As I’ve mentioned previously, link-building is one of the most important aspects of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It seems that there are SEOs these days who would like to see blog and forum commenting done away with completely, but I disagree with that (as I imagine most people actually doing SEO full-time today do as well). It can be a challenge to find good, relevant, non-spammy blogs to either guest post on or leave genuine feedback on, so I hope this method helps out a few of you who are faced with the timeless and inevitable challenge of building links. In order of steps:
1 - Visit Google Blogs.
2 - Type in one of the keyword terms that the content on your landing page focuses on. Don’t be afraid to use quotes around your keyword term if it contains more than one word. Ex. “Nickel Cadmium”
3 - On the left-hand column, you can sort your results by time/date. I usually like to start with “last hour,” then work my way down to “past week.” This will allow you to find fresh, hyper-targeted blog posts to browse through and cherry-pick the best-of-the-best!
When you do this, make sure that you’re not just picking spam-filled blogs that scrape content from somewhere on the Web. It’s pretty easy to figure out which blogs are spam/auto blogs due to how they look, how their content reads and how their content is formatted. Because the content you will be finding is so new, it won’t behoove you to check out any of the metrics that exist for gauging the strength of a page, so if you’re concerned about that, just go take a look at the home page of the site and gather all the metrics you typically do (PageRank, mozRank, mozTrust, Alexa Rank, Compete score, et al).
Additionally, if you want to see how that site’s content typically performs, try using SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer to find the strongest pages and number of unique root domains linking to them. If you don’t know how to do that, then go to Open Site Explorer (sign up for a free account so that you can view stats for 20 pages), search for the domain you’re interested in (don’t forget to consider both www and non-www versions of the site if they don’t 301), then click the “Top Pages” tab in the results. Voila!
As for “nofollow” and “dofollow,” it’s your judgment call. Do you want to have a more natural-looking link profile? If so, then just go ahead and leave comments (not spammy, of course — always make your comments constructive and relevant) on some “nofollow” blogs. Do you only need “dofollow” links? If so, then your blog searching will inevitably be a bit more exhaustive (hopefully, you’re using something like the SEOmoz Firefox plug-in to quickly see which sites/blogs are “nofollow”). Although commenting will suffice, one of the best things you could do is ask to guest post on that blog and provide an article based on the topic you’re interested in; so, take that into consideration, too.
That pretty much does it for the method I wanted to demonstrate in this post. For your consideration, I’ve decided to add a few additional tips below that will play well with this method. I hope that you find them useful in correlation with the method above and/or with your other link-building endeavors. Good luck and have fun searching!
Bonus Tip 01: If you do decide to leave a comment on a blog, try submitting that blog’s home page and RSS URL to pinging services likePing-O-Matic and Pingoat. There’s no guarantee that the result will be Google’s bot revisiting that blog and finding your comment any faster than if you hadn’t submitted the blog, but it takes all of 15 seconds each to submit and you very well may be doing yourself a favor by doing so!
Bonus Tip 02: If you are curious as to seeing if/when Google has cached a page with your comment, simply search for that page in Google, click “cached,” then look up at the top where it says, “…a snapshot of the page as it appeared on…” The time and date you see will be the most recent cache of that page! If the time and date are later than the time and date you commented, then scroll down and see if your comment was cached along with the page.
Bonus Tip 03: Set up Google Alerts and have Google email you whenever they index a new blog post related to a keyword term you’re interested in! Simply visit Google Alerts, put in your keyword term, select “Blogs” from the type selection box, select how often you want to receive results, then select the volume of results you want and enter your email address and you’re all set!
Posted by Vidya Parab at 11:03 PM 0 comments Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Google Buzz Links to this post
Sunday, October 10, 2010
3 Truths of SEO
This post is something I feel SEO (Search Engine Optimization) desperately needs: A plea for its legitimacy. The following short list is comprised of three simple truths which I hope will aid in establishing the legitimacy of SEO for you beyond the shadow of a doubt — even if you do not yet understand exactly how or why. SEO has an incredibly tarnished image throughout many industries and schools of thought thanks to spammers and the black hat tactics often associated with the industry. Likewise, it doesn’t help that SEO is often thought to be unquantifiable, unqualifiable, and ultimately unjustifiable by many. So, without any further adieu, here are 3 simple truths to defend the integrity of white hat SEO.
Truth 1: SEO is an Acronym; not a Word
I can’t tell you how often I hear and see “SEO” spoken as a word in some cynical context. “SEO is just a bunch of hocus pocus used to pad search engine results.” It’s almost as if “SEO” has become a word synonymous with everything negative on the Web. Just so we’re clear, it stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” It is also used to reference a person as a “Search Engine Optimizer;” as in, “Jon Payne is one of the best SEOs in the industry.”
Anyway, just what exactly does “Search Engine Optimization” mean? In its most basic form, it simply means optimizing your Web site for search engines. It ranges from optimizing content and code on your Web site to optimizing content on other Web sites that are relevant to your Web site (more on this later). Yes, there are black hat SEO tactics (high-risk and excessively spammy tactics that can be leveraged to cheat your way to higher rankings) and white hat SEO tactics (the tactics I will focus on teaching and that many people build legitimate, long-standing businesses off of), but just realize that SEO is not a word defined as cheating search engines and spamming searchers.
Truth 2: Eating, Drinking, Breathing and Sleeping SEO
It’s important for you to realize that while there are plenty of “black hat SEOs” out there who lie, steal, and cheat their way to higher rankings, there are equally as many — if not more — who eat, drink, breathe, and sleep white hat SEO practices. Those people make this stuff their life because they’re interested in it and they’re interested in genuinely helping their clients to succeed! Some people run legitimate agencies, others take the role of consulting, and then you have the individuals who REALLY dig in and tread not-yet-trodden paths.
People do this for their livelihood and they earn an honest living doing as such. The problem becomes trying to flesh out just who is legitimate and who is not. Luckily, there are some quick signs to look for which will aid you in spotting the difference should you be in the market for hiring an SEO agency or consultant. For instance, anyone who guarantees top-rank results before ever speaking with you most likely isn’t worth hiring. I will dive much deeper into the topic of spotting shady SEO agencies/consultants soon in another post.
Truth 3: Good Enough for Microsoft and Google; Good Enough for You
If Google and Microsoft speak in terms of SEO, why shouldn’t you? My final and undoubtedly most compelling point; here are two of the most successful companies in the world with tremendous presence on the Internet who discuss and implement SEO — and not just in some minuscule capacity, either! Please reference the following links which help support this 3rd and final truth:
1 - Google’s Dedicated Site and Guide to SEO: Google has a page dedicated to what you need to know when it comes to hiring an SEO. The page also includes a beginner’s guide to SEO. ‘nough said! Click here to view the page and click here to download the guide (it’s a PDF).
2 - Google’s Face of SEO, Matt Cutts: Although addressing SEO is not his primary role, he spends a lot of time addressing it. In a lot of ways, he is our lifeline to a small fraction of Google’s views and mechanisms with search and SEO. Click Here to visit his blog.
3 - Microsoft’s SEO Toolkit: Yes, Microsoft has created a tool which will essentially crawl your site and provide a detailed report of areas needing some SEO lovin’. If you will, recall the context in which I defined SEO in truth 1. Optimized content and code are what Microsoft has based its tool on. Click Here to read all about it and download it. It’s FREE!
4 - Microsoft’s Face of SEO, Chris Moore: Less known in the SEO realm is Microsoft Program manager Chris Moore. He diligently posts about SEO in relation to Microsoft; the ways they implement it, places they discuss it, et al. Even if for nothing else, this just goes to show how a company like Microsoft chooses to invest in SEO. Click here to check out his blog on Microsoft’s MSDN blog network!
3 Simple Truths: Conclusion
I hope this post goes to show you just how legitimate SEO really is. As with many things in life, you have to take the good with the bad and SEO is not exempt from that. The points to take away from this post are clarification of exactly what you should mean from now on when you say “SEO,” the fact that plenty of positive forces out there live and breathe honest SEO practices, and the fact that companies as big as Google and Microsoft clearly invest in SEO (which means you should, too).
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