We Do Search Engine Optimization.

Some people seem to get all the luck. In an article about the new Tesla Model S Sedan electric car, the New York Times blog author links to Mahalo founder and controversial tech blogger Jason Calacanis twice as much as any other source.

A link from NYtimes.com is very valuable and the only thing Calacanis has to do with the new Tesla sedan was to put a down payment on one.

Outspoken online media figures tend to get the most exposure, and therefore the most links. This is a great example of how to use your popularity in social media to expand your website, get high quality links, and improve your reputation. Many people resent Mr. Calacanis for this, but his online force is undeniable.

Original Blog Post

About 5 years ago search engines realized that blogs, comments and user generated content were going to pollute the web with an endless stream of low quality, off topic, unmanaged links. As the search engine ranking algorithm is primarily link based, this had the potential of making search engine results unusable.

How to Stop Links Gone Wild

The answer to a new influx of links was the nofollow tag, which literally would tell a search spider not to crawl this link. the tag looks like

<a href=”http://questionable site.com” rel=”nofollow”>questionable anchortext<a>

The question we are asking is if the nofollow link tag is dying. The answer is no, but it is changing. Increasing use of nofollow for a range of purposes.

Google lists the three main intended uses of nofollow as:

• Linking to untrusted content
• Paid links
• Crawl prioritization (typically linking to yourself with nofollow)

See more opinions on the nofollow tag and the rise of microblogging from a Will Chritchlow.

Links are one of the largest untracked forms of online currency, and as soon as the IRS discovers this they will try to find a way to tax them. Every link is an indication of an exchange of real value, even if the parties are linking naively.

Here is one example where an innocent link exchange with no money changing hands is increasing the value of a site:

Site A finds a cool image they want to use on site B. Site A copies the image and gives credit to site B via a link. In this example, a link has replaced payment for usage of the image. This is a basic barter deal and no search engine can complain about the link exchange.

Here Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google talks about outbound links, but forgets to mention it is a multi million dollar business.

Relevant outbound links can help your visitors

• Provide your readers in-depth information about similar topics
• Offer readers your unique commentary on existing resources

Thoughtful outbound links can help your credibility.

• Show that you’ve done your research and have expertise in the subject manner
• Make visitors want to come back for more analysis on future topics
• Build relationships with other domain experts (e.g. sending visitors can get you on the radar of other successful bloggers and begin a business relationship)

Read more about how Google tries to downplay the global linking cartel.

In another twist of irony, this article is published as a subdomain on blogspot.com which is the number 1 source of link spam and autogenerated content online.

The popular Long Island New York newspaper Newsday was penalized by Google for selling text links that pass pagerank.

Here is a screenshot of the crazy amount of nofollow tags used by Newsday.com

There are nearly 100 no followed links, but it’s quite curious to see which links are still passing PR. Semi related links to small local destination sites are still getting a link boost from this PageRank 8 site including a wedding, travel, health and shopping site.

Links that are directly related to this large print publication including the LA Times, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and other huge newspapers are nofollowed.

The archive shows a section labeled ‘ Featured Links’ which carry sites such as :

• Mesothelioma Lawyer Lung Cancer
• Personal Injury Law Firm
• Buy Mets Tickets
• Buy Yankees Tickets
• Wicked Tickets
• Hamptons Travel

So Newsday.com can boost its fledgling sites while trying to negate the association of major newspapers, and the Hamptons Travel site is still linking with full credit. Hey newsday, i’ll sell you one of my content sites so your PR8 site can link to it and we can dominate the SERP’s.

Google has always been inconsistent in dealing with link sellers. There seems to be no complete method to find out which sites will receive a penalty for selling links that pass page rank. Google has not algorithmically solved the problem of link brokering and must rely on a semi accurate computer model with heavy human intervention.

Loren, WPN, Barry posted about this interesting case.

*update*

The SEO Manager, who was hired after the link selling program was implemented, posted a request in Google Groups and apparently got the problem resolved within 1 week. Newsday.com instantly jumped from a toolbar PR 5 to 8.

Google Engineer Reid

Thanks for your post. I’m glad you’re posting here in the Webmaster
Help Group, because the discussions here help educate webmasters
around the globe. I just checked over newsday.com and compared it to
the most recent version of newsday.com that was indexed by
Archive.org:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070829225145/http://www.newsday.com/

Scrolling near the bottom of what your site used to look like, I see
the following “Featured Links”:
Mesothelioma Lawyer Lung Cancer Personal Injury Law Firm
Buy Mets Tickets Buy Yankees Tickets Wicked Tickets
Hamptons Travel

Please remember that participating in link schemes intended to
manipulate search engine rankings, including buying or selling links
that pass PageRank, is a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines, and
may impact your site’s standing in Google:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

If you believe your site was at one point in violation of the
Webmaster Guidelines, and you have since made changes to your site so
that it fits within the guidelines, you can request reconsideration of
your site by following the steps here:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843

DMOZ the open directory that gets huge exposure from prominent position as the Google directory is blogging. DMOZ bloggers are publishing major PR for their directory to encourage quality submissions and keep the project alive. I applaud this.

The comments below are from their blog post and seem out of synch with most DMOZ editors philosophy of natural linking.

I think we can all agree that the most exciting take away is that search engines love place a different value on free, human edited directories. The point is easily debatable. Perhaps a link in DMOZ is as valuable as any other link on the web or maybe it is worth more.

Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold.

Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits.

Pointed out by the anti-SEO Shoemoney. It is quite ironic that DMOZ editors hate SEO’s multiple scales of magnitude more than Shoemoney, yet are advertising their benefit to the search engine optimization process.

The open directory project needs a huge sign that says: only quality sites need apply. This would drastically reduce the acceptance time for new website submissions.

The questions all upcoming webmasters and SEO’s ask themselves: Should I ask for links or not? Can I get targeted paid ads/reviews? Are relevant reciprocal links worth the effort?

The short answer is: anything you do to your website that benefits your users will also help you in the search engines. If this means getting links to your electronics site from manufacturers, get these links. If it means getting reviews on blawgs for your law firm site do it. It may mean sending out articles and press releases for your fashion news site.

Different websites have different search engine optimization requirements and need to be promoted uniquely. It is probably not a good idea to try to get lots of .gov and .edu links for your home improvement website.

video http://www.youtube.com/v/B4aVSlnFITM

Matt Cutts acknowledged that Webmasters are free to do whatever they please with their Web sites and Google is free to do whatever it wishes with its index. Read more from Esoteric.

Best of the Web is a great directory with high authority and tens of thousands of backlinks. BOTW is definitely a directory you want to be listed in, and now you have added incentive with a directory submission coupon.

Save $15 off directory submissions at BOTW.org with a discount promotion. This is one of the top 3 directories online, and a must for all search engine link building campaigns.

BOTW coupon code is below:

save15now

So go save money at BOTW.org and get another quality directory link for your site. Your SEO will thank you.

The search for links is a never ending quest by search engine optimizers, and we can use all the help we can get. Thankfully many talented SEO’s have created helpful tools for link building and analyzing competitor backlinks. Using these tools we can refine the manual process for finding high quality backlinks.

Search here for a keyword, for example search for ‘leather chairs’
http://www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/top-competitor-tool.php

Then use each URL and search for sites that link to it. These are good places to find links, as they already link to similar competitors:

http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/

Another backlink checking tool developed by an SEO firm is the back link anchor text analysis from SEOmoz.org.
SEOmoz link analysis: http://www.seomoz.org/backlink-analysis
The Yahoo Site Explorer is currently the only major search engine that provides detailed backlink data. Many of the links shown by Yahoo.com are spam links/paid links/scraped links/unrelated links but it is a good public link repository. Also links are shown in descending order of quality, so the links on the first page of Yahoo search results are the most trusted.

Yahoo Site Explorer linkdomain command linkdomain:www.site.com%20-site:www.site.com

Basic Yahoo.com Query:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain:mysite.com%20-site:www.mysite.com

I love linkbuilding, and with helpful tools like these you can learn to love it as well!

Yahoo site explorer is the best tool to use to find incoming links to your site, and without them SEO’s would not know much about the strategic link building practices of their associates.

Recently yahoo started showing erratic backlink results and caused much speculation in the SEO world that they were on the verge of removing this research tool as Google and MSN have done. Google has the most reliable link data, but it is hidden behind Google Webmaster Central, disabling competitive link research on websites you don’t own. MSN is a mixed bag, some seeks they show relevant link data, other times you might as well ask the magic 8 ball for a backlink count. For the past few years, showing links was Yahoo’s game to loose.

Today Yahoo! Search maestro Priyank Garg put the search engine optimization community at ease with these comments about the Yahoo Site Explorer:

While the counts have been incorrect in some cases, the actual returned results have been correct. However, we did roll out a product fix yesterday and will be rolling out a couple more over the next few days to resolve this difference in counts some of you have observed.

If you are serious about getting a better ranking for your site and engaging in link building, Yahoo Site Explorer is the tool you need to monitor your backlink status.

Oh yeah, Jim Boykin and the crew from webuildpages.com sent out free clocks and I had to take a photo of mine. WeBuildPages is a link baiting firm that is run by the self proclaimed link ninja, and has been providing high end link building campaigns since 2001. I’m a big fan of linkbuilding through social networks and targeted exchanges and WBP has some cool tools that allow you to analyze your incoming links and backlink anchor text.

Who can say no to free swag, and besides, having a clock hanging on my neck makes me look like Flavor Flav. My next post will be both me and Jim with these SEO clocks around our necks. That would be a great photo.

I think I’ll stick to SEO instead of rap, even though Flava’ was the king of style in the 90′s.