involved with attending several websites and blogs either.  Its a lot more than creating a site, building a few backlinks, and letting it sit there.  For example.  Do you see the pretty YouTube icon to the right over there?  I know, you can’t miss it…  That simply happens to be a reciprocal backlink in action.  And, I might add the link from YouTube is “follow”!  That little project took me about 1-1/2 hours to implement; from creating the YouTube channel, to finding the YouTube icon image, editing it in Photoshop, and uploading it into cPanel and creating the HTML widget to display it on the page.  Yea, I’m a little slow, but I’m okay with slow.

You see, I am the type of person who likes to invest constructive time in the process of building backlinks to my sites.  Although there are many automated link-building software programs out there, I am kind paranoid of being slapped by Google and having any of my sites disappear into cyberspace oblivion because I was too lazy or inpatient to invest a little bit of time into my project(s).  A lot of people probably think that I’m nuts for doing things the old fashioned way in this regard too, but when things go bad for these link-building sites and the penalties start being imposed, my investment won’t seem so bad, will it?  I thought you might see things my way, and if not I wish you all the best in your risk-taking endeavors.  For me it’s simply not worth it.

Comment Moderation

Now in addition to the development processes of my site I also have the painstaking endeavor of moderating my comments and the litany of SPAM that comes in to.   For those of you who post relevant comments I apologize for utilizing the term “painstaking” to describe my comment moderation obligation, because in many cases I enjoy reading your comments and answering any questions, etc.

Although I utilize the Akismet application, some times individuals like to post multiple comments with the same text and different backlinks associated with the same text in their comments.  I personally categorize those comments as SPAM, period!  I mean hey, if you want a backlink I am more than happy to share, but at least take the time to write something constructive to provide some meaningful conversation, questions or whatever?  Its only fair in my estimation.  And please don’t utilize the same text for multiple backlinks.  I’ll give multiple backlinks, but at least invest some time to comment — its really not too much to ask.  As you can see from the comments that pass my muster, there are some relatively decent comments from various people and their websites or blogs.  And the backlinks in those comments get the follow tag as well.  In all cases I will first visit the site from the comment source to ensure that the site is not SPAMMY!  Like my article on co-citation clearly describes, I simply don’t want this site or any other to be associated with any SPAM, period!  Is this system perfect?  Probably not.  But its personalized and I have fun doing the work…  Speaking of which, It’s time for me to head to my day job so this post is going to be cut shorter than what I anticipated.

Now go get some backlinks and be kind and constructive in your endeavors…

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Effectively Marketing Your Site For End-Users

Although it can often times be easy to forget, first and foremost the essential and fundamental truth about websites which transcends all the conjecture floating around in cyberspace by so called SEO and internet marketers is this: Sites that do not work for end users (i.e., customers, visitors, and browsers) absolutely do not work!  Websites are simply no good for anything or anyone other than the self-serving ego of their creator if their primary is search engines…  Most importantly, unlike us mortal beings, search engine robots with their crawling spiders — limited only to that which was programmed into their silicon chips and lacking any free-will — never forget this truth!  Relentlessly crawling and collecting words and link sources, search engine robots always put the end-user friendliness and content quality high on the priority list of factors when they are assigning return position and/or page rank of all sites.  So the next time you stumble across a site and read that backlinks — one way links, regardless of quality or relevancy –  have become the crème de la crème of search-engine optimization and are the only kinds of links the search engines are still including in their ranking calculations, just bear one thing in mind:

This unfounded myth is patently incorrect!

Go ahead… ask!  Don’t be shy?  I already know; your wondering how I or anyone else would know this, right?  It’s relatively simple.  Because they (the search engines) say so!  That’s correct…  facts right from the source.  And there’s no better place to get the facts, unless of course you wish to skewer them for self-serving interests?

Now before I go any further, perhaps you might be thinking, “yea right; why should I believe what the search engines publish?”  “Such and such site states that one-way backlinks are gospel, and that search engine technicians and publicists are likely to misguide webmasters to try and keep their algorithm parameters (or some other off-the-wall rubbish) a secret …  For this type of proposition I would be forced to respond with a few simple questions?

1. What are the credentials of the author at such and such site, and where does he or she obtain the factual basis to support their proposition?
2. What is it at the such and such site that they are marketing or otherwise looking to:  a) gain from you, or  b) keep from you?
3. Why would anyone render anything from an internet marketer, webmaster, or SEO — whose identity may or may not be available — gospel over the credibility of huge corporate businesses whose ultimate goal is to become most popular by rendering the best end results for people searching for things?  It is my experience that the primary goal of search engines is that they want your legitimate, popular, and NO SPAM site to perform well for the customer just as badly as you do.

What the major search engines state about indexing, return position, and page rank:

Google:

“make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.”

~Official Quality Guidelines

Yahoo!:

It prefers to index “pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary.”

Bing:

Microsoft advises webmasters trying to optimize for Bing to concentrate on making sure the site’s “target audience is interested.”

That is what they say, and they want NOTHING from me or you other than simple compliance with user friendly principles.  Now back to links…

Good backlinks can often help a site’s search engine rating.  All links are a sign of popularity or a “vote” for your site. Believe it or not, search engines do tabulate votes favorably as long as:

a) the links are relevant

b) the links are organically obtained; and

c) the links are non-spam in nature.

Now because search engines primarily trade in relevance, and make very few — if any — value judgments whatsoever, it is practically impossible for a backlink to hurt your sites page rank.  And although backlinks can and will drive potential customers to your site and act as votes by search engines, they provide absolutely nothing in the form of value or benefit to your end users!  They don’t see them, and probably don’t even know that they exist.  Moreover, as for fulfilling the prerequisites of the search engines by creating “pages primarily for users and being designed for humans,” it becomes clear that one-way backlinks are detrimental to the rudiments of successful SEO and internet marketing campaigns which focus on conversion and targeted traffic.
On the other link horizon, however, are reciprocal links, and for the purpose of catering to the end-user they are the best link source.  Here is why.
Not only are reciprocal links an integral part of making a site “primarily for end users“,  they are also pathways to:

• how to tips and tricks for fixing stuff

• virtual rooms jammed with useful information

• portals to necessary service providers and communities

Moreover, a quality reciprocal link is better than a one-way link because its diverse nature enhances your site’s search engine appeal twice-over by providing both a backlink vote with search engines, and a forward link which can help you comply with search engine recommendations to “make pages primarily for users.”

What are Reciprocal Links?

Wikipedia defines a reciprocal link as follows:
“A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. Example: Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob’s website links to Alice’s website, and Alice’s website links to Bob’s website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories, in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process because Google uses link popularity algorithms (defined as the number of links that led to a particular page and the anchor text of the link) to rank websites for relevancy.”

Granted, quality reciprocal links relevant to your site are very tough to attain and take a lot of manual work, but the benefits achieved through your hard work serve the common goal of both you and the search engines by marketing your site for end-users.

When the search engines like your site everyone is happy!

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Why Not Link To Sites With Low Page Rank?

It’s no secret in the SEO world that quality, relevant, reciprocal links added to a site in appropriate numbers at reasonable intervals may very well improve a site’s appeal by Google.  Moreover, gaining backlinks from high PR (Page Rank) sites provides a higher grade of influence for your site by virtue of the linking sites achieved status via their established Google Page Rank.  But does that necessarily mean that sites with low or even zero PR do not provide useful backlinks?  And how do you suppose that these high PR sites gained their authority to begin with?

It is estimated that about 99 million of the internet’s approximate 110 million websites never attain a position in Google’s SERPS to really matter.   And although most webmasters refuse to admit or otherwise believe it, Google’s algorithms pay very little attention to PR when assigning return positions.  So then, if PR is practically irrelevant to your sites return position in the SERPS, and return position is the only thing that determines if you will get page views via Google’s natural search results, then why not get backlinks to low PR sites?

Google, as it has been repeatedly stated in its official pronouncements, considers backlinks an integral and essential part of the web experience; using them as a factor in both its assigned ranking and return position. Just as good links are good links and can be beneficial for your site, bad links are often harmful for your site. The difference between how a link to a so-called “popular” website with a high PR and a less popular site with a lower PR impacts a given site’s return position is simply just a matter of such small degree that PR should really bear no relevance whatsoever in your backlink campaign.  The simple TRUTH is that backlinks to quality, content-compatible sites with low or even no PR will not hurt your ranking and can actually drive traffic and customers to your site!

Contrary to the unfounded belief of many webmasters that only PR matters, there simply is nothing in the Google Guidelines which states that they penalize sites for having good but not high PR backlinks.  As a matter of fact, the guidelines clearly state that the following “black-hat” linking practices may affect a site’s ranking adversely:

• link schemes designed to increase ranking or Page Rank

• links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web

The Google Guidelines say absolutely nothing about downgrading any website or blog for a quality backlink from a relatively new or otherwise under-ranked site. As such, because there is nothing contained within the guidelines about penalizing good links to low-ranked sites, it is absolutely illogical and bad business practice to refuse a link that would otherwise provide valuable information to your end users, or by creating a portal for new prospects to your site, simply due to the that link’s low PR status.

My suggestion is that when in doubt, read the directives from the source!  Don’t fall for all that hype from third parties who get their facts mixed up, or simply create dissension for the sake of acquiring visitors to their sites…

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How To Avoid The Bad Neighborhood Blues

I can only suspect that you have managed to find your way to this site because your interest falls into either or both of the following two categories:

a) You are a social blogger looking for popularity and/or fame; or

b) You are a webmaster looking to brush-up on or advance your backlink skills for the sole purpose of successful internet marketing.

Now as most of you may or may not know, the term “SEO” is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization.  And it is no secret that gaining backlinks is the primary means upon which to get your website or blog positioned well in the search engines…  But I’m going to jump a little bit ahead of the game here to help eliminate a potential and inevitable problem that you may face in your backlink building conquest; especially if you are new to the game.

As with any internet marketing technique, there are certain risks attributable to having other sites linking to your site. This is because any given site could ultimately turn out to be a bad reference or otherwise have less than a reputable character with the search engines because they have been associated with SPAM; thereby imputing that status to your site.  Although there are some reputable resources out there that teach you skills on how to build effective backlinks — sites I will respectfully endorse a bit further on in this site — for now I find it very critical to focus on a subject that most of these sources simply glean over and/or fail to mention altogether.  That subject is known as  “Co-Citation”.

Now just like anything else there is both bad and good co-citation, especially when it comes to backlinks.  Although the term “co-citation” is rarely used by seasoned webmasters or internet marketers, the term that most webmasters are familiar with when it comes to link building is “Bad Neighborhood”.  Both terms essentially have the same meaning, so distinguishing between the two is mere semantics because the term “bad neighborhood” is simply a case of co-citation.  Needless to say, at all cost you want to avoid being associated with sites that have been branded as a bad neighborhood!  To achieve this it is imperative that you understand how your site might become associated  with a bad neighborhood through co citation.

What is Co-Citation?

Co-Citation is a popular similarity measure used to establish a subject similarity between two or more items, in this case we’re referring to backlinks.  The following illustration provides an example.

The upper four sites A, B, C and D all link to the other sites 1, 2, 3 and 4, but A, B, C and D do not backlink to each other.  However, despite the fact that sites A, B, C and D do not link to each other, search engines imply that sites A, B, C and D are related to each other because sites 1, 2, 3 and 4 link to them.  In other words, if your website is “1″, because your site is linked to from A, and A links to sites 2, 3 and 4 your site is considered to be associated in the same neighborhood as sites 2, 3 and 4.  Likewise, the relationship of site B linking to sites 2, 3 and 4; or site C linking sites 2, 3 and 4; or site D linking to sites 2, 3 and 4 — all create and form the same co-citation association to your site.  If any of sites A, B, C, D or 2, 3 or 4 are associated in a bad neighborhood these backlinks could could substantially jeopardize the trust-rank of your site in the eyes of the search engines.

Therefore, when you are getting backlinks to your site, the most critical element is not only who you link to or receive a link from, but also who is linked on these same sites with you! It does not matter if you are not directly linked to sites that are considered bad, the fact that you are on the same site pages with bad sites means that your site is now  linked  from a bad neighborhood, which could substantially hinder your sites ranking and trust in the search engines.  Granted, having a lot of backlinks to your site is good SEO, but being conservative and cautious as to which sites you link with could save you from potential problems in the long run.

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