Posts tagged Link Popularity
Linkbaiting Campaigns for SEO – How to Choose Your Bait
Aug 14th
Viral content is the new king of the net … but unlike real viruses, it is surprisingly hard to ‘catch’ the idea of how to create it! Once you understand the idea of viral ‘hooks’, though, you’ve created a nice fertile breeding ground for that viral content to multiply within your mind. Then it will ultimately be published on your blogs, earning you lots of links and SEO success. Today we explain the hooks that all viral content has, to help you re-create them for your own SEO work.
There are 7 main hooks that are used in linkbaiting content for SEO:
- A news hook
- A resource hook
- A humour hook
- A contrary hook
- An attack hook
- An ego hook
- An incentive hook
If you’ve spent much time reading blogs, you’ll probably be able to think of a few examples of each that you’ve read. Here are a couple of notes on creating each, for your own SEO purposes.
A news hook
MUST be very fresh. If you aren’t constantly on the net, looking out for breaking and trending stories, and if you aren’t able to add a fresh perspective to a story, you shouldn’t try to publish this sort of linkbaiting content. You’ll also need a decent readership to make use of these stories for SEO.
A resource hook
These are the easiest type for most businesses to create, and the great thing about resource-based linkbait content is that as long as you follow a few basic best-pratcices when you create it, the amount of exposure you get will be almost directly proportional to the amount of work you put in. Create a better resource, get more links and SEO-love. Your resource can be an authority list, a tool, a walk-through or a guide.
A humour hook
These can be difficult for corporate sites to pull off. Humour inevitably offends some people … unless there are pets or children involved! Keep these posts relevant to your business, and run them past everybody at the company for a negative reaction. If you find a single one, keep looking.
A contrary hook
Disagree with a popular opinion, or one popular person’s opinion on something. However, you’ll need to be tactful – otherwise you’ll gain SEO success, but lose respect.
An attack hook
Also known as ‘being controversial’. This works well for some, but be aware that people will constantly be wondering when you’ll attack them, if you make it a habit.
An ego hook
Stroke the ego of somebody you want a link from, by asking them for an interview, or giving them an award. A great way to get those single, valuable authority links.
An incentive hook
Offer samples or prizes in exchange for links, or run a content with an awesome prize to encourage links to flow naturally – great for SEO.
5 More Hot Tips for Submitting to Directories
May 6th
There are a lot of people that have given up trying to get into DMOZ … which is a great pity, since it is still a very valuable link and a staple of internet marketing! Today we continue our list of tips that can greatly increase your chances of success in getting into ‘the project’, or any other human-edited directory. We looked at the most important things last time – so read yesterday’s post first!
- Contact information
It’s one of the hallmarks of a legitimate business, and one of the things directory submission assessors will check for first. - Corporate-type stuff
This would include having a privacy policy, a returns policy (if applicable), guarantees, etc. - Outbound links
Share the love! Link to high quality sites, and don’t overlink. - Images that work
Your images should display in all the common browsers - Java and HTML that works
It takes a while to get your site listed in DMOZ, and you need to maintain it perfectly error-free until the listing is approved.
5 Hot Tips for Submitting to Directories
May 4th
A listing in DMOZ is now one of the base strategies that almost anyone looking to SEO a large site, or one in a competitive industry, must do straight away. It takes a long time to get listed, though, and if your submission isn’t up to all sorts of standards it might never make it. Here’s our checklist for DMOZ, and any other human-edited directory submission!
DMOZ - The new Yellow Pages
- Keep your content fresh
DMOZ cares, just like Google! Current prices, new blog posts. - Intact links
Make sure that you update links whenever you delete or move a page. Users hate broken links (you know that!), and directory submission evaluators do too. - Appropriate category
Not all businesses fit into a neat category. If you have competitors online, you could check which categories they are listed in as a guide. - Titles and meta descriptions
Make sure they are complete, relevant, and succinct - Domain names
If your domain name matches your site title, you will probably find it much easier to get listed … although even DMOZ knows that there are legitimate reasons for having a domain name different to your business name … for example, if your business is called ‘expertsexchange.com’!
The Legalities of Linking
Apr 13th
If you’re a website owner, then linking out is probably almost as big a part of your SEO marketing strategy as getting inbound links. Today we look at some of the legal issues around linking. The internet itself makes things difficult to enforce, so people are often tempted to forget about the law. Today we show you why it pays to be wary of your legal position when you link out to a site.
Will they break down your door for linking out?
Simply linking out is not illegal
There have been a couple of cases in the States where people have challenged the idea that anyone can just link to anyone else’s site. Fortunately, these have been overturned in every instance. If you ‘just’ link to a site that is publicly accessible, there is little to no possibility of legal action. Thank gosh!
Content in frames
It is possible to link to sites so that their actual content is displayed on your site. Unless you clearly state on your site that the content displayed doesn’t to belong to you, and note the owner, there could be legal issues. This is usually done with frames or iframes.
Libelous links
It’s a well-known and very valid SEO practice to use anchor text for links rather than just typing out the web address. This anchor text shouldn’t contain any defamatory opinion or untruthful claims, though.
So, you shouldn’t write: “This incompetent moron thinks that Google is something you use to see in the swimming pool”. Not cool – and the basis for a libel lawsuit.
Diagnosis: Link Farm
Apr 12th
Ask what a link farm is on any forum or message board, and you’ll draw hundreds of comments doubting that you have the necessary intelligence to stay alive, if you don’t know such a basic fact! Actually, it isn’t always clear what sites would be considered link farms and which would not (and therefore which ones would kill your SEO rankings!), so we review the definition.
The link farm can be identified by its occupants!
The basics
Wikipedia defines a link farm as “any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group”.
How do you know if a site is a link farm?
One of the major clues is that they will ask for a link on your own site to theirs, in order to consider linking out to your site.
Another major clue will be their Pagerank. If the site has zero Pagerank (install the Google toolbar and you’ll see a site’s Pagerank in your browser), it is likely that Google considers them a link farm.
If the site has little content in relation to the number of links on its pages, that’s another big clue towards a diagnosis: link farm. If you can’t read 100 words without encountering ten or more links, Google probably considers it a link farm.
The links will be almost exclusively external (to other domains) if a site is a link farm.
And if you value your SEO dollar … stay away from them!
Five MORE Reasons Your Site Might Have Been Google-Banned
Mar 12th
Despite all of your web marketing genius – you’ve carefully paced your link building activities, kept your keyword density to the minimum of the effective range and been checking for duplicate content every second day – Google still got the stick out and whacked your site. Why, oh why … oh WHY? Here are five more possible explanations.
1. Doorway pages
Google doesn’t like doorway pages. These pages are usually optimised to rank well for a particular keyword, but are ‘hidden’ from the navigation of the main site. Someone would usually enter a doorway page through a search engine result, but if they bookmarked your home page, wouldn’t be able to find it again. You see this often when companies service a sizeable physical area and want to optimise for several locations – “removalists Melbourne”, “removalists Coburg”, “removalists Northcote”, “removalists Brunswick”, for example. If you want to use doorway pages, make sure they’re accessible from the main navigation.
2. Redirect pages
You can redirect pages to other ones legitimately in Google, for example if you choose to change your domain name. However, the pages that come in groups of between 5 and 500, all targeting similar keyword phrases, and contain no content except links to other pages in the family, AND THEN redirect you to a different page when you click from search results, are a Google no-no.
3. Buying links
Google is keeping an index (funny, that) of all the sites that sell links to other sites, and is devaluing the links from those sites. You will end up paying for nothing – and probably getting slapped with a Google-fine, as well.
4. Linking to spam/bad neighborhoods
We’ve talked in a previous post about linking to spam and bad neighborhoods – Google doesn’t like it, and if you don’t keep on top of your checks you may find that previously reputable domains have expired and been bought out by spammers.
5. Code swapping
If you optimise a page for good rankings, and swap the content there once it is ranking well, Google will often penalise you when they crawl that page again.
Stop Your Outbound Links Murdering Your SERPs!
Mar 10th
We all know that both on-page and off-page internet marketing tactics can help boost your Google rankings. We also know that there are on-page factors that can get you banned from Google – things like copying someone else’s content, keyword stuffing, etc. Did you know, though, that there are off-page factors that can also get you kicked off the world’s biggest search engine? If you link to ‘bad neighborhoods’ … even if you link at a time when the web page is perfectly respectable, but the domain later gets marked as a link farm, a spammer, a keyword stuffer, etc, you could get banned by Google. So how do you find these nefarious sites that could undo all your good SEO work? Follow our guide.
Those nefarious site links can really make your rankings hurt...
1. Check out Bing.com
The lord and master of most of our computers, Microsoft, has created an awesome tool for checking whether you’re linking to spam – if you use it with a bit of ingenuity. You can use the ‘linkfromdomain’ command (without the apostrophes) to check whether links that originate in your domain point to spam.
2. Make a list of probable spam terms
Start off with drug names, pharmaceutical misspellings, casino, poker, over 50 life insurance deals, home finance, home equity, 4u, bllogspot, etc. Check out the lists (1 and 2) of words that trigger spam email filters to create a more extensive list.
3. Search for two or three words in conjunction with the linkfromdomain command
So you might type “linkfromdomain:webmarketinngexperts.com.au gambling casino poker” into Bing. Starting off by targeting several words at a time helps cut down the sheer number of pages that might use the term innocently.
4. If you’re concerned, do individual word searches
Alternatively, you can also search for individual terms that are far less likely to ‘innocently’ appear on web pages. Spam filter words like ‘Shemale’ or ‘lesbian’ are good examples.
5. Check out the sites and decide whether you want to keep the link
In many cases, instances of these words will be innocent. In some they will not – and better you find out than Google! Get rid of anything shady looking ASAP, or you could face an uphill battle to get your Google ranking back.