Blue Hat SEO-Advanced SEO Tactics

After taking a little leave of absence I decided to come back to remind you of a few virtually untapped markets in the link building process. Some of these may seem like common knowledge, but honestly ask yourself if you truly utilize their full power.

Site Reviews

Try searching for “your main keyphrase”+site reviews. You may end up with more results than you’d imagine. Getting others to review your site is a great way to build a TON of traffic as well as quality links. I used to run an online text based game. I sent out a ton of request emails to game sites and game magazines. I managed to pull 70,000+ links that many still to this day stand. It was easy and it bumped the game up several thousand players a day with over 30,000 unique visitors/day. All from getting other people to review my site for me.

Product Reviews

This is crazy. Believe it or not a TON of shopping cart scripts never filter html codes out of their product reviews. Find these scripts. Do unique searches that identify sites using those scripts(ie. “powered by shop super script”). More to come on this later in a future Blue Hat Technique when I can explain the proper way to do this without spamming.
Testimonials

You should already know about this, but I’ll say it anyways. Submit testimonials to people complimenting them on their websites. Sometimes they will post your review along with a link to your website. I built a real estate website pretty large using strictly this technique. This particularly works with saturated markets like real estate. Every Joe Shmoe REALTOR will link to you if you tell them their cock is big.

Note: Incase I never mentioned it; I absolutely hate real estate agents. I really do consider them the Down Syndrome Children of business people.

If any of you haven’t yet tried MSN’s Instant Answers yet, your missing out on something that’s pretty cool. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about try searching for babe ruth home runs on MSN. You’ll see an instant answer at the top of the search. Combine this with Google’s new quick product links and this could be a great rifle in the competition for search relevancy. With the new trend arrising of the major search engines instantly copying each other’s successful product rollouts lets assume that these two technologies form together and become a standard among the 3 giants(Google, MSN, Yahoo).

There could be many possibilities for this.

Each search engine would want to expand their answers as quickly as possible. This would mean they would need contributors as well as incentives for the contributors. Now if they paid us to contributor, sure I’ll do it. Otherwise they could offer the webmasters a link to their site in exchange for an answer. This would sound like the more plausible solution. I think this would be a great service to both the surfer and the webmaster. The webmaster would get to prove his expertise in an area, and promote his site on the subject, and the surfer wouldn’t have to surf from site to site for an answer to a quick question. As for the shopping sites, the more products the better. I’m already seeing a jump in traffic since Google started putting my site at the top of every search for the products I sell.
What other possibilities could come from this?

Over the past year I’ve read a lot of articles and posts from people claiming that page rank is no longer important because information shows that it does not heavily affect ranking in the SERPS. This is a valid argument and it’s definitely true that people should not assume their site is going to rank well just because it has a high page rank. However I think this argument misses the point behind page rank.

Page rank is a logarithmic calculation of your current linking practice. This includes all links to a single page, including inbound and onsite links in comparison to the Internet as a whole. If your well established site has a page rank of 3 or less then that means your page isn’t as “efficient” as it could be. By efficient I mean the pages capability to draw links in comparison to handing them out. By this simile you can determine if your site is competitive in the efficiency sense with the other sites related to yours.

This is very important for two reasons

1) The major search engines are always encouraging site owners to “stay in good neighborhoods.” That way when you are seeking links from other websites in your field you can know which ones are not only in good neighborhoods, but which ones are in great neighborhoods. This is the true intention of the page rank meter. No one can argue that a link from a PR7 site that has the same topic as you won’t have a drastically positive affect on your SERP rankings. The meter is there to help guide webmasters to finding the RIGHT links that WILL improve their rankings.

2) Page Rank IS calculated in some form into the SERPS. This cannot be denied, but one could argue about how little it may actually affect them. Consider this for a moment, even if one day Google decides that with all the spam and link buying that page rank is pretty much worthless, they will still, at least to a small degree, include it in the algorithms that determine which sites are in the top. For those of you who don’t make a living on the Internet you see this as a relief to quit worrying about page rank, but for those of you who are Search Engine Optimizers you realize that your site is not OPTIMIZED until EVERY single aspect of your site is the best it can be, this includes even the most minuet factors. If you are a true pro then you ask yourself this question every time you are wondering if you should make a change. Do the search engines use this to determine my rank in the organics? Yes? Then I must make the change.

I first heard of the term “link bait�? from Aaron Wall at SEO Book in this post when he mentioned it back in a post on his SEO blog back in August of 2005. He says in his post that if “you are in a field that can’t build links naturally create linkbait�?. What really is link bait? It’s something on your web site that causes someone to link to you. Aaron gives some examples in his post, but a classic example of link bait would be the Subservient Chicken web site by Burger King. So many people ended up talking about that web site that they linked to it—it currently enjoys about 29,300 links according to Yahoo!, and ranks number one on Google for the word chicken. By creating something on your web site that’s funny, controversial, informative, or creative, it will gain natural links—which is the key to top search engine rankings.

You don’t have to be a big brand or have a lot of money to create link bait. Many people have created link bait on purpose—and many have created link bait without even knowing it. It doesn’t have to cost that much to create something that people will link to. For example, it’s sometimes difficult—if not impossible—to get your competitors to link to you. But, consider this—take, for example, the case of Andrew. He works for a high tech company with a lot of competition. Andrew recently took his digital camera to an industry convention where he took photos of many of the attendees, the booths, and some of the after-hours events. He posted the photos on his web site after the convention, sent out a few emails to his colleagues and other industry insiders he met at the convention. Before he knew it, most of Andrew’s competitors were linking to his web site and the photos he took.

One way to create link bait is to get ranked well for phrases that will become popular in the future. As I sit here writing this article, the term “link bait�? might be a good target if you’re in the search engine marketing industry. By searching Google for the following: allintitle:”link bait” you can determine about how many web pages on the internet are targeting that search phrase. Right now, as I write this, Google returns 25 results. Since that’s not very many, writing content about link bait would be a good thing for your web site. By informing the search engine marketing industry about link bait—and because the term is new, there’s a chance that others will search for it as it becomes a more popular phrase. As that phrase becomes more popular, others will need something to link to—and by ranking well for that phrase there’s a good chance that your web page about link bait will get links from other web sites. This is a phenomenon that I’ve been following since 1996 when I created my first “link bait�? type of web site. If you’re a search term innovator, people will link to you—and links from other web sites mean better search engine rankings.

One of my ‘pet projects’ over the years (since I started doing search engine optimization in 1996) has been to follow the news—and if there’s a topic that I am passionate about I usually create a web page or a web site about the subject within minutes of the ‘breaking news’. In the cases where I have a web site about a particular topic and there’s breaking news about that subject, I immediately post it on my web site. Since I’m one of the first to have information about that subject, I end up ranking well fairly quickly—sometimes within 24 hours. Other people follow suit and post information on their web sites about that topic—but since my site is already ranking well for that search phrase, they end up linking to me. What they don’t realize is that they’ve fallen for my “link bait�? which catches them—they’re actually helping me by linking to me and I end up ranking well in the search engines for a very long time, sometimes even many years. How can you take advantage of this? If there’s news in your industry, be the first to post it on your web site (or add a new page to your site). Be the first to get it to show up in the search engines and other people will link to it naturally.

Create an entirely new web site on a new topic. The new site could be funny, controversial, or just informative. Take, for example, Paul English’s IVR Cheat Sheet that he recently created. Mr. English is now enjoying thousands of links to his web site because he created a web page that’s helpful to all of us. Not only that, because of his cheat sheet that he’s posted on his site, companies are now seeing a backlash according to an article posted on Yahoo!. “Companies that rely on automated call centers have been weathering a consumer backlash in recent weeks…�? reports the article. I don’t have access to the number of visits to Mr. English’s web site, but I would suspect that he’s getting a lot of traffic based on all the high-quality links that he has—and I would suspect that he hasn’t requested any of them.

Although the term “link bait�? is fairly new, the entire concept of link bait has been around as long as the internet itself. People have been creating controversial, funny, and informative web sites and web site content that others naturally link to. And with the ever-increasing popularity of blogs nowadays, the bloggers need something to link to and talk about—why not create some link bait on your web site so it too, can enjoy better search engine rankings—just reel them in.

This post was submitted by bhartzer Corporate Web Site Marketing and MarketNet - Since 1994

Thanks Bharzer for the great article 

With the changes rippling through the SEO world that spawned from a stone called Jagger thrown by Google; I predict there will be many changes in the way people start to think about link popularity in 2006. Many new and inventive ideas(schemes) will arise from the ashes of dropping SERPS in hopes of adapting to apparent changes in Google’s devaluing of link exchanges and gaining respect for in-content-linking. The following is my predictions for 2006 so no one can ask who thought of it first

Link Pyramids
This will be the new world of link exchange directories until the major search engines catch on and figure out a way to stop them. One site joins the program and places a page on their site containing a link to the first site to join. Then another site joins and places a page on their site that has links to the two sites. Then a third and a fourth…so on and so on. That way when you join, you only link to sites that joined before you and don’t have a link to you, and every site that joins from that time on links to you, even though you don’t have a link to them. The more the link pyramid grows, the more one way links each member gains. The inherit benefit of this goes of course to the sites that join quickly. However the sites that join later when the pyramid is growing much more rapidly gain one way links much much faster. For those of you who don’t yet grasp this concept I’ll put it into numbers for you. If you are the 10th person to join a link pyramid that gains an average of 50 members a day, by the end of one year you will have gained 50*365-9=18,241 one way links for the small price of 9 links on your site. If you are late to the trend and don’t get in until the 100th day, you still get 13,241 one way links to your site by the end of the year, but will probably have to place a whole directory of links on your site. However if you only link to the directory from one location within your site, and lets say for example you pass a PR4 to it, mathematically you will still gain much more PR to your main page from the 13,241 one way links. I’m not saying it’s the greatest idea in the world or if it’s even possible to get off the ground, but I still predict someone will think of it and manage to pull it off before the year is done. The search engines will have a fit!

Content Directories
This will be the temporary solution to Google’s new found love of in content links. Advertisers and Exchanges will start placing directories containing whole pages of content written by the link providers for publishers and/or other members to place on their sites. They will pitch it as, gain content on your site and get paid/gain HIGH QUALITY links of your own. I realize concepts of this are already in practice, but I predict it will become quite a bit more developed before the year is done. Already advertisers are paying publishers to place single content pages on their sites. We are only a hair away from full content directories being placed on sites, and the services being rendered for free.

Article Directories
Boy that phrase Content Is King is really getting pounded into people’s brains. Lets face facts: article directories are exploding all over the net. The problem you ask? There’s not a single GOOD article submitter. I’ve done my research on this matter. You may argue that there are ones that work and may even submit to quite a few article directories, but all it will take is one quality programmer to put in some actual effort with a good open source community backing him up before this marketing method completely explodes and search engines will have to start thinking of ways to stop it. Duplicate content?

Google Will Surprise Us
Google will develop a set of algorithms that look at each individual pages on a site. If that page contains over a certain ratio of outbound links to content(pages that are inherantly link exchange pages) the page’s ability to give “votes�? will be greatly devalued with certain exceptions for authority sites like DMOZ of course. If i see this in the next Google patent I’m gonna sue and buy beer for members of WPW with the money

Celebrity Blogs
Com’n…admit I’m right. Small brained, big egoed celebs mesh with technology to allow themselves the power to express to the world what they think about stupid sh*t like politics and society have been a ticking time bomb ever since Rosie Odonald first told us who to vote for.