Archive for May, 2006

Funny….I was just reading about a conversation I had with Barry Schwartz 2 years ago. Back then I asked Barry not to disclose my name if he blogged about it for fear of Google coming after me for what I was doing……it’s been just over 2 years…and we’ve moved into what I hope are "better directions" than what I was discussing back then….but it was basically the beginning what what soon became known as "3 way linking" or "Triangular linking".

I’m an ebay junkie…I’ll admit it (you too?)

Some of my saved searches are for "google", "Napster" , and a few "family" related searches.

Today I came across this listing "Tattoo me / nike wwe google all corporations welcome"

dunno….guess that’s one way to make a lot of money….

I’ve got a tattoo on my arm of the "Eye of Horus" that I got a few years ago in exchange for some internet marketing work for a local Tattoo parlor.  (Yea, I waited until I was 33 to get a Tattoo).

Back in 2003 We Build Pages was at #2 for "internet marketing" for about 4 months in Google…and back then I said "If we make #1, I’m going to get another tattoo that reads "I’m Feeling Lucky" on my other arm"….but we never reached #1.

Do you have Tattoo’s? What are they of?

Questions I hate getting:

Today I got an email with this question:

“for the investment, what kind of return can we expect?”

my answer: “I have no idea”

Here’s some other questions I hate getting:

What Pagerank should I expect?

A common answer: I don’t know….it doesn’t matter anyways. What’s the PR of the top 10 sites for the phrases you’re targeting? I’d hope you’d be somewhere in that range.

How many links each month will you get for me?

A common answer: As many as we can get for the time you’re paying us for. This is done by hand, there is no button pushing. It’s not a numbers game anyways, it’s a qualty game. If you’re focused on numbers, we’re not the company for you.

Can I spend a smaller amount now, and when I start making a lot of money I’ll raise my budget?

A common answer “If you start low you might never get anywhere….and then you’ll never have the money to pay us more”.

How about instead of paying you, I give you a percentage of my business?

A common answer: I have to pay employees and I have a wife and child to feed.  Credit is not an option.  If you make millions you won’t have to share any percentage with me, just keep paying my monthly bill.

How long will it take to be in the top 10?

I don’t know. Have you looked at this tool yet?  How old is your site compared to the top 10 sites? How many backlinks do you have compared to them? How is their quality of backlinks compared to yours? What the history of people linking to you (what words have people been using to link to your site?) How good of a resource is your site? Can you site attract natural backlinks or are you 100% relying on your SEO for backlinks? How much unique content do you have? Do we have to pay everyone to link to you, or do you have a “natural” reason why people might link to you? Keep looking at that tool with the phrases you’re targeting, and keep asking yourself these questions. An SEO is only part of your solution - how much are you helping?

How would you respond to these questions? What questions do you hate getting?
PS…I’m a bit tired and maybe a bit cranky….so maybe my responses at this moment are a bit more “bitter” than they normally are. I’m usually a bit “nicer” with how I respond.

TextLinkBrokers.com have come up with a very good resource for those of us who are link junkies like myself.

It’s the http://www.linkbuildingwiki.com 

Speaking of TextLinkBrokers.com, Rob and Jarrod have a excellent blog in case you didn’t know (focused on link buiding issues).

If you haven’t seen these, you should check them out.

I’ve been hearing a lot about Article Submission Services….and I ask myself….why?

If you’ve got an article, and you submit it to a bunch of places, isn’t google going to just toss all of them (except 1) into the "Supplemental Results"?

I guess I might as well go beyond "Article Submission Services" and ask the same question about Press Releases (if you’re doing it for "link value"….and not for the "Press Value").

Why bother? …or am I missing something?

I was reading Loren’s article today, which referenced a forum thread on SE RoundTable.

In that thread Benjamin Pfeiffer was quoted as saying:

The best approach I think is rather instead of a site wide link a webmaster should approach a website by targeting individual pages and taking a slower more covert approach to obtaining links. I don’t mean hide links, but do your linking in a way that appears more natural. Place links here and there. This would thus make it more difficult to determine patterns in your approach.

This got me to thinking about "linking in a way that appears more natural", and blended with what Aaron was saying today…

Seems like Yahoo!’s related phrases / seo also section is based at least partially upon co-occurance of words in close proximity of one another across various web pages.

I’d bet my favorite cat, that Google looks at link text "co-occurance of words in close proximity of one another across various web pages"

…ok…let’s think about this for a second.   If you have 100 baclinks where each of those looks like this:

Jim Boykin’s Internet Marketing Blog
This is Jim’s soapbox where he rambles on about SEO and Internet
Marketing related stuff. Jim is also the CEO of We Build Pages.

Where the link text was always the same…and the next 4 words after the link text were always "This is Jim’s soapbox…" do you believe Google thinks this is a real "vote"? Do you think this looks natural?

Do you ever fill out one Form for submitting to 50 directories (same link text, same description?).

Do you do Link trading where your link and description after it is always the same?  (allow me to put another nail in the "link pages" coffin).

The words surrounding your link matter….this has been known for years…but rarely utulized by SEO’s.

What looks like a real vote…my listing example above done the same 100 times, or something like what is below?

….and Jim Boykin said "SEO Rules" bla bla….
….I was reading what Jim (an SEO) said about….
….quoting Jim (a self proclaimed SEO specialist)….
…that crazy Jim guy (he’s a SEO) link pages…
..an SEO named Jim said link pages suck….

Now, not one of those links above are for "SEO", but notice how the word SEO is near all the links.  I’ll ask you again, which is more natural?  Think I can rank for SEO this way? (I do).

Isn’t it kinda funny how SEO has evolved…in the past we’d find one "trick" and do it over and over again…the SEO of 2006-2007 has shifted to "how can I make this all look "natural" and not "tricky"?

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Technorati Tags: seo, sem, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, links, link building, internet marketing, link popularity

I see that Truman Hedding of InfoSearch Media has started blogging, and is off to a great start.

A few of his starting posts are quite good.

From Link Building 101, some pretty good advice:

One of the most common misconceptions about link building is that relevancy doesn’t matter if you have a great deal of links. The idea, however, is not to get as many links as you can, but to get as many relevant links as you can.

And from Multiple website domains- Duplicate Content, his closing paragraph reads:

Just like everything with search marketing, the basic principle here should be absolute honesty with the engines—no tricks, no gimmicks, just straight quality.  Avoid duplicate content penalties and keep on track to high rankings by removing identical issues within multiple domains.

I’ve know Truman for quite some time, and this is one blog to keep an eye on.