For any of you who have been paying attention to the SEO malady in 2011 it certainly has been a very eventful year.  For SEO it has been a very challenging year at that, especially with the many, many algorithm tweaks that Google has been putting into place to thwart spam and scraper sites.  I certainly have no objection to Google cleaning up the cyber-sphere, and for anyone who spends as much time as me working on various sites and niches I’m certain that you welcome the efforts by Google as well.  Anyhow, this post isn’t necessarily about Google’s Panda algorithm, but more along the lines of using quality backlinks post Panda.

I’m not trying to brag, but for the sake of relevance to my personal knowledge and experiences in the post Panda era I simply want to note that I manage or operate over 30 websites.  Some websites are business-based sites for clients, while many of them are just like this site: a niche site that I enjoy working with and watching grow over the years.  As such, it’s not like I’m sharing from the perspective of having one or two websites, but from the likes of many.
The reason I mentioned the number of sites I manage or operate is simply to prove one very important point.  Whether any given website is personal niche site or for a business, ranking any site well and consistently entails more than a few comment type backlinks.  Of course all backlinks are good, but nothing tops quality backlinks.

What is a quality backlink?

A quality backlink has many elements that make it so.   A quality backlink is a back link that comes from a page with decent page rank (PR3-PR5) and has the “follow” attribute so your website actually gets some benefit from the back link.  A backlink with a no follow attribute is useless!  A quality backlink will be nestled on a page that has limited outbound backlinks.  Having a backlink on a PR4 page that has 2-300 outbound links has minimal value as well.  Ideally a page should have no more than 20-50 outbound links for it to have good value towards your website or blog.

I could go on and on about links and link attributes, but for the most part its all common sense.  Generally I find it best to defer to an SEO to run a campaign of sorts that ranges from backlinks, comment links, and article based links.  The whole gambit, if you may

Maybe its just me, but it seems as though lately everybody seems to have an answer since Google’s proverbial SEO “wrench in the gearbox” desecration of the SERPS.  It took a couple of months for them to regroup, but they seem to be back again, maybe even stronger?  They had to redesign their silly splash pages,  write new content, and record new video’s, but the SEO guru’s are back …unfortunately.

Fortunately for me I know better, and from what I’ve wasted my time reading thus far, I know that these purported SEO guru’s don’t know squat about panda’s either.  How do I know this?  Real simple.  Actually open one of the bazillion emails that your inbox and spam folders have been littered with, go to the ugly splash page, and cull a couple of the keywords and long tail phrases from their site and do some random searches.  See what I mean?  You don’t see their pathetic splash pages there, do you?  Yea, and you were actually considering spending the $3-500 for their “guaranteed” backlink generator submission tool thingy, right?  Why would you buy something from someone when they can’t even demonstrate that it works for them for effective SEO?

Tip#1

Take your hand off the mouse and step away from the monitor if your thinking about blowing your hard-earned money on some magical devise that will help your site rank high in the SERPS.  There is no single devise.  Are there software programs and submission tools out there that will help with your SEO? Absolutely!  But you better be careful where you step in Google’s minefield because your surely to get your leg blown off!

Tip#2

If your going to implement some effective SEO campaigns you have to be versatile and very, very patient.  Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, and surely don’t jam 1,000 backlinks to your website in one month.  I personally go for quality before quantity, and I’ve heard that perhaps 2-300 backlinks per months doesn’t seem to sending up any red flags, but I would be very careful…  If you have to, buy a couple good high PR links, but make sure they come from aged domains that have decent archives, not just jammed content for the past 6-12 months.

By the way, I thought that I would mention that my friend James has got some tips if you need to recover from Google.  A lot of good reading over there, and since Griz has been on the lamb “working” — how dare he — I’ve had to find a new source to read from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.  How do I know that they now?  HINT: “experiments”

Most visitors to this website have obviously seen the lack of new posts and content over the course of the past couple of months.  If your wondering what is going on; that perhaps this website has been abandoned, you guessed incorrectly. I also turned the comments option off because I was averaging between 4-500 comments per day!  Nobody can keep up with that type of work when you manage in excess of 30 websites so I had to re-group and focus on a manageable way to run this website.  In the mean time  I have just been very busy building backlinks and monitoring what has been a very long series of algorithm updates by Google.  For any of you who are not new to this and know exactly what I am talking about, then you too have been watching and reading about the many horror stories of the Farmer Update that Google made in an attempt to eliminate content farms.  Perhaps even your website(s) fell victim to this update?

For what I predict was a minimum of 60-90 days of pandemonium in the search engines results pages, I watched and monitored Google implement various unknown algorithm tweaks and it was a really weird experience to witness.  At one point in time the Google Places pages were mixed in with organic search results, despite the fact that they are commonly grouped together, typically at the top of search results.  Further, I had several “Places” pages simply evaporate into thin air and I was forced to do some editing to the respective profiles to revive them.  One site in particular had to be revived not once, not twice, but three separate times…  I was actually beginning to get pissed off at whomever the Google moderator was that kept changing settings back to!  Anyhow, I’m not here to babble about  Google Places because although they are very helpful in ranking business sites and the such, many of us do not rely on that application for niche sites that do not have a physical address or unique brand name.

Can I undo negative results from the Farmer Update?

The answer to that question is yes.  Is it going to be easy?  Perhaps, but that depends upon how you implement your backlink campaign(s).

For starters, when you engage in a backlink campaign do you keep track of when and where you attain your backlinks?  Do you build them in smaller, moderated groups, or do you plow hundreds of backlinks at your website over the course of a wee or couple of weeks?  Here’s a subtle hint of advise.  Always record where you attain your links, and do not send hundreds of links to your site too quickly.

A lot on online marketers grew very complacent in their comfort of using article directories, and I would suspect that many of you used article spinners to republish the same article to many article marketing directories?  Am I safe to assume this as being an accurate guess of your practices?  Well, welcome to the NEW world of Google SERPS and their attempt to eviscerate this type of SEO from their search results.  This is no longer going to work with the effectiveness that it used to, especially if the quality of the content was anything less than stellar.  Writing and spinning articles is okay, but you cannot write content at a 5th grade reading level and spin it 100 or so times, expecting it to show favorable results.  Moreover, in the wake of Google’s Farmer Update I would suspect that submission of this quality will probably either be removed or unapproved altogether.  So what do you do now?

Using Effective Article Marketing for Your SEO

Although submitting articles to Hubpages, Ezine Articles, and other directories for your free one-way backlink is still an effective and viable option, keep in mind that when Google finds your duplicate content it will retain the source from the site with the most authority and send the other version(s) straight down the rankings where it will never be of any value.  But there is a solution that works.  It takes a small investment and a little bit of time to get to know how to implement it correctly.  Just look in the upper-left sidebar and try the FREE 5 day trial of AMR. 
If you want credible one way backlinks to your site from a source that will not get you spanked by Google, then give it a try.  What’s the worst thing that can happen by trying something for FREE? Probably the same thing that happened to me, you’ll fork out the $97 and own this awesome piece of software.

So today I make it to the site to moderate any comments, and just to perform some updates and the such, and low and behold what do you think I find?  Hmmm, about 600 or so registered users, hundreds of gibberish articles awaiting approval, and over 700 post tags!  I mean, come on already!  Why are you so fucking stupid?  Do you even think about what your trying to do, or do you just make aimless attempts to pollute each and every site that comes across your browsing path?

Go away!

You spammers will never get into this site anymore, ever, ever, ever!

…I’ll try to keep this brief and to the point, but it may not end up that way?

As an aspiring internet marketer my mind is always racing!  Ideas come and go; sometimes I get the opportunity to jot down notes, and other times the ideas are lost forever.  The creation of this website is one of the many ideas that I conjured-up and I simply jotted down: “BacklinksForSEO.Com“  Thus, the Genesis of this website. Some of you might wonder why the “www” prefix is not there?  The answer is that I didn’t really think it relevant, but I’ve been considering making the necessary database changes to implement it…  We’ll see?  Anyhow.

The initial idea for this site, like the four or five other websites that I experiment with are just that.  Experimental.  This one is primarily for building backlinks.  Aside from that they help me learn.  I won’t elaborate on the plethora of things that I do “learn”, but to explore that topic in relevance to this website, I’m going to share a little bit of what I have learned so far — primarily one subject:  SEO Practices, and the hit-and-miss SEO that I am seeing.

Make Your Comments Matter!

Now this does not speak for every single person who visits this website and leaves a comment, but it does apply to more than half of the visitors.  What I have observed, correct me if I’m wrong, is that the majority of you simply come to this site and leave a comment with that being the sole purpose.  I dub it “hit and miss SEO“.  Kind of like shooting in the dark.  In many instances some of you leave a comment on several posts or pages, and some of you leave a comment on every single page and post!  Hey, I don’t mind.  And I don’t blame you for wanting to acquire the “do-follow” text link to your website — even if this website has no page rank ?  But there is one thing that perplexes me about those of you who do this.  Less than one month ago I wrote about the importance of building backlinks that look natural.  If you haven’t read it yet, please do so now BEFORE you invest your time commenting on several, or every single page and post on this site for the purpose of building backlinks.  In the aforementioned article I elaborated on the fact that it is essential to link to several pages of your website, as well as internal pages.  Yet, for 90% of those of you who make several comments at this site to get your text link, you manage to use the same keyword that is directed to the same URL…  I’m to criticizing anyone, but I do wish to emphasize that this Hit and Miss SEO is probably doing you more harm than good.  It doesn’t look natural to search engines and God only knows whether or not the bots even credit a site for backlinks of this nature?  If your going to invest the time to write the comment to get the backlink, why not take the little bit of effort needed to write a unique comment each time, and make those links to various pages?  Okay then.

I just wish to humbly share that I really am not some big SEO or internet guru.  I am still learning just like many of you are.  I don’t get rich with the ads on this site.  They are there simply for the purpose of hopefully generating some income that will balance and allow my monetary investments for hosting and the such wash in the end.   Quite frankly this site consumes a lot of my time for comment moderation when I could be  reading or writing something.  But that’s neither here nor there.

Why are you here?

I’m here to share what I’ve learned, and to learn from what I share.  I’m here to act as a custodian of your backlinks and to guard them from the SPAMMERS who have nothing better to do than plague this site with comments that have 40-50 links to porn sites!  I mean, come on!  Does this method have ANY effective results?  I don’t think this even qualifies for hit and miss SEO????  If any visitor to this site even remotely glances to the sidebar on the left and sees the glaring red text in the “Comment Policy” box, it should serve as a warning that your wasting your time placing links in the body of the comment!  Especially porn!!  Not to be rude, but I don’t even read the context of the comment or where the link leads.  If there’s a link in the comment body it gets deleted as soon as I see the link.  Trust me when I say that many, many comments have been sent to the trash bin simply because of this.  Again, this Hit-and-Miss SEO is a waste of what I consider to be valuable time.

Why not make your time and comments matter?

Merry Christmas from Backlinks For SEO:

Do yourself a big favor!  Just in case your considering, DO NOT buy Total Traffic Annihilation.

Click the link to read why…

The saying has been around for hundreds of years and it applies to just about anything, doesn’t it?  Well I think so…

Lately I’ve been on this mission to generate some quality backlinks from sites that have decent PR so I can get a site ranked for a specific keyword.  The keyword, by the way, is “Truck Accessories”.  In SEO terms I believe this is referred to as linking to “authority sites”, and these sites have authority due to the fact that the search engines have deemed the site worthy of page rank; which gives the site a little better reputation in the eyes of the Google Gods.  Did I say that right?  Anyhow, you find these authority sites, you comment on their posts and/or you register as a user and create a “signature”, and subsequently you create a backlink to the site you wish to rank a specific keyword for.  Well, needless to say my attempts at ranking this site for truck accessories has been a royal pain!  Could I use some help?  Absolutely!  Am I willing to “buy” a backlink from a high PR site?  Not yet…  lol  Just kidding.  I am not at liberty to get caught for doing what is clearly a violation of  Google Webmaster Guidelines for any site I have involvement with.  I cannot be responsible for having anyone’s website de-indexed!  As a matter of fact it is unfortunate that many of the commentators on this site whose websites are aged have zero pages indexed and I have to delete their comment. (See Backlinks For SEO comment policy in sidebar)

The reason for this post was to remind myself that sticking to the basics might be the best method, rather than trying something NEW!  I mean, for a couple of years now I have been creating a number of blogs with free Blogger blogs and paid WordPress blogs.  I simply create some unique content and write an occasional post every now and then.  Eventually the site gets indexed and I have a resource to share and create usable functions with.  Is this considered building link farms?   Probably not?  The sites range from about 30-50 various topics and do not link to one another in any way or form.  Their just there for the prospect of generating a backlink some time down the road, or for Google Adsense purposes.  It’s just a means of experimenting for me, but I have also found that in some cases it is an excellent resource for getting another site ranked well in the SERPS, or simply promoting an idea or two?  This takes a lot of time and effort, and to be quite honest with you I have been getting lazy — hence, trying to find an easier softer way to generate some backlinks to get the site ranked for truck accessories…  Well, time to go back to the basics.

What I am wondering is how many of you use this same type of resource and how well it works for you?  Do you utilize your free Blogger blogs for the same purposes as I do; Adsense and backlinks?  Have any of your sites, coincidentally acquired Google page rank?

Looking forward to some comments and feedback from all of you, and perhaps someone who knows of a good resource that will help me nail the truck accessories ranking issue.  Thanks!

Okay…  This is nothing new to anyone with even the slightest knowledge in SEO and Google.  Further, I cannot take credit for this knowledge as it has been acquired from someone who I consider a very true friend: Griz, that would be you!  But this information is what I learned well over a year ago when I took his humble advise to make a pot of coffee and do some reading. So I read for a few days.  As much as I would like to direct you to his site so you can read too, I regret to say that it is no longer available.

Anyhow, to get to the point of this post — a point I am raising simply to clarify what I know to be fact — I’m letting those of you who don’t know, that Google page rank has nothing to do with where a given website ranks in the search engine results pages (SERPS).  I know at this point there are many of you who think I’m crazy, or that I don’t know what I’m talking about.  But before you get upset and simply leave this site, please look at the illustration below so I can prove that what I am saying is not a load of crap!  I like facts, I share facts, and I welcome ANYONE who has evidence contrary to any of the facts as listed on this site to let me know.  After all this is SEO and it is an ever evolving art that is liable to alter facts in some way or another.

As you can see there is a PRO site sitting in 1st place right on top of PR3 and PR4 sites!  What’s even more amazing is that 6 out of the top 10 sites listed on the first page are a PRO as well.  How does this happen?  Backlinks!  Now maybe you don’t care where your site is ranked in the SERPS?  I wouldn’t believe that for a minute because you wouldn’t be reading this, would you?  So for any of you who spend so much time trying to satisfy Google in the hopes of attaining page rank, it’s probably better that you spend your valuable time building backlinks and adding content to your site.

Now I will agree with the many resources who teach that spending too much time reading other sites’ content is no way to get credible backlinks, but a person has to dedicate some constructive reading time to first learn how to get credible one way backlinks, right?  And I’ve done my share of reading, so now I write and share my experiences — paying it forward if you may…

I’m going to keep this post short.

Today was the day I dedicated to arduously moderating the more than 400 comments in the comment queue of Backlinks For SEO.  Yes, I visit each and every URL submitted.  Yes, I analyze each and every site for page rank and/or the number of pages indexed.  Yes, this takes hours of my time, but I do it to ensure that this backlink resource is a worthwhile investment for everyone.  Just like the old saying, “one bad apple spoils the bunch,” so too is the principle that one backlink associated to porn or gambling can have a bad impact on the reputation of this site, as well as every site that links to or from it.  But that’s not what I wish to discuss.  Actually I wish to discuss the importance of building backlinks that look natural to the search engines.

There’s a plethora of information out there about building backlinks that look natural, but I’m going to dissect it into one tiny segment: “Pages You Link To”

Link To Internal Pages:

I couldn’t help but to realize that many visitors who submit comment here at this site only fashion the backlink to the landing page of their site.  In most cases many of the sites I visit have numerous pages, yet there’s only a link to the landing page.  Why?  Are the other pages not worth the time to visit?  I would certainly hope not!  Is it just a matter of being lazy?  Probably not…  Most importantly, what do you think it looks like from the viewpoint of the Google search engine — or the Google employee who happens to randomly review your site — when all of the backlinks to your website are directed at only the landing page?  Got you thinking?  Good!  Because I’m willing to bet that you agree with me that this doesn’t look very natural.  Not to mention the fact that neglecting to promote the entirety of any website is likely detrimental to a sites SEO.  Just a thought…

Anchor Text:

Another matter is the text or anchor text that you use when creating the actual backlink.  Do you always use the same anchor or keyword?  Does that seem natural to you?  Probably not.  But some times we just use the same term anyway — hoping and impatiently awaiting for our site to rank for the term.  Did you ever take into consideration that on many sites the text for a URL is “Visit Website” or “Website”?

In the least I would recommend a random anchor backlink of this type.  Perhaps 1 out of every 10 backlinks would be the best proportion; though I’ve heard as high as 20%…  Nevertheless, break up the monotonous anchored backlinks directed toward your website or blog they look more natural.

So there you go.  Chew on this information a little bit and analyze it.  Most importantly, start getting some backlinks to ALL of the internal pages on your website to make the link-building process more natural!

Here are some excellent backlink resources to help and get you on your way:

• http://www.websiteoutlook.com/

• http://www.alexa.com/

• http://www.cubestat.com/

• http://www.quantcast.com/

• http://www.aboutdomain.org/

How To Avoid

Fraudulent SEO Services!

There are endless SEO companies which provide absolutely useless, and sometimes harmful SEO and backlink building services which you should never buy.

The following are Three of the more popular, and even fraudulent, SEO services that you should avoid at ALL costs!

Website Optimization Services

Some SEO agencies provide website optimization services. Do yourself a favor and forget about this type of service.  What you need, and what you can do yourself for on-page website optimization include some of the following:

1. Create an attractive title which includes your main keyword. Focus on your targeted audience instead of search engines while you create your title. It is most important for your site to convert your visitors to than to improve your SERPS.
2. Insert your main keyword in your landing page 2-3 times and highlight it once with bold.
3. Avoid duplicate content, flash, java scripts and hidden text.
4. Link all pages between each other.

Services Which Guarantee Top SERPS Rankings

Many SEO firms “promise” or even “guarantee to get your website ranked in the top Ten of Google SERPs within a week or ten days. This is a service you should avoid at all cost because most likely:

• They will get your site ranked in top Ten SERPs for unpopular, non-competitive keywords that you won’t even get any meaningful traffic from them anyway.

• They will simply add your site to Google AdWords paid listings and your site will show up in sponsors section. Essentially your paying the SEO service to administer a Google Adwords campaign when you can purchase AdWords paid listings by yourself directly from Google.

• They will find the keywords your website already lists in the top Ten SERPs for and tell you that your  SERP ranking is the result of their SEO work. What you don’t know, however, is that you likely don’t receive any significant amount of traffic from these keywords.

Any SEO company who promises or guarantees a top ten listing in a very short period of time is always a fraud because it is impossible to get a website in the top Ten SERPs for a highly competitive, popular keyword. The truth is that it takes anywhere from One month, and even as long as Six months to get a website in the top Ten SERPs for a highly competitive or popular keyword.

Did you know that:

• Most link building services don’t work because they are not SEO friendly!As a matter of fact they build links too quickly and actually get sites penalized by Google. This is because the majority of SEO service agencies don’t have the capability to control the link building frequency for your SEO campaign?

• 30-50% of backlinks implemented by most SEO agencies get removed within the First month after they have been built?

• Most SEO companies build backlinks with the same anchor texts?

• 50-90% of backlinks built by most SEO firms get removed within the first Three months after your link building campaign sevice is completed?

• Most SEO companies build links from similar pages?

• 70-99% of backlinks built by most SEO companies are removed within the first Six months after your link building campaign service is completed!

• Most SEO companies build links from pages with too many outbound links?

Search Engine Submission Services

Regardless of the number of search engines and promises by SEO firms to submit your website to search engine submission services to improve your SERPS rankings, a majority of these services are absolutely useless and even detrimental to your website!

• 99% of organic search engine traffic comes from the top Five search engines:

Google (60% to 70% of all traffic comes from Google.)

Yahoo

Bing

Ask

AOL

• If your site isn’t indexed it means that you must increase your website link popularity so search engines will find your site. Manually submitting your site to search engines is useless, because if it doesn’t have enough backlinks it still won’t get in the top 10 SERPs; even for low competitive keywords.

• There is no necessity in submitting your website to search engines because their crawlers will find your website by themselves!

TIPS:

There are many reputable SEO link building services out there, so be certain that the services you purchase are one of these credible SEO services.

Only buy links from SEO services which will guarantee that they will replace for FREE any backlinks that are removed within a minimum of One year.

Website development entails numerous components which ultimately determines whether or not your site sinks or swims!  Getting the right backlinks is the most important factor to consider.  Moreover, even if your site has thousands of backlinks pointing to it, if it is not properly developed for search engine optimization chances are the site will not maintain its placement in the SERPS. (Search Engine Result Pages)

I find it simply amazing that there is so much content floating around in cyberspace about the various attributes of back links and whether or not their value has any significance for your website or blog.  Some critics will vehemently proclaim that no follow back links have no value whatsoever!  Others state that keyword anchored backlinks with either do follow or no follow attributes have positive value as long as they are acquired from a source that:

1. has relevant content to the key words utilized in the link; and
2. is credible by scrutiny of the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

In any case it is important to know what does and does not work, otherwise you may just be spinning your wheels…

As for the truth to whether the “do follow” vs. “no follow” attribute matters, it is essential to know that the only difference between do follow and no follow is that a “no follow” attribute is a hyperlink inclusion that tells search engines not to pass on any credibility or influence from the host site to any outbound link from that site.  In doing this it allows the host site to maintain its integrity or page ranking assignment.  However, that does not necessarily mean that the fact that a site with PR 6, 7, or 8 — a site considered extremely credible by search engines — cannot afford credibility to outbound links from the site, does it?

A recent discovery in my Hostgator cPanel helped me to conclude that even “no follow” backlinks can boost your site up in the SERPS past high PR sites, even if your site has zero or lower PR!  What I discovered is that my cPanel now includes SEO Tools called Attracta SEO and it is excellent!

My opinion is that Hostgator is the best hosting source available.  My sites are never down, it has an excellent cPanel, and their support is extraordinary!  What has this got to do with Backlinks?  Well, when you use the coupon code: “FREESEOTOOLS” when you sign up for Hostgator Hosting you save money in conjunction to a service that has excellent SEO tools, resources, and credibility with the search engines.

In conclusion I wish to end this post with a simple question to visitors:

Would you pay for PR 6-7 backlinks?  If so:

How much would you pay for six of these high PR backlink resources?

Looking forward to your responses!