Link Building tactics that webmasters use, some White Hat, some Gray and some Black. Find out how to tell the difference. Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz.orgtalks with Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting.  

You can get some good ideas for link building form this video and then also find out things you might not want to do to keep your website White Hat.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-Link Building Tactics from White to Black from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

If you are not sure what this “White Hat”, “Black Hat” is all about, read this:

White Hat - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hat
Grey Hat - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_hat
Black Hat - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hat

BlogCatalog is one of my favorite ”tools” to kick start the traffic to a new blog website. When you register and submit your blog people will start visiting or reading your blog. If your blog is interesting, the readers can become your friend. Lots and lots of people do on my account. When I signed up last year and submitted my Web Design Ideas Blog, people started reading and becoming my friends.

Well now if I have a new blog, I can submit it there to my account and tell my existing friends to check it out. This will give the blog an initial kick start of traffic, will get the word out.

BlogCatalog also has a paid option. You can sponsor a category or a subcategory in the blog directory. This will cost from $8 to $25 per month, depending on the category. A well worth investment. Here, you would be paying not for PR but for the actual visitors.

As I wrote in the previous post you should focus on white hat link building techniques and grow your site’s content and link bait but there are always ways to supplement your link building by purchasing a few links per month. This will boost your PR and will bring extra traffic to your website.

Webmaster forums is the place, like Digital Point  and Site Point. There are thousands of offers to sell you a link but you have to sift through all of the spammy offers to find a worthy link. Probably the best way is to post a thread your self and offer to buy links. Specify in the post that you will not except any links from links, adsense farms or directories. You want to get a link from a functional, useful site. They are minority but they are there. This website should be relevant to yours and should have PR3 or higher.

Before you commit, investigate the site your self. Run it through the way-back machine, check backlinks at Yahoo and verify the PR by checking the cached version on Google.

Way-Back Machine - click here

This is a great resource, they keep a cached version of most sites. The history goes back to 1996, which is when the way-back machine started.

You can see when the website you want to get links from started and see their development stages. You want to find an old site, the longer it’s been around the better for you.

Yahoo Site Explorer - click here

To know how many websites are linking to the site in question you just need to run it through the Yahoo’s Site Explorer service and it will give you a count of backlinks and the list of websites that are linking to them.

Checking for Real PR - click here

Black Hat SEOs will always find a way to cheat the system but you want to make sure that you don’t become their victim. High PR can be achieved through cloaking the website using different programming techniques. What they do is check the IP address of all the visitors and when the IP address matches the one of the Google bot, the site gets forwarded to another, high PR website. So Google bot thinks the domain is being forwarded and assigns it the same PR as the landing site. A real, human visitor never sees the site that the bot gets forwarded to.

To check whether the PR is real or not is simple, go to Google search and in the search bar enter the domain name without the .com of the website you want to run a check on. So if you wanted to run a check on notSEO.com you would search for term “notSEO”. The first result will most likely be the site you are looking for. Click the Cached link to see what site Google bot landed on when visited that domain. If the site you see cached is the same as the one you see if you go to the domain, the PR is real.

Inlinks

So you got a domain and built a website, what’s next? To get some traffic to it you are going to need to do some marketing. One of the marketing techniques is collecting inlinks.

Why you need them

If you want your web site to rank high in Google SERPs you’ll need to get Google to think your website is important. And one of the most important ways that the big G tells whether a given website is important, is by looking at the web sites that link to it. So to impress Google, you need links. Not just any links, quality links.

Bad link, Good link 

The links you collect will need to be quality. But how do you tell what link is quality and what one is not? There are a few things you need to look for.

The number one thing is relevancy. The site that links to you has to be relevant to your web site. Not necessarily exactly the same topic that your web site is but something that is parallel to it. For example, a friend of mine has a web site which has a collection of articles that various members of his site write and the articles are free for anyone to use as content for their site or what have you. A parallel topic to this would be SEO, marketing, business, web design, etc.

The next thing you want to look for is content and qualityof that web site that the link would be coming from. Look at the content, is it valuable. There are so many websites on the Internet that are just useless AdSense farms that have no value. If you find this web site useful yourself, it may be a good candidate for a link.

Where and how to get them

There are four ways of getting links that I am going to talk about, there are more than that but I am only going to talk about the top four.

1. Link Bait
   This is the hardest way to get links but it it the best. To get a link via link bait you would employ a variety of different techniques which include writing a quality article that people would find very useful. They will have to like it enough to link to it from their web site or to share it with their friends that would then link to it. An alternative to an article could be an image or a set of images, a quiz or a test. Basically you need to be able to excite the reader to get him to want to come back to this web site or to share this website with their friends. There are a hand full of news websites that will help you to spread the word like: digg.com, newsVine, del.icio.us, stubleUpon, etc. We have a list of these sites on our SEO Tools page.
    
2. Link Begging
   I can’t stress enough that when trying to beg for a link, the “linkee” website has to be worth the link. Before the link begging campaign starts, the web site has to be in pristine condition, it is functional and is valuable to a visitor. If a potential “linker” does not find the web site - a valuable resource, the only thing can be expected is a laugh in the face and hope that it does not get mentioned on their blog for everyone to laugh at (as I’ve seen a few people do).Begging for a link is very common so don’t feel bad when time comes to do it. The main thing that needs to be understood when begging for a link is that the person on the other end does not need you or your business, you need them. A web site’s About Us page  contains a lot of information that can be used to familiarize yourself with the company. learn as much as you can about the company and the webmaster, become familiar with what is important to them. Find out if the webmaster runs a blog and read through it. Become an expert on your linker.

   Writing the email
   
   If the webmaster’s name is known the email should address him by name. The tone of the email should be professional yet friendly. Tell them how you found their site and what you think of it. Of course when I say “what you think of it” I am confident that you are ecstatic about how great their site is. Be encouraging, polite, excited yet subtle. Introduce your website, note your role in this venture and conveniently mention about how you linked their site to your’s because of how their web site is such a good supplement to your visitors.Now at this point you may ask for a link. If you ask for it, you need be able to convince them how their users would benefit from having your web site as one of the resources for their visitors. You also have to remember that if you ask for a link in return you run a risk of shattering the relationship possibility with this opportunity for a link. If this risk is acceptable to you, go ahead and ask for it. However if you do not want to risk this opportunity, just the flattering email with the link to their site should get them to link back to you on their own. This may take some time or may happen quickly but could also not happen at all. Don’t get discouraged, go on to the next one. After a few tries you should be able to land a nice inlink.Try the ones that didn’t give you a link again in a few months. Remind them of the previous email, be polite and friendly, ask if they would be willing to link to your web site. You have nothing to loose this time, asking for the link this time is less risky.Most webmasters know the value of a link and they know that when they get an email like this the correct response would be to return a link. But how you address them for it plays a gigantic role in whether you get it or not.

   Here is what I would write:

   Dear Joe,
    
   Greetings from NotSEO.com in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

   My name is Valik Rudd and I am the webmaster for our company web site, NotSEO.com. I was searching the internet to find some new resources for our Marketing Tools web page and ran across your site, domain.com. It really impressed me, specifically the simplicity yet accuracy of the article search feature.

   I decided to send you an email and compliment on the valuable tools that you are providing on your web site and let you know that I have added a link to domain.com on our Marketing Tools page. I hope that you will be happy to expect some new traffic from our web site.

   Best Regards,
   Valik Rudd

3. Link Buying
   There are various places to buy links, from online forums to “door to door”. DigitalPoint forums is one of the sources for links, Google search is another. To be successful at buying links undetectably you have to deal webmaster-to-webmaster. Using bulk link providers will almost always get you in trouble. Google can tell that all of a sudden your web site has 1000 inlinks after a year of no inlinks at all. Buy links gradually, 5 to 10 per month. Buy only quality links, just like I went through the process of qualifying a web site to become the linker, same goes for buying a link.You can expect to pay anywhere from $30 to $200 even up to $2000 per month for a good quality link. But do your homework before purchasing one.If you look at the link sellers’ web sites on DigitalPoint, you will see that most of them a low quality link and AdSense farms with medium PageRank. Once in a blue moon you will find a quality site selling 5 or 6 links.The best way to find quality links though is to do a search in Google for parallel keywords. Analyze the top 5 to 10 results for each keyword and round up your top 10 web sites that qualify for beeing the linker.Research each web site, get familiar with the company, find out what they do and what they care about. When contacting the webmaster follow the same principals I went through for Link Begging. Be professional yet friendly, be human, like if you were to meet this person in a restaurant. Introduce yourself, tell them how you found their web site, and what you think about it. Propose the deal and tell how they may benefit from this transaction.Here is how Rand Fishkin form SEOmoz said he would write it, in his famous piece called The Art Of Buying Links Under The Radar:

   Greetings from your friends 15 minutes up the road in Medford (over at the Eden Valley Winery),

   My name is Rand Fishkin and I actually work in the web marketing department over at Eden Valley (OK, so technically I’m also the web designer and the guy who has to clean the glasses after tastings, but that’s beside the point). I wanted to get in touch to see if we could possibly do some cross-promotion over the web. I’m hoping that you’ve got some time to schedule to chat on the phone this week about your website and possibly getting an advertising link of some kind.

   Let me know if this is something that can work for you - we’d love to reciprocate by sending some of our site visitors your way as well. You can reach me anytime over email or at 215-649-XXXX.

   Best,
   Rand

Expectations

What should you expect and how quick? Well that is a question everyone asks but the best answer is probably “yes”. Yes there will be results and yes it will happened eventually. With the way that Google does things, you never know what their plan is, so we do and we wait.

If you get a link from a good web site that gets crawled by the Google bots daily, it’s a good chance your site will get the benefit from that and will get crawled quick too. Otherwise you can expect 2 to 3 months before seeing any kind of Search Engine results. You can however expect immediate results from the traffic coming directly from the linker’s site.

Having an inlink from a quality web site will raise the importance of your site which will get you ranked higher in the SERPs and in turn will get you more traffic. So remember, do your homework, analyze the web site before starting relationships with it.

Image Alt Text & Link Title Text

These are two annoying, small details that are often over looked but are important for optimizing for search engines. Both the Image Alt Text and Link Title Text have about the same purpose in the Search Engine Optimization. They add more legitimate places where you can stash keywords.

Here is what the Image Alt Text looks like in the HTML code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Title Text</title> 
<META NAME=”TITLE” CONTENT=”Title Text” >
<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Keywords list” >
</head>
<body>
<img src=”image.gif” alt=”Image Alt Text”>
<p>Page body.</p>
</body>
</html>

 And here is what the Link Title Text looks like in the HTML code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Title Text</title> 
<META NAME=”TITLE” CONTENT=”Title Text” >
<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Keywords list” >
</head>
<body>
<a href=”link.html” title=”Link Title Text”>Link</a>
</body>
</html>

 Keep these short and to the point. A good rule of thumb is to use the Title text for this text. On the Image Alt text you can use the title text of the page that the image is on. I would not use the same exact text on more than three images. Alternate and reword the sentences. For the Link Title Text use the Title text of the page that the link is linking to. This actually helps with the positioning of the target page.

Descriptive Text/Content.

The most important part, what makes or breaks the web pages’ chances of getting indexed correctly is the content, the text. This is what is going to determine where the web page is going to be placed in the SERPs.

I am sure everyone has already heard the saying “Content is King”, and it is. The content is where you’ll need to spend your time developing a theme by the use of keywords. It can’t just be filled carelessly with keywords, there needs to be structure and meaning. The text needs to be readable and valuable to the reader.

Audience

There are two types of audience that you are going t want to please, the human and the bots. Human reader will be able to tell whether a piece of writing is valuable or not. The bots will not be able to access that but they will be able to pick out the key words and by analysing the patterns on a page they will be able to determine if it is Search Engine SPAM or usable content.

Why please both types of audience?

When a human reader finds your content valuable he will pass it on to his friends or will link to it from his website. If your page gets a link, the page’s rating goes up. The search engine finds the page more important. If you page does not get a link but at least gets a human reader that finds it valuable, you gain a reader that will probably come back and visit the page again and hopefully through word-of-mouth gain a few more readers.

Bots are easy to please. You give them text that is not SPAMy, that contains your keywords and it is a happy bot. It will index your page according to the keywords it finds and it is on it’s way to the next page. Once the bot indexes your page you will reap the rewards from the search engine traffic.

Keyword Density

When writing keyword oriented content for a web page you need to keep in mind that the text needs to be humanly readable and not just that, it has to be valuable. So when you read a piece of writing that contains the same keyword or key term every other sentence you can tell that there is a hidden agenda (well, not so hidden) in this text, that it was written for SEO and poorly. You also start to loose interest in it because the writer did not have the reader’s best interest in writing this text. This piece of writing becomes worthless to the human reader.

Write for humans and then once it is all written, go in and add your keywords into the text where it makes sence. The text should contain 2% to 4% keyword density to be effective and still valuable to the reader. Here is a Keyword Density Tool that you can use to check your writing with.

H2, H3 & H4 Tags

H1, H2, etc. stands for Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. 

Here is what the H2 Tag looks like in the HTML code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Title Text</title> 
<META NAME=”TITLE” CONTENT=”Title Text” >
<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Keywords list” >
</head>
<body>
<h2>Page title.</h2>
<p>Page body.</p>
</body>
</html>

 About 3 to 4 years ago H1 tag was as important as the Title tag is now, but now, H1 no longer rules the playground. H2, H3 and H4 has taken it’s place. Search Engines use this tag together with the Title, Meta Title, Meta Description, META Keywords and the content on the page to determine the topic and index it in the SERPs.

Every page in a website should have at least one H2 tag. Then H3 and so on, can be used for sub-headings. All the headings on a page should be relevant to each other as not to confuse the search engines and they should be as close to the top of the page as possible. You should use the same sentence you used in the Title tag for thisH2 heading, since the H2 tag would actually hold the humanly-visible Title for the page.

META Keywords

 Here is what the META Keywords Tag looks like in the HTML code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Title Text</title> 
<META NAME=”TITLE” CONTENT=”Title Text” >
<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Keywords list” >
</head>
<body>
Page body.
</body>
</html>

 The META Keywords are not as important for Google optimizing but still is useful for raising the keyword density on the page. You should have already sifted through the pile of keywords and picked out the ones that go to each page.

I usually start with the most important keyword or term and then list the rest. Do not list the same keyword more than 4 times. I try not to use it more then 2 times but in some cases you just need to use it more often so keep it to 4 or so.

Again if you are selling shoes here is what your META Keywords would look like:

<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”nike air force one shoes, nike shoes, best price, save” >

Some people like to use hundreds of keywords in this section, but times have changed and the META Keywords do not have as much effect on your position as other elements on a page. I find that 4 to 10 keywords is sufficient. The first keyword should be your main keyword that you focused the title on.

META Description

 Here is what the META Description Tag looks like in the HTML code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Title Text</title> 
<META NAME=”TITLE” CONTENT=”Title Text” >
<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Keywords list” >
<META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”Description text” >
</head>
<body>
Page body.
</body>
</html>

Description text plays a big role in optimizing for search engines. This text is used in part for the page description in SERPs.

It is important to include your main keyword in this text and to keep it close to the begining of the sentence. When Google and other search engines use this text, sometimes they cut it off in the middle of the sentence. So keepyour main keyword and descriptive text in the beginning of the sentence.

I usually keep the META description the same or a little longer version of the META title. This helps focus the page on a sertain keyword of key phrase.

So you have your list of keywords. You did your homework and sorted the quality ones from non. Now you need to look at your website. If you already have a website and are trying to optimize it, this information will apply just as for building a brand new website.

The Home Page

 Home page is not going to get very much attention at this time and probably will not rank as good as your products pages. This is because your home page is going to hold a general overview of what the web site’s purpose is. If you are selling shoes, the home page will greet the visitor and let him know that this site sells shoes, will show brand names, maybe a few featured shoes and so on, nothing specific. So the only keywords you can use on this page is going to be the broad words like “shoes”, “nike”, “reebok”, etc. Do not expect to rank well for these words in search engines, most of the traffic coming from the search engines will be directed from your product pages. If you can come up with some scheme where your home page could have unique content on it to which you can apply some specific keywords then you can apply the same techniques to it and expect results.

Products/Services Page(s)

Are you ready to get your elbows dirty? Ok, here we go.

The first thing you will need to do is make sure that every product, I mean everymodel, size, color and shape has it’s own page. This is going to be a boring tedious process but for best results this is what needs to be done.

You are going to be focusing on 8 elements:

1. Title
2. META Title
3. META Keywords
4. META Description
5. H2 - H4 Tags
6. Descriptive Text
7. Image Alt Text
8. Link Title Text

I will take you through each element in detail.

Title

This is what the Title tag looks like in the HTML code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Page title goes here</title>
</head>
<body>Page body goes here</body>
</html>

The text that you put into this area should be short, about 64 characters. It’s not a huge deal if it’s longer or shorter, that is just the ideal length. What you have to worry about is when search engines index this information they will sometimes cut off the title text at 64 characters.

You want to cram as much relevant, specific information in there while still keeping the title readable by a human.

META Title

 Here is what the META Title Tag looks like in the HTML code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Title Text</title> 
<META NAME=”TITLE” CONTENT=”Title Text” >
</head>
<body>
Page body.
</body>
</html>

 The META Title tag works just like the <title> tag and is considered to be just as important for search engine optimization. I usually enter the same title for the META Title as I did in the <title> tag.

Google uses this tag’s contents, for the web page’s title in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The way this works is, if Google finds a web page worthy and the rest of the page supports the relevancy of the <title> tag and the META Title, it will then use this text as the title when it displays your page’s listing on the SERP.

You have to remember that all the pages on your web site should have unique content. This includes the <title> and the META Title. No other page on your site should have the same title. If Google bots finds two pages on your site, or even anywhere on the Internet that are identical, it will rank one page more important than the other. How it makes this decision? Nobody knows. A Google bot is exactly what it sounds like, a bot. It does as it’s programming says, it will not judge as you could, so why let this thing judge your pages. You have the power to tell the bot exactly what it should do. There is too much competition out there to compete between your own pages. So let the bot choose your’s over competition but don’t let it choose between your own.

This is why your titles have to be unique! On every page, make your titles specific to the product or service that is offered. Make every page about one, only one topic, product or service. Focus! Focus! Focus!

Make it as easy as possible for the bots out there. Don’t make them think. Think of it this way, the easier it is for them, the better they’ll rank your page.

Bots Don’t Like SPAM

Yes, SPAM. Using titles like “Shoes cool shoes nike super duper shoes” is not a good title. It will probably be concidered as SPAM.

If you are focusing on the word “shoes”, don’t!

You need to focus on, what kind of shoes you are offering, what size, style?

So the keyword you are focusing is….?

Correct, “Nike Air Force One”. And the title should say something like “Sale on Nike Air Force One Shoes, size 12” or “Lowest Price on Nike Air Force One Shoes, size 12“. Utilise secondary keywords, like in this case I used “Sale” and “Lowest Price”. This makes your title unique and powerful.

A few DON’Ts:

• Don’t include your keyword in the title more than twice.
• Don’t just list words, write a sentence.
• Don’t be afraid to make the title longer than 64 characters if you need to. Just have your keyword within the first 64.

And a few DOs:

• Do make the title readable & grammatically correct. (You only get a first impression once.)
• Do make the title specific.
• Do make the title descriptive.
• Do make the title unique.

I will continue to META Keywords in the next post.

Search Engine Optimization, Where to start?

I am going to try to explain in simple terms how to get your website optimized for search engines and get a better position for your search terms in Google, Yahoo and other major search engines. Google’s ways are not a complete mystery if you do your home work. Spend a day searching around on the Internet and you should be able to find your way to the “truth”.

So the first thing you need to do is determine what you are trying to achieve. Put together a list of key words or terms that you think person would be searching your product with. Just start writing them down. Imagine you are running an online shoe store. What word or term would one use to search for shoes? Nike shoes, Nike air force one size 12, red Nike shoes, cheap Nike shoes. What else, think creative. Be sepecific. Your main objective is to drive traffic to the products or service pages. The home page will probably feel like it’s being neglected but it will later get traffic from the product pages.

If you focus on words like shoes, nike and so on, you will have little success because there are sugnificantly more websites tryging to rank high for these keywords. You have a much better chance of ranking high for more specific terms like I brought up earlier.

Lets say you brought a visitor to your site that searched for the word “nike”. What are the chances that this person is actually looking to buy a pair of shoes? He could just be looking for corporate information. If you get a person to your site that typed in “Nike shoes size 12″ or “buy Nike air force one shoes size 12″ you can be sure that the only thing standing between him and a sale is probably your price.

So write up as many keywords/terms as you can, as specific as you can. think of every product you have, every size, color, shape and describe them in 2 to 4 words.

Now go to Google and search for your top search term that is on your list. Just pick the one that you think best applies to your product. In the results pick a site that is your top (realistic) competitor. Don’t pick eBay, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, or any other huge company.  Go look at their site, examine it.

Look for the following and make notes:

• Notice how easy it is to use
• Is it easy to tell what this site’s objective is
• How much descriptive text is there
• Are there any advertisements on the page
• Is the navigational bar on top, left or right
• Does the domain contain a keyword
• Make notes and think how you can use this information.

We are now going to get a bit more technical. If you are attempting to do this yourself I assume you know a bit about HTML and how a website is structured. Right-click on the white space (where there is no text or images) on the page and select View Source. Look for the META tags, they will look something like:

<meta name=”title” content=”Search Engine Optimization Done Right | notSEO.com”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”search, engine, optimization, seo, notseo.com”>
<meta name=”description” content=”Search Engine Optimization Done Right | notSEO.com”>

This is where you will want to write down what it says and will later need to modify it to apply to your site.

For now you need to look at the keywords. This is a great source of keywords that you haven’t though of that may apply to your situation. Add the ones that apply to your list.

There is lots more to learn about keyword, if you want to know more I recommend reading SEOmoz’s Beginner’s Guide - How to Conduct Keyword Research.

Picking out the best ones of the bunch.

You’ve got a list of keywords that may or may not have demand for them, and now it’s time to pick out the best ones. To do that you will need to find out what the demand for that key word is. Yahoo Marketing, formerly Overture has a tool for that. Click here for the keyword suggestion tool.

UPDATE: Yahoo has decided not to update this tool anymore so the results there will not be current but it should give you an idea.

Enter your keyword and hit enter. The results will show you how many searches were done for that keyword last month. It will also show you other keywords that are related to the initial keyword that you might want to consider using. Look at the demand, if it is over 1000 and it applies to your site, write it down.

I actually created a spreadsheet in Excell that holds the information for me and it also calculates it all. Click hereto download it.  If you are using this tool, enter the value from the Overture tool into the demand field, if you are writing it down, make sure you write it down exactly as the keyword/term is in the overture tool.

Once you run all the keywords through this tool now you need to find out the supply. To do that I use both Google and Yahoo.  First go to Google and do a search on your keyword. Once the results come back you will see on the right side it will tell you how many results there are for this keyword. Write that down next to the demand or if you are using the spreadsheet, enter this value into the G Supply field. Once all the keywords are recorded, do the same thing in Yahoo for Y Supply.

The spreadshee should have already calculated the values for you but if you are not using the spreadsheet the formula to calculate the s/d ration is:

(Google Supply + Yahoo Supply)/2/Demand = S/D Ratio

You want the S/D Ratio to be lower than 100, if you have very popular keywords you will need to compare the S/D Ratio for all and pick the one that has the lowest value.

This may not be the most accurate data but it is an effective way of picking out good search terms.

Applying the keywords to your site

There are two ways you can apply these keywords to your site. You can base your page on these words or you can develop content based on these words.

I will go into detail about building or editing your pages while keeping these keywords in mind in my next post.

I’d like to hear what you think about this, how you go about finding keywords and how you weed out the low quality ones and pick out the gold nuggets.