Archive for the 'Yahoo Marketing' Category

Many of you might not know Abhilash, but he’s a great SEO and also happens to be a Link Ninja.

Abhilash just wrote a great post on "Predictions on the Future of Text Link Building" that’s definitely worth the entire read. Abhilash says:

Link building has changed dramatically over the past couple of years, and the sophistication level of quality link building has definitely gone up. Where are we going now?

He then talks about 5 main points including:

• Article Distribution is going to remain useful.
• Relative Placement on a webpage will be more important.
• Relevancy is no longer king, but gets crowned emperor.
• The age & amount of unique content on your site will affect the “leniency” that your site is given.
• Blog Links may get discounted, but Editorial Blog Links will be MONEY.

All of Abhilash’s points and reasons are spot on in my eyes. If you’re a link builder, it’s well worth the read.

…FYI, Abhilash will also be speaking at SES San Jose on "The Vice Presidents of Search Marketing”

Through search engine watch I found a thread on highrankings forum where wowdezign starts by asking:

I always here people say, “don’t link to bad neighborhoods”. I agree with that thinking. Is the reverse true?

If I link to several authoritative sites, and/or sites that naturally relate to my topic, can that add to my credibilty as far as search engines go? For example, when you write a research paper, doesn’t your choice of references add weight to your work?

There’s some good comments and then Michael Martinez makes some good points, and then some people jump all over Michael for not backing up his ideas with “facts” ….kinda silly the whole thing…in fact, the thread is closed now…even sillier.

Does linking out to trusted related sites help? Hell Yea - most of the time doing this will give you a boost. I’m not even going to bother to back this up with specific examples. If you don’t want to believe this, that fine. Many people don’t believe a lot of what I say like “link pages are dead” or “the sandbox is real” or that “pagerank is dead”. People are fee to believe whatever they want.

Showing examples of “proof” or “Matt said this” is often just not possible (BTW, in Mike’s interview Matt did allude to linking out being a factor), but anyways…..”proof”…in SEO there’s so many variables that showing “proof” is near impossible (who only changes one thing (either a clients site, backlinks, or google) which is the only way to show “proof”…often it’s impossible…..trust in what you’re head tells you…think like you think that they (google) think….(If were them, I’d look at …..).

So in conclusion - I highly believe linking out to trusted related sites helps you. I believe good resources often link out to other good trusted related resources….I also believe Google is trying to rank “resources” highly….so in trying to be a good resource, I link out to trusted related sites.

There’s more good info on the closed thread on Highrankings forum where people debate on if they should link out to trusted related sites. (does it really need to be debated?)

I just cleared 100 replies in the "Introduce yourself" area.

Did you introduce yourself here yet?

If not, what are you waiting for?

Introduce yourself - Who are you?

Thanks!

Where we’ve been to where we’re going.

From 1999 to late 2002, the "We" in We Build Pages was Me, Myself, and I. During those day I also waited tables and worked for a few design companies as their "Internet Marketing Specialist". Those years were "lean" but I could always wait tables as many days a week as I needed.

In 2003 We Build Pages went up to 9 people (I hired my first employee in Dec 2002). Sales rocketed, and then Florida hit in November and took away 2 of our biggest clients….who happened to account for 1/3 Each of our total income…overnight we lost 2/3’s of our income….not fun.

2004 the first half of the year was a loss (I invested in more people, diversified our services…and ended up anyways back at focusing on link building services - it’s what everyone wanted). The second half was good..so we ended up somewhere around evenish.

2005 was the first "good" year. We made some profit with a 90% focus on link building services.

The first half of 2006 was best it’s ever been and the second half of 2006 looks like it easily has potential to be "really good".  2007 looks like it could be "wicked nice" if things work out as planned. (remember we also have several hundred of our own sites ).

So now we’re making some profit, and I want to pass some of that on to my employees so that if we continue to do better, they all continue to do better.  I’m going to be looking into some profit sharing plans next week.

Does anyone have experience or advice?

IncrediBILL always has a way with words, when I saw this title in my feedreader I couldn’t help but see what bill was saying when he said, "Google Dance Makes You Shit Your Pants".

Bill was reporting google rankings jumping all around, so I ran to check rankings using Digitialpoint’s ranking tool, and ya….we track about 400 sites and most sites we’re tracking between 3-5 phrases each…and yea….there’s something going on…a dance?…we’ll it’s the biggest shifts I’ve seen in a while. Overall most of our clients got a nice jump…..and dang, on some datacenters webuildpages.com is at #8 for "internet marketing" …we havent’s been in the top 10 in a few years - I hope the wheel stops here.

Most SEO’s that are on the hunt for more backlinks are working towards their goals by dealing in "discounted" link pages or they may be paying monthly fees for often "substandard ad placement" that may or may not count for much.

I’m really digging doing something a bit different….I’m out here cherry picking other kind of links.

I won’t even give you examples of the techniques we’re using to identify sites/pages that are related and powerful (I did that here and here).

I won’t even get into what our text ads look like (I did that at the last WebmasterWorld Pubcon).

I’ll just show you 1 "random" email that was sent out today (this also just happened to go live a few hours later).

Hi,
I have a client (www.myclient.com) who will give you $30 for a banner ad above the bottom navigation bar on this page:
http://www.yoursite.com/XXX/your-page.htm

Here is a sample banner http://www.oursample.com/banner.html
The size and shape is flexible and I will customize it to blend with the page a bit more.

If this works for you can you let me know if you prefer paypal or a check?

Thanks,
Jim Boykin

Now believe it or not, this is not a template…every email I pull up is a bit different…but there’s some common things about many of them (study that email if you want)….I also look at this as a possible "stage 1" for bigger future advertising options.

This site was found on a "research search" which yealded one of these pages in the top Google 100.
This site is all natural in it’s backlinks (no SEO muck-up). (these sites are not hard to find!)
The site just happens to have over 500 backlinks, including 6 .edu’s. This page is Extremely relevant to my client who’s getting his ad there.

There really is so many resources, and so many pages…virgin land…..it’s really the best links from the best places at the best prices….if you know how to look, and how to choose the best pages to get your ads on, and how to do the right ads for the most "bang", and how to deal, and have the time to do things by hand while Thinking about each aspect.

Do you think I’m smoking crack, or believe what I’m saying?

How do you spend your time getting links?

OK……I’m not a lawyer….but I was just reviewing the "fine print" of my contracts and was wondering what you guys thought about it. Anything you think I should add or subtract?

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