I’m only spewing this forth on my blog for the sake of the fact that they’ll probably pull the post down from public, leaving it only accessible to paid members. And hey, these people have said it much better than I am able to right now.

My takeaway: even if spammy link-building techniques get you results today, the algorithm will catch up with you one day.

Photo Credit: portrait by striatric. Some rights reserved.

Technorati tags:
seo, search marketing, search_marketing, links, link building, link_building

From cnvi

… I share your concerns because I work in the link exchange management business and I see the same trend you do on a daily basis. Today’s new webmasters (who don’t have the experience you have) simply don’t see it the way you do.

I would like to share with you top 6 reasons why I believe link building is harder in 2007 than in 2001:

- Reason 1: Some (not all) webmasters have abused link building through link exchange in high volume with junk sites. In my opinion, this is Google’s fault because they revealed their Pagerank scoring system based in part on link popularity instead of keeping it hidden like so many of their other technologies. G opened this proverbial pandoras box providing a means to game the Pagerank scoring system.

- Reason 2: You all have received an irrelevant link exchange request. If you know how to read between the lines, you realize that irrelevant link exchange requests are part of today’s Internet – and that there are still quality link opportunities out there through relevant link exchange. But not all webmasters think that way anymore.. many webmasters have become frustrated with irrelevant link requests and some have thrown up their hands and said “no more” which is putting the baby out with the bathwater in my humble opinion. These webmasters who have given up on link exchange are missing out on some quality linking opportunities (see my reason 4 below where I tangent on a way to cut down on requests via email).

- Reason 3: 98% of what I read about link exchange on today’s web is flat out false misinformation and/or webmaster paranoia. There is so much inaccurate information regarding link exchange on the web today, it confuses webmasters who don’t know what to believe. Some simply say “I won’t do it because Y blogger said X”.

In the past week, I have seen article and blog topics along the lines of “link exchange will get you banned in Google” and “Matt Cutts said don’t link exchange”. Both completely false statements. The truth (based on my ten years of experience in the link exchange business and monitoring factual search engine webmaster guidelines) is that link exchange in slow natural volume with quality sites related to your own builds traffic to your site both via the links themselves, and through search engines rankings based in part on link popularity. Matt Cutts has never stated “do not link exchange”. I read the conference transcripts and I watch his blog. Matt has indeed stated “there is such a think as excessive link exchange”. Matt has also stated “avoid irrelevant reciprocal links”. Google knows webmasters acquire quality links through relevant link exchange. But most webmasters don’t realize this.. if it’s been blogged by Joe SEO Expert, many webmasters believe it. This spreads false information causing webmasters to abandon this classic link building method.

- Reason 4: Link exchange is a mind numbing time consuming data management challenge. And although there are editor based software scripts and application services on the web that manage the tasks for you while allowing you to maintain editorial discretion, many webmasters are paranoid to use any software because they fear “it will get me banned by Google”. Paranoia surrounding what G thinks affects webmasters decisions to link exchange; “I won’t link to you because you are using X software”. When all the while, there is documentation in Google webmasters forums indicating that G views link management software and scripts as CMS‘s.. it’s HOW you use the software and not necessarily which software you use. However, unless the webmaster is reading these facts in an official forum maintained by a major search engine, webmasters are more inclined to believe the next paranoid blogger statement without questioning it’s validity. “I read about it on the Internet so it must be true!”

Many sites who do participate in relevant link exchange and use quality link management software publish “suggest link forms” to take the hassle out of fielding link exchange requests. Watch for those forms. Use them when the link exchange is deemed relevant. There is nothing wrong with them and you are more likely to get a response to one of those forms than a direct email which we all agree are time consuming to deal with.

Here’s a quickie tangent and tip and then back on topic: Suggest link forms are considered to be “low hanging fruit” for professional ethical link builders. Find them by searching keywords related to the site + link exchange such as “motorcycle parts suggest link” or “motorcycle parts add link” instead of sending email.

- Reason 5: Some webmasters who have read way too much misinformation about link exchange are doing it for SEO when they should be conducting link exchange as a traffic building and branding function. Sure it’s ok to benefit from the SEO benefits but folks who send email demanding a link from “PR 3 or higher” as Beren suggested above are wasting their time and linking for all the wrong reasons. Folks, if you can get a quality link from a site that will benefit the end users of both sites, GET THE LINK regardless of PR or other metrics.

- Reason 6: Other marketing methods exist to build links.. you know them all, we discuss them here all the time so I won’t bore you with a recap. As other marketing methods become successful, webmasters are more apt to try them, especially those that promise lots of links overnight without much effort by the webmaster. In this world of drive thru’s, overnight shipping, and downloadable movies, webmasters want it now. However, it’s the slow natural method of acquiring links that is exactly what the search engine Gods are always watching for. As other methods come under fire such as paid links, I think you will see webmasters return to their marketing roots and explore relevant link exchange.

Sorry for the long post.. I didnt realize I would go on so much! I would like to wrap up this post by explaining the three most important things webmasters need to know about link exchange: Editorial discretion, Relevancy, and Volume.

Editorial discretion: Google’s Search Engine 125 patent cites “gaining links from documents without editorial discretion on making links” as a primary indication of “attempts to spam a search engine.” Translation: maintain editorial control when making links. That’s easy. Avoid software or services which guarantee links. Maintain editorial discretion always and don’t allow a full duplex link exchange software to publish links you have not approved. There are many editor based software and scripts out there. Avoid the full duplex products.

Relevancy: The Google patent states “A sudden growth in the number of apparently independent peers, incoming and/or outgoing, with a large number of links to individual documents may indicate a potentially synthetic web graph, which is an indicator of an attempt to spam … this information can be used to demote the impact of such links.” Translation: Don’t link to sites irrelevant to your own. Who you link out to says a lot about your linking strategy.

Volume: You may read about “natural volume” but rarely does anyone translate that into English.. how many link exchanges is too much? Google’s patent on the subject says “While a spiky rate of growth in the number of back links may be a factor used by search engine 125 to score documents, it may also signal an attempt to spam search engine 125. Accordingly, in this situation, search engine 125 may actually lower the score of a document(s) to reduce the effect of spamming.” … it goes on to say “The dates that links appear can also be used to detect ‘spam,’ where owners of documents or their colleagues create links to their own document for the purpose of boosting the score assigned by a search engine. A typical, ‘legitimate’ document attracts back links slowly.”

So how do you fly under that “excessive link exchange” guideline recently published by Google? Easy. Avoid software or services that make links for your site in high volume. That means avoid the service that offers 500 links for $50. Instead, obtain links one by one over long periods of time (this is exactly what ethical link exchange facilitates). Example: get 1 link today, no links for the next four days, 3 the next day, 1 the next day, none for the next five days, 1 the next day, none for two weeks, 5 the next day, and so on.. That is natural volume.

Hard disk space is very cheap these days. You can bank on the fact that all of the search engines are trending how often you obtain links! Every time a search engine crawls your site, your site is being forensically probed in manners you never dreamed possible. It’s worse than a rectal exam. Don’t give a search engine any reason to penalize you. That means slow natural volume when obtaining links through link exchange.

Hopefully, some of the information above will get some webmasters rethinking link exchange as a perfectly acceptable marketing method in 2007.

And from Miamacs

I have the same problem, and even developed a non-conditional disgust of doing link research ( the turnoff of being rejected so many times, clearly because of the reasons you listed ).

And it turns out that even though I’d like to push this onto someone else’s desk, the task requires my SEO eyes… I could tell others what to look for but… they’d never manage as well as I do.

*sob*

Let’s find a solution and get out of this mess, shall we? Google arranged the set for us, all we need to do now is tell people how links work in 2007.

…

As with every trend in SEO the public is informed/misinformed with a lag of about 2/3 years.

Which sometimes is for the benefit, but most of the time is just plain annoying to those who know the realities. One thing is for sure, it slows the process down. Which is a problem because I don’t like doing it.

…

Want to put an end to this?
Educate people of the *real* facts.

Penalties, filters, phrase based reranking related to…

Irrelevant links (2007):
aka. links bought for PR, nonsense link exchanges, blog spam, non-editorial directories

- Irrelevant links get devalued. PERIOD. ( not just new links, but *all* such links in retrospect )
- a site with lots of irrelevant links ON it *will* get a penalty.
- a site with lots of irrelevant links TO it *will* be demoted.
- a new site which aims to compete in monitored areas with links from irrelevant sources will *never* make it. Regardless of volume.
- and most importantly… regardless of the trust towards the source ( an irrlevant link from Harvard, is… just as irrelevant. uh, er, no, actually it’s worse, for it’ll flag you until you gather enough trust, relevance to counter that link… as if you could. .edu spammers: goodbye. )

- Relevant links ( in and out ) will strengthen your theme in Google. You’ll rank higher.
- Also, relevant links for some mysterious reason, tend to bring in more traffic too.
- A lot of such links will make you less dependent on search engine traffic.
- A site with lots of relevant links ON it is *OK*
- A site with lots of relevant links TO it is *OK* ( extension: don’t request/exchange/buy sitewide links to your site. Make sure to have variety in your incoming anchor text, watch out for natural balance in your link profile )

- Not only is this the only method that’ll work, but… honestly…
- People, it’s EASIER this way! ( and more fun! it’s like marketing research! You’ll get to know the competition, you’ll see many, many ideas on the same theme… it can be inspiring, it can yield a new idea for content that’s not yet covered on the net. Join the new Initiative NOW and make the Internet a Better Place. Yaay. … )

- I guess sooner or later people will get this.
- My link campaigns outrank long established competition with 1/100 the number of links. Get it now?

These aren’t myths, gossip, blog posts from Joe SEO, these are/this is the new Google, the new patents, the prelude to Universal Search, TrustRank revisited, and the root of all -950 rankings. I’ve been doing research since May on the issue of what caused all the shakeup. In layman’s terms the trust that’s passed with links and which is required to rank for competitive phrases… is tied to relevance. You have to stay on topic.

- Those who don’t adapt
You’ll be out of business soon enough, so I guess you can just stop posting cr@p on your SEO blog as if you knew what you’re doing.

If we let people know that irrelevant links aren’t worth it, the practice of linking will be *forced* to revert to normal… er… pre-Google standards.

- Link to me, I’ve posted great content and you’re the established website on topic, please help.
- Link to me and I’ll link to you, let’s share the visitors interested in this.
- I’ll link to you because you’ve posted great content. No need to thank me.

Meaning… lot more comprehensive, managable communication between those who built a new site, and those who are already at the top and want to stay there.

In short

Competitive keywords:

- Relevant links, ie. the *source* and the *target* being relevant to each other will make you rank.
- Irrelevant links ie. the *source* is NOT related to the *target* won’t go nowhere + kill your rankings for life.

Non-competitive keywords:

- Google doesn’t care, neither do I, nor does any SEO. And this isn’t a coincidence.

Solution:
Go out, look for sites that are related to yours.
Related by theme, and not only words.

The Google echo chamber

1. Someone from Google, particularly Matt Cutts, says something about how their search engine works.
2. 20 different blogs echo the quote from the Google representative.

Conference posts

1. Big search-related conference starts.
2. [SEO Blog X] types an incoherent stream of consciousness about each and every presentation at the conference.
3. I start drooling from brain numbness while reading.

The forum thread post

1. Someone posts something interesting in a forum like Webmasterworld.
2. [SEO Blog X] quotes the posting and interjects some half-thought response. Then another thread outside of the original forum posting forms on [SEO Blog X].
3. People start bitching about AdWords and closed algorithms.

The useless technology release post

1. Some technology that no one really cares much about, like Microsoft Adcenter, releases. Nothing else is really going on in SEO Land.
2. 20 different SEO blogs announce the release of said technology.

The false expert post

1. Again, nothing’s really going on in SEO Land. But there are big Web 2.0 sites like Digg linking to sites.
2. [SEO Blog X] talks about “the anatomy of linkbait” and tries to pretend to be an expert on creating something viral. But their creativity was never really there, so you can very easily see that they don’t have any personal experience in creating something viral. Some expert!

Frustrated

I am looking for some remarkable blogs about SEO, particularly in the light of SEO Book and Improving Customer Experience. Any ideas?

Speaking your customers’ language, revisited (…again)

I’ve made it a point to tell you repeatedly about the benefits of using the words your customers use. You need to learn about the language your market speaks. Your market is becoming less accepting of your awkwardly huge vocabulary. (Unless you are a part of an open source project and enjoy confusing people to death!)

I believe that this thinking needs to go further than that when you’re building a web site. The information on your web site needs to be organized in a fashion that your customers understand.

Consider this. I recently described how Target organizes its sales floor to a colleague:

Blue World

• Toys
• Electronics
• Camping
• Automotive
• Cards & Gift Accessories
• Bikes

Yellow World

• Clothing
• Shoes
• Accessories
• Jewelry

Green World

• Linens
• Furniture
• Food & Snacks
• Domestic Goods
• Appliances
• Cosmetics
• Pharmacy

Would it be wise for Target to organize their web site into sections for Blue World, Yellow World, and Green World? Would customers get it without thinking much about it? While there is value in Target employees knowing this classification system, I doubt anyone outside this ring would come close to understanding what would be in each world.

So where does SEO come in?

SEO is not the end-all solution to IA problems, but it can help.

If you research the words that your customers look for with tools like Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, you find out what’s important to your customers. You find out the popularity of search terms in your customers’ own language. You know what to emphasize in your site’s navigation.

If you were on a cookie site looking for chewy cookies, which set of navigation tabs are you going to respond to with the least amount of thought?

I know, I know. Kind of an absurd example, but I’ve seen dumber information architectures! I like how if you’re looking for the word “chewy,” it can’t help but jump out at you in the second example. Go ahead, look at it again and give it a try.

Information architectures are selfish

Have you ever been writing and had trouble deciding which word to use in your sentence?

Should I use “pensive” or “contemplative?” Hmm…

You can run across the same problem when defining your information architecture. You can only choose one word amongst its synonyms. So why not do a little keyword research and just pick the word that your customers use more often? Chances are, they’ll understand it better, and they’ll bite the hook.

Repeating myself yet again

I’ll be a broken record and say that SEO only helps. It doesn’t solve IA problems, but it’s another tool. Think of keyword research as your Ask the Audience lifeline. And really, is usability testing much different?

I’ve been explaining the virtues of SEO over the past few posts. Now we know why SEO is good for accessibility and the general experience of searching for information. Here’s another way it helps contribute to improved user experience.

Technorati Tags:
seo, usability, html, web

Marketing in the name of usability

Search Marketing includes the word “marketing” for a reason. You need to evaluate your options to determine where you can get the most value, or return on investment. Fortunately, a lot of the work behind Search Engine Optimization is fairly universal after you’ve completed the research on keywords to optimize on.

When you’re a marketer, you want your resources to create business for the organization. You’re interested in a web site’s ability to convert a visitor into a customer (visitors include searchers!). You want for the site to meet its visitors’ needs.

When you’re a Search Marketer, you want your landing pages to create business for your organization. You want to optimize where a searcher lands on your site so that it meets his or her needs. If you can figure out how to address these needs, you will succeed in creating business.

Emphasizing important words in the name of usability

I already talked about how SEO helps your site to speak in your customers’ language, not your own. Part of SEO involves emphasizing important keywords on a page. You should emphasize words that are important to your customers in headers and by bold-facing these words on the page.

Why is emphasizing your customers’ language important? You take for granted that you’re reading the words on this page. When people are searching for information to solve their own problems, they don’t often want to spend much time searching. To save time, most people scan the words on web pages. They don’t read everything, only what’s important to them.

A lot of time, people do this scanning to evaluate whether or not they want to spend any more time on your site. If you’re emphasizing words that are important to them, they’ll be more likely to stay. You’ve helped them out, hero!

Internal links in the name of usability

A part of SEO involves examining how pages within your own site link to each other. For a given page, you must ask yourself if it links to everything on your site that is related in some way.

If a product page falls within a given category, does the product page link back to the category? If other products are related to a given product, does the product page link to those related products?

Make it easy on your visitors. They are looking for information, so provide it for them.

Outbound links in the name of usability

Like it or not, your site should also link to other related sites. The search engines are looking for indicators about where your site fits in the big picture.

If your site is about coffee, you probably want to link to some information about how to make coffee and good coffee makers.

If your business is local in Columbus, Ohio, you’ll want to consider linking to maps and information about Columbus. This is especially important if you are providing a service where location is crucial. I’ve seen local search traffic increase just by linking a local service’s site to all of its related areas Wikipedia pages. If it’s a Columbus-based service, link to all of the suburbs of Columbus as well.

Let’s think about that in context of what the searcher is looking for. If they search for “pizza in columbus ohio” and get to your site, what do they want to see on the landing page? If they live in Westerville, they want to see Westerville listed somewhere on the site. Provide the information, and make it relevant!

Making technology work for everyone (…in the name of usability)

Another useful side effect of SEO is in discouraging the wrong use of technology.

I’m surprised by (and proud of) the number of small business owners that come to me and “don’t want anything too flashy.” While Adobe will encourage you to build whole web sites in Flash “for a better experience,” SEO practitioners will encourage otherwise.

I am in the camp that says that Flash and other flashy technologies should only be used where it’s needed. If HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can’t show a visitor all angles of your product, then by all means use Flash to do it. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript definitely can’t display video like a nice Flash-based YouTube widget. And more people have the Flash plug-in installed than any other piece of software.

Another benefit of good SEO work is in recommending the use of alternative versions of the flashy content. Provide content that describes the information that the Flash-based content is trying to convey. Sure, the alternative content isn’t as convenient, but that’s why it’s the alternative. Not everyone can view Flash, and Google is in this group. Cater to everyone and reap the benefits.

How SEO doesn’t help with usability

SEO is not a replacement for solid user testing. But if you can have one more person in your organization that is optimizing your site for a better experience, a good Search Marketer is a good hire.

The pains of using a screen reader

Worst case, you’re using a screen reader to browse the Web. You have low vision or blindness, so you have your computer read all of the text on web pages aloud. If you’ve never tried using a screen reader, I’d suggest downloading JAWS and trying to surf the web. It’s painful and inefficient. If you already hate computers, you’ll hate them even more.

To overcome the need to listen to every word on the page, users usually have the screen reader read only the links on the page to figure out what their options are for navigation.

Now imagine running through the scenario of using a screen reader when the page’s content looks like this:

To learn more about Wookiees, click here.

We absolutely love Wookiee hair, so we’ve listed our favorite Wookiee brushes here.

Click here to order some Wookiee ice cream.

The screen reader would read it like so. Imagine the frustration:

Link: click here. Link: here. Link: click here.

If you decide to ignore support for screen readers in spite of that scenario, beware. Even users that can see often look for that blue underlined text instead of reading everything in context. Regardless of sight ability, users that sense that they want to go somewhere else immediately start looking for links. In this case, no one cares about what you’ve written.

Please save everyone time by restructuring the example content so that the link text describes where the link points to:

Learn more about Wookiees.

We absolutely love Wookiee hair, so we’ve listed our favorite Wookiee brushes.

Order some Wookiee ice cream.

What’s great is that SEO encourages content writers to follow this practice. The text you have in a link describes to search engines what the next page is about, so Google uses this link text to determine what keywords the page should rank for. Don’t underestimate the blue underlined text’s ability to let the user know that they want to click it.

Headers are important, too

When a user with low vision is on a page containing the information they need, it’s still painful to listen to the screen reader read everything on the page. So the user will often toggle through the page’s headers, much like they do with links. This helps them find the part of the page they want access to faster.

It just so happens that Google places more value on the text contained within page headers. So that means that search marketers are ahead of the game here as well, knowing that header text should be keyword rich.

Headers should do a good job of summarizing their sections, so be sure to use words that visitors understand. (Also known as key words! Sound familiar?)

Don’t use obtrusive technologies

Search marketers know the importance of not using JavaScript, images, Flash, and other “non-readable” content to convey your message. If you regularly embed text into images on your site, you have both SEO and accessibility problems.

Computers can’t read graphics, so screen readers and search engines can’t read graphics either. If you absolutely must put content within images, JavaScript, or Flash, learn how to provide a text alternative for each situation. It will improve your SEO and also the experience for screen reader users.

I covered how to write effective alternative texts a couple years ago. Recommended reading!

Overall user experience revisited

Let’s not forget that your sites’ visitors with disabilities benefit from the same SEO improvements that everyone else does. Because browsing a web site takes disabled users even more time, they want to consume content that speaks to them in their own words. They want to find your site quickly in Google. They don’t want to spend time listening to a screen reader’s inhuman voice, let alone deciphering your confusing message.

Remember, this is yet another reason to bring in cookies and elaborate gifts for your search marketer.