Before reading this article, it is important to understand the role that backlinks play. This article may help... The definitions of good links and bad links have changed over time. Back in the day, any link was considered a good link. That's because Google valued the quantity of links over the quality of links. But as business owners and SEOs discovered this, a link building enterprise that Google likely never imagined was built from the ground up. It started out [...]
I was recently explaining to a client that the best way to determine if a link is good or not is to ask this question: "If it weren't for SEO and link juice and PageRank, would I still want the link?" And if the answer is "yes", it's probably a good link. Because answering yes to that question means that you're not just acquiring the link in order to impress Google's search algorithm in an effort to rank higher. It [...]
I talk to a lot of small business owners who are trying to figure out the world of internet marketing. The days of buying a yellow pages ad or even some newspaper ads have been complicated by the many channels that are now available online. And not only are they complicated strategies in many cases, but they are also changing all the time. It's very likely this very blog post will be outdated a year from now. Ughhhh. So for [...]
There’s no way to set budget for SEO and provide accurate expectations. There are too many variables that the SEO specialist cannot control. Let’s look at a couple of cases. I recently worked with a tire dealer in a medium size suburb. We searched ten pages deep for him on five of his best keywords. He was nowhere to be found. I recommended a few onsite changes and asked him to invest less than $1000 for me to build him [...]
Despite the buzz from webmasters and search engine optimization specialists, Google’s Penguin update did not render link building worthless. If you’re not familiar with Google’s Penguin update, it’s their latest algorithm update and it has turned the search results on their head. Both white and black hat SEOs are complaining about dropping search results and few have a handle on what has happened. I do not claim to have all the answers. I’m more of a “high level look at [...]
It's the million dollar question - why are your competitors' sites ranking better on the search engines? The answer is nearly always one of the following: 1) Their website is more relevant. They have more content on their site about the given keyword for which they are beating you on the SERP. Or maybe their content is fresher than yours. How to beat the competition: Add lots of your own fresh, relevant, quality content. Consider blogging or updating your news [...]
When I first started working with Forum Links, I did some research and found that it was hard to learn much about them. Wikipedia doesn’t even have a page for Forum Links. All they have is a page about Forum spam. That made me wonder if links posted in forums were even any good. If other SEOs are talking about forum links, it’s hard to find their stuff because there are so many sites selling garbage forum links. Well, I’ve [...]
Today's analogy compares resumes and references to websites and links. I'll translate afterwards, but something tells me you'll get it as we're going along. Scenario: You're conducting interviews and have two candidates who have applied for the job. They are both qualified and have excellent resumes. They are clean, well organized, use proper grammar and both candidates have previous experience that is relevant to the position for which you are hiring. They both seem equally qualified and capable to do [...]
Ever talked to someone about SEO and they started throwing around terms that made no sense to you? I know I'm guilty of it. I'll say something like, "That backlink will give you some really good Google Juice," before I realize that the person I'm talking to hasn't the slightest idea of what I mean by that. So in today's post, I'm going to provide brief explanations of some of these terms. If you want a meatier, more in depth [...]
I talk to people every single day about anchor text and I am constantly surprised by how much peoples’ opinions differ on the subject. Most are basing their opinions on what they've read on blogs from 2009 and 2010. Others have had personal experience with running campaigns and know what works and what doesn't. In my role, I read as much as I can to stay up to date on the subject. But more importantly, I see the real live [...]
