Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
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” ;-)
…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!
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?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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!
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.