Archive for October, 2006

Since I’ll be taking a blog break for ~6 weeks, I thought I’d leave some of my favorite post here on top, and organized nicely (Pulled from how it’s organized from my link teams training page).

Link Building Philosophies:
Picture of Link Neighborhoods  
Changes and Paranoia - the sky is falling
Why that site with 50 backlinks beats your site with 1000 backlinks.
The Google Gods Speak to Us about Link Building.
Just what is “relevant” when getting links?

How to find sites to get links from:
Buying links under the radar
Cherry Picking Links - Believe it

How to find the best Pages on these sites to get links from:
Tips for finding the best pages to get links from.  
Part Two: Tips for finding the best pages to get links from.

How to place you links on these pages:
Text around your links…Keeping it Natural Looking.
Links Within Content, Linking to Content …. a Rant.  
Co Citation - understanding how it effects your SEO.  
Text around your links…Keeping it Natural Looking.

FYI, I hate "Link Pages":
Link Pages are Dead - Long Live Content Pages. 
Will the real link request please stand up? 
Software vs. Manual Link Building and Management.

Ninja Knowledge
I like ‘em old.  
Playing with Google’s Domain Age Factor
Google Ranking Filters: Trust and Age Factors.
Linking out - The overlooked link neighborhood.
New Pagerank Patent - Jims Abstract Translation.
The Historical Importance of Backlinks.
What does Google know about your domain names? by Nick Wilsdon
Damned to Google Hell - Supplemental Results
Psssst — GIVING away DMOZ Editor Accounts!
 Abhilash on the Future of Text Link Building.

Bonus:
Jim’s Hostingcon Presentation
Click Rate for Top 10 Search Results
How 46% of SEO’s get away with not buying text links.
Mike Grehan - Drink from his knowledge.

I’m Feeling Lucky,
Jim Boykin
CEO, We Build Pages

This next month I’ll be busier than I’ve ever been….so I’ll be taking a break from blogging for a little over a month.

Next week I’ll be locking myself in my office while I work on rewriting webuildpages.com. There’s so many services on there there that are outdated, and we haven’t even shown off our "writing content" side. I’ve been rewriting it for months now, and have collected a ton of chicken scratch, but I’ve realized that the only way it’s going to all get written is if I take a whole week devoted to mainly writing this out  (then ~2 weeks to design around (we’ve got a new look coming too).

I’ve got a handful of new employees that I’ve been  training on a daily basis (we’re making more Link Ninjas). We’ve also been video taping the training sessons, and assigning projects based on each training lesson.  One day we might just sell those training videos.

We’ve also got a great programmer on staff and we’re creating great internal tools for tracking and recording our work and progress. And creating the world best (and non-shared) database of great sites willing to offer advertising where related.

My wife is also getting rather plump, as our second baby is due Nov 16 (and I’m predicting Nov 9th…which is 3 weeks from today)….

I guess that one of the items I don’t need to worry about for about 5 weeks is going to be my blog. So yes, I’ll be taking ~5 weeks off from blogging.

I was thinking that when I return I might start blogging more on "Here’s how to build links….do this, and then this, etc" as opposed to "This is a great backlink to get….now go get them" postings.

I’m also toying with the idea of charging a small fee which allows you to read those complete posts (part free…."to read the rest, please subscribe here")…I could also throw in some private tools into that (no, not the "find old sites tool"…but other tools that are Killer…just private). Thougths on that?

I’ll, of course, post when the baby comes as well, and perhaps a thing or 2 in the coming 4-5 weeks….

Oh yea, and looks like there’ll be a Link Ninja class in a few months…stay tuned.

We’ve got openings for 7 new link building clients over the next 2 months, want to be one of them?

*link for a friend: ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

Bill Slawski (SEO By the Sea) just wrote an excellent post called "20 Ways Search Engines May Rerank Search Results". Now some of this might be speculation, and some might be advanced ranking techniques that search engines just might be using, and few SEO’s know of. I’ve been thinking of doing a post on the topic of "Things Search Engines might be ranking pages on, but few people know of"…..but Bill seems to have covered this pretty well, so I’m out a future post.

Here’s just 2 great ones from Bill’s list of 20:

10. Changing orders based upon commercial intent

Similar to the method described above by virtue of the use of a slider, Yahoo! Mindset lets users determine the reordering of results based upon whether they want to see results that are more commercial in nature or informational.

BTW, if you haven’t used Yahoo! Mindset yet, it’s a great tool to play with.

15. Reordering based upon implicit feedback from user activities and click-throughs

There have been a lot of papers and patent filings that describe reordering of search results by looking at user behavior and query selections. Here’s one that describes looking at different queries over user sessions:

• Query Chains: Learning to Rank from Implicit Feedback (pdf)

Now the above is a great point that I see few SEO’s talking about!

Bill is an expert at Search Engine Patents, so know that Bill’s speculations come by deep analysis of all the search engine patents and looking at them through the eyes of an SEO.

Read Bill’s full article here.

Today I saw a post by Rand on SEOMoz about "if the Google Algorthym was leaked"….it’s a fun reading post, where in the middle Rand and Rebecca of SEO Moz start dreaming this:

Matt: It’s ours! We’ve stolen the precious Google algo from the ‘plex.
Rebecca: Yeah, with our newfound knowledge, we can rule this puny Internet!
Rand: OK, wait - let’s examine it and see what we need to do.
(six months of IR research later)
Rand: Aha! I’ve got it!
Matt & Rebecca (in chorus): What, what is it?
Rand: Links! We need links.

Rand finished up the article with a very true point:

Honestly, at this point in the SEO game, it pays to be a great business strategist, a creative content developer and a phenomenal marketer far more than an analyzer of algorithms…

In the comments, Softplus adds:

…The algorithm could - if expressable in a single formula - be a function with those 200 signals, some weighting, perhaps some combined weighting with inverse signals… let’s just simplify to an unrealistic:

Rank(page.site) = weight1 * signal1 + weight2 * signal2 … weight200 * signal200

The interesting parts would be the weights — the main signals which are used…

Later in the comments, Blackbeard makes the best point with:

Here is the funny thing: having the knowledge of how it works doesn’t automatically mean victory. I mean, it’s common knowledge that Google’s algo is largely a link-based algo. Now, assuming that links and domain age are in the top 10 factors, even if you knew the algo and figured out what the other factors are and what the weights are, that woudln’t guarantee victory. If you try to rank on a super-competitive term where there are a bunch of 10 year old domains with tons of edu links and other high-quality links, knowing the algo only tells you one thing: that it’s going to be extremely difficult to beat them.

At the end of the day the algorightm is only how the system works. Being successful in that system still requires real work. I mean, even if you had the recepie for KFC, you’d still have to make it and sell it to be successful and it would take years to be anywhere as successful as KFC is.

I also can’t help but think that knowing is still only half the battle. Knowing "the perfect types of links" and what you are able to achieve, might be 2 different things. A lot of us know what a "perfect link" would be for our sites….but the real trick is…after you’ve got the knowledge, what can you do with it….what are you working with, and what are resources can you impliment with the knowledge of "where you are", "where your competitors are (Google top 10)" and how to bridge that gap…..but once you’ve got that down, how do you bridge that gap…..

Good content can help…..slowly.
Great content can help faster.
Good backlinks can help.
Great backlinks can help better.
The history of your backlinks (you can’t change your past).
The history of your competitors backlinks (can’t change that either)
Creating a Strategy
Following through with the resources it takes - and doing it well eneough to compete.

Later in the comments though, Fluxx then add the true reality to this dream of being handed the google algorithm:

I’m surprised that nobody has suggested that the algo is so complicated & spread across multiple machines and infrastructures — that even if it leaked, it would take a team of CIA cryptographers a week to make sense of it.

So what do you do then? Use the Google Force. For long term, stay away from the dark side. Know what the engines like (resources with great links) and create it.

We’ve all got a Google God (Jim’s 15 commandments) in our head….we all have in image of what She wants from us, and we do our best to deliver to Her the best we can with what we’re able to achieve as far as creating a resource, and building backlinks.  Time will tell you if the content and links you’re getting today, will support your site tomorrow.

— Read the entire "Google Algorithm" post on SEO Moz.

Lately I’ve been walking on air - and Feeling Lucky. I’ve assembled the biggest and best We Build Pages team to date. We’ve got 22 employees, including 13 Link Ninjas - and still hiring more future link ninjas!

Also a few months ago we did that move to the 5th floor (top floor) - For the suburb we’re in; we’ve got killer views and killer work space for us.  We got a ping pong table a few weeks ago and there’s active tournaments with everyone involved. For the employees we’ve got outings each month - this month it’s to see a play one of our employees is in, next month to see the local ice hockey match, then an employees kick boxing tournament, then sledding at a local ski area….then? (WBP pay’s for all tickets).

Next week the employees are getting the official meeting introducing them to the new 401k plans we’re offering, as well as profit sharing. 

Our employees include:

1. Me: CEO, SEO, Planner, Trainer, Dreamer

2. Rita - Our Office Manager and Manager of 64 content writers.

3. Virginia - our Accountant.  We’ve great records and I get regular updates and analysis.

4. My wife, Mary, also oversees the books, and handles some bookkeeping.

5. Chuck, our Link Team Manager, Old Site Finder, SEO Reporter, and more.

The web design Room has 3 employees:

6. Steve - SEO Designer, Affiliate tracker, Advertising tracker, hosting issues.

7. Louis - SEO Designer, Contextual Advertising

8. Eric - SEO Designer, more.

9. We’ve got Patrick the Programmer in our office for a few months before he goes traveling again. (Patrick wrote a few of the webuildpages tools last year), and he’s building some Killer internal tools for us now….killer!

And now…..our crown jewel - The Link Teams! There’s 3 link teams here. Each team is a room of 4-5 people.

We’ve got:
10-13. For the Link Ninja Link Building Rooms, we’ve got Marc, Todd, Rob and Tony as Link Building Team Leaders.
14-22.  And SEO Link Ninjas in Training: Shawn, Matt, Dave, Bruce, Rob, Jen, Gary, Sarah, Patience.

The best thing is that all the players are in synce with all that we’re working on. Another nice thing is that the link team is kicking ass. They have to record their links each friday on the wall for all to see. There’s also a total for the room as well. At the end of the month, the winning room gets to keep a 3 foot trophy in their room - there’s also amazon gift certificates for the winning room.

Sometime I’ll have to some post on some of the things we’re working on….like the killer database of natural sites willing to give great contextual advertising or citations…..the Video Training……the Link Ninjas! (Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s coming back…stay tuned…invite only)….the SEO Pow Wow at the Grand Canyon in April or May of 2007…..so much good stuff coming along!

I’m really feeling lucky in that I’ve got the biggest, best, smartest team we’ve ever had here! Thanks Team!

Look out World - You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet!

 As reported on the Best of the Web BOTW Blog - Martinibuster is going to BOTW!

… we are pleased to welcome Roger Montti as the newest member of the BOTW executive team.

…Roger will be acting as BOTW VP of Verticals. Our newest offering, BOTW Verticals (beta) will serve as an online resource for users to find information on various business solutions.

Wow, Roger and BOTW (Directory since 1994 - Blog Directory - as well as hotel marketing and several bloging projects) - Nice!

I thought I’d toss in some pics I have the Roger and the Crazy BOTW guys I have - I left out the ones that could get us arrested and the one with thier buddy Matt ;).  At all the conferences there’s always tons of BOTW supporters wearing BOTW shirts (Since 1994) (all the cool SEO’s wear them). I know I’ve got about 6 BOTW shirts in my dresser, and I’ve got 2 BOTW sweatshirts  - I wear these all the time.

Roger Montti - Martinibuster (now BOTW). Google Dance 05

Greg (BOTW) and ?, and Rob (BOTW) - New Orleans?

Motley Crue - Greg BOTW bottom right. NYC?

Brian with some wild Ask Women - NYC?

Brian (BOTW) and Tony somewhere in the US

Sumo Shoemoney and Sumo Rob (botw) - San Jose

Congrats Brian, Greg, Rob and the rest of the BOTW Crew, and Congrat to Roger as well!

The Google Gods (in our heads) Speak to Us about Link Building.

Brandon Cornett has a nice article called “The 10 Commandments of Link Building” I just read on ISEdb.

Brandon also gives a nice tip under #6 “Thou shalt be creative”

…Then it dawned on me. There were hundreds, possibly thousands of websites out there looking for the kind of content I could provide, but not knowing where to look. So I began searching phrases like “home buying articles” and making a list of websites that provided this content.

Next, I emailed these sites one by one and invited them to use any of the 100+ articles I had written on the subject. All I asked was that they keep the author’s note with hyperlink. By being proactive with my article publishing, I earned more than 30 new and highly relevant links! When you combine quality content or a unique website with strong imagination, your link opportunities are limitless.

Read all 10 of Linking Commandments here:

Eric Ward also recently gave us LinkMoses Linking Commandments - Part 1 that’s worth a look.

But I should note that in Eric’s eyes, I’ve been known to be a whore according to number II:

II - Those who link in exchange for gold are link whores.*
(*linking in exchange for a return link may be marginally slutty)

Ok…I’ve graduated from being slutty to being a whore at times.

Damn…and looks like I might be guilty of a few more of Eric’s…..including #VI:

VI - Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s links.*
(*or if thou doest, only those from high trust TLDs, and shame upon  thee, who asks thy child for a link from child’s .edu site)

Hey, if I’m paying for my kids education, you can bet he’s giving me ftp to his .edu space

Here’s 10 Jim Quick Link Commandments (and 5 bonus Commandments) off the top of my head:

1. Know what your site is related to (broad thinking phrases)

2. Search for pages that are resources and that have earned backlinks themselves

3. Give something of value (content or otherwise) in excange for citations or advertising.

4. Get your citation within the content area of the page, with words on each side of your link.

5. Never publish the same exact citation or sentence on more than 1 site.

6. Never publish a bunch of links on 1 site - unless you don’t mind that Google thinks they are related and you’re not scared of the neighborood it shows.

7. Never publish your link on a clear cut “Links Pages” that was only created for link deals.

8. Never respond to people seeking to trade links with you - don’t deal with SEO link trader sites.

9. Don’t buy ton’s of over-the-radar links - unless you don’t mind your site being flagged.

10. Don’t forget that the best link in the world is a “natural link” that comes through never having to ask someone to link to you, but occurs naturally. Think RESOURCE for best long term results.

Bonus 5:

11. Give trusted co-citation (additional links) on pages when you can.

12. Get Presell Pages on related sites when you can.

13. Get links from older sites when you can - Getting a link from a site that’s been around since 1994 is worth a ton more than getting a link from a site that started in 2005.

14. Get links from sites that don’t know anything about SEO

15. Get links from sites that have lots of trusted backlinks (.edu’s and .gov’s are 2 examples)

Can you add any? What does the Google God say to you?