Understanding the Challenges
of the Link Building Game
By Bill Platt (c) 2007 Links And Traffíc
Many webmasters who have been following the discussions about Google's dislike of paid links have been confused about what constitutes bad links and good links, in the eyes of the search engine companies. In this article, I will seek to answer many of the questíons people have on this topic.
There are two kinds of links that you can pay to have made for you: rented or paid links, and permanent links.
Introduction To Paid Links, Or More Accurately Rented Links
With Rented links, you can generally make your purchase decision based on the PageRank of a page.
The downside with rented links is that Google has stated that they do not like links that are sold on the basis of PageRank, and they are trying to create systems to identify links rented for PageRank, for the purpose of discounting those links. While they may eventually be able to target and negate links developed by systems like Text-Link-Ads.com or TextLinkBrokers.com, they will nevër be able to completely identify and discount all links that are sold for the purposes of PageRank.
In the end, I suppose Google is not going to penalize the Source or Target websites for those links, but they will nullify the value of the individual links in the Google algorithms. Cutts suggested and implemented the "rel=nofollow" a while back as a tool webmasters could use for the purpose of identifying links for which the webmaster did not want to pass PageRank. The only thing that Google's algorithm will actually do to links identified as rented or paid links is that it will treat those links as "rel=nofollow's". If Google succeeds in their quest, the webmaster buying the links will be throwing away his or her monëy, if they are buying placement on a webpage solely for the purpose of influencing PageRank.
The Story Of Permanent Links
The second kind of link is the permanent link. Permanent links come in many formats, and in most cases should generally be viewed as non-rental links. With rental links, you pay a fee for placement once a month, quarter or year.
Of course, the Yahoo directory is not viewed as a paid link by the Google engineers, because although you "pay" to get the link, Yahoo does not guarantëe placement of your link in their directory. Instead, Yahoo says that we are paying them to "review our link." This is why Google is not discounting links from the Yahoo directory. Those Yahoo links are nice to have, but they still do require a yearly review for commercial websites, which must be paid for on a yearly basis.
Permanent in all cases is in the eye of the beholder. Permanent as a rule in the Internet world means that you will not have to pay another fee later to keep that link on the page, where it will reside. In the context of links on the Internet, permanent actually means that the link will live at that location, until the webmaster who owns the website changes his or her website's direction OR goes out of business.
In my experience, perhaps 10% of the websites where we get links placed will go under within one year. Towards the end of the second year, webmasters will look at their Profit/Loss and make a determination whether their income level will justify shooting for a third year of operation. Another 20% will close their website at the end of the second year run. So, 30% will drop out of business, within their first two years. Of the remaining 70%, many of those websites will survive to the fifth year and beyond. I don't know how long one will be able to count on a permanent link just yet, but links that I built for myself in 1999 continue to produce traffíc for my websites today, and those links have sent me continuous traffíc for years.
Permanent, One-Way Links
Many permanent one-way links can be acquired on pages that currently have PageRank on them. In those cases, it may simply be a matter of your link being added to a líst of links already on someone's web page.
However, any link created through a content development method, such as pay-per-post or article marketing, will be posted on a new page on the Internet. All new pages on the Internet begin life at PageRank Zero. It is like the birth of a baby. The baby begins small, but grows into a child, then a teen, and finally an adult. All article pages begin their lives at PageRank Zero, and most of those new pages will íncrease in PageRank as they age. Some web pages will nevër mature beyond PR1, but others can grow into pages that are as high as PR6 (at least that is the highest I have seen an article page to date).
If you trust Matt Cutts of Google, he has indicated that all new pages begin life at PageRank Zero and in the Supplemental Results. He also said that Supplementals are not the end of the road. Cutts stated that the only thing required to bring a web page out of the Supplemental Results is to have that web page gain PageRank. (For those curious why a page went from the Primary Results to Supplemental Results, the answer is that either Google began counting links differently OR the links that gave a web page PageRank no longer exist.)
Three Reasons Why Article Marketing Helps Link Building
My conclusion from this information, and I might be biased, is that the use of article marketing for link building is a positive in the Google algorithms.
I conclude this because links developed through article marketing begin on pages that have a PR Zero. So, we are obviously not getting links placed on websites for the sole purpose of acquiring PageRank, not directly anyway. We are placing links for the sake of having links, but with good luck, many of those links will gain PageRank over the long haul.
By the very nature of article marketing, we can ensure that the links we develop for our websites reside on web pages that are tightly focused and targeted to the content of our websites.
Most websites that post articles do so through a process of moderation, meaning that all article placements have been human reviewed. That human review process at the other end of the transaction puts most article websites on par with Yahoo's human-reviewed directory.
When we can get our keywords embedded into the link pointing to our websites, then that is always a much better deal. But, that outcome will be affected by the webmaster at the other end of the process. Each webmaster has his or her own rules for article placement, and some of those folks simply do not permit embedded keywords in our links, either in the body of the article or in the about the author information. A plain text link is better than no link at all, although we always strive to get embedded keywords in our links.
Final Thoughts
When you write a great article people will link to it, no matter where it may reside. So in time, the pages that house your article will gain PageRank.
As the article's author, you are in total control of the relevance of the web page linking to your website.
Just as you are in control of relevance, you are also in control of whether people will choose to reprint your article. Write a good article, and people will use it.
About The Author
Bill Platt has been involved in article marketing since 1999, and he introduced his link building service in 2004. Bill employs article marketing in his link building efforts, and he guarantees embedded keywords in his links. He says, "Our link building service is not for everyone. Our service is more for the person looking for a permanent, long-term solution for their search marketing efforts." Bill can be reached by telephone at 405-780-7745, Mon-Fri, from 9am-6pm. Learn more: http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Search Engine Optimization
and the Magic Fairy Dust
By Bill Platt (c) 2007
There is only one thing that all webmasters agree upon... They all want to be at the top of the search engine results for search terms that will drive traffíc and consumers to their website.
The truth is that the search engines are like our childhood game of King Of The Hill. Only one person can be at the top of the hill and the top of the search results. Only ten websites can be on page one of the search results. When a new website moves into the top ten, another must be removed.
For any given search term at any given time, there are only ten web pages on page one of the search results, and there are millíons of web pages that did not make page one, who may or may not catch a few stragglers from the search engines.
How Can A Website Break Into The Top Ten?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an industry that has sprung up around the concept of helping their clients improve their rankings in the search engine results.
When you talk to SEO professionals, they generally point to a two-pronged approach to search ranking optimization. A website owner needs to optimize their on-site real estate for the search engines, and they need to build inbound links to their website.
On-Site Search Optimization Challenges
The trick with on-site search optimization is that you must cater to multiple audiences on your website.
You must provide simple navigation and an attractive interface to the human visitor;
You must provide good salës copy to your human visitors, for the purpose of converting them from shoppers to buyers;
You must provide text copy for the search engines to read; and
You must optimize your content to help the search engines know what topics and keywords they should pay attention to, so that they can give their users the right web page for the right search terms.
A web page that draws good search rankings is useless if the web page cannot convert the human visitor to a buyer. Many website owners get caught up in the process of optimizing a web page to get it to the top of the search results, and they forget that the human visitor knows where the Back Button is in his or her browser. Once your visitor has hit the Back Button, they will go to someone else's website and buy from them, instead of you.
Most website owners have the alternate problem. They consistently convert a significant number of visitors to buyers, but they have to rely on various forms of paid advertising to get visitors to their websites, since they do not rank in the search engines.
I recently spoke with an individual who spends ,000 per month on pay-per-clíck advertising to get targeted traffíc to his website. He said he consistently earns back his monëy, but he was still looking for a better way to get ranked in the search engines, so he joined my client líst.
On-Site Search Engine Optimization Basics
According to the search engine companies, there are more than one thousand calculations that determine how well a website will rank in their search engine result pages (SERPs).
The Google engineers are fond of saying that if you build your website for human beings instead of search engines, then your website should rank well in their algorithms. To a certain degree, this is a good strategy.
Think about how magazines are constructed:
The Table Of Contents shows story titles, brief descriptions, and page numbers telling you where you can find a story.
On the story page, the title will be in a big, bold font. Sometimes, the magazine will include a brief blurb about the story, in italics or font that is a bit bígger than the story font.
Pictures support the story with captions that further develop the story, by describing the picture.
Major subsections of the story have their own subheadings. And, the primary body of the story is in regular plain text, with only an occasional bolded or italicized word or phrase.
By analyzing the title and other large text on the page, a person who is flipping through the pages of a magazine can quickly assess the story content and make the decision as to whether they want to read the full story.
In the most simplistic way, this is how the search engines analyze a website's content to decide which web page will best serve their users' needs.
Off-Site Search Engine Marketing (SEM Basics)
Since the inception of Google, and with Yahoo and MSN recently, the number and quality of links pointing to a website play a significant role in determining how well a web page will rank in the search results.
I have heard people suggest that as much as 75% of the value given to a web page in the search results is based solely on the number and quality of links pointing to a web page. I tend to believe a more conservative number (50.1%) will apply.
Inbound Links Are More Important Than Page Content
To prove this point, type "clíck here" without the quotes into Google, Yahoo and MSN and chëck the Adobe pages that come up in the search results: Number 1 in Google, #2 in Yahoo, and Number 1 in MSN. When you pull up those pages, search the page to find the individual words "clíck" or "here" in the text of those pages. They are not there. This has happened because millíons of people have linked to these Adobe pages with the embedded anchor text, "clíck here".
Next, let's analyze those specific web pages from the perspective of each of the search engines:
Google's Number 1 result - Google PageRank 8.
(www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) Links to this web page: according to Google (31); according to Yahoo (nearly 12 million); according to MSN (6,400).
Yahoo's #2 result - Google PageRank 10.
(www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer) Links to this web page: Google (15,200); Yahoo (700 thousand); MSN (32).
MSN's Number 1 result - Google PageRank 8.
(www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash) Links to this web page: Google (0); Yahoo (2.9 million); MSN (778).
On Google's top result, they show 31 inbound links total for that web page. But, Yahoo claims that there are more than 12 million links to this page. That is a huge difference.
On Yahoo's #2 result, MSN gives 32 links, Google gives 15,000 links, and Yahoo claims it has 700 thousand links! That is another huge difference between the link counts from the search engines.
On MSN's Number 1 result, MSN shows a strong link count, but still nowhere near Yahoo's 2.9 million links. But, how does a web page with zero links in Google get a PageRank 8?
What Do These Numbers Mean?
Google has always said that they will nevër show us all of the links that we have pointing to our websites, because anything we can see in the public search results, our competitors can see also. So, for me it really is no surprise that we cannot see all of the links that point to Adobe pages, or to the links we have created that point to our clients and ourselves, by querying the search engines.
Also, the sheer numbers of inbound links do not rule the roost. Google's Number 1 result (PR8) is actually shown in Google, before Yahoo's #2 (PR10) result.
The Proof For Link Building Is In The Search Engine Rankings
Recently, a fellow who works as a SEO "professional" told me that be believed my link building system was a sham.
I showed him that on the top 51 keyword phrases we use to market our original commercial website, we had 11 number one results, 31 top five results, 34 top ten results, 47 top thirty results, and 51 top 100 results within the Google search results. Additionally, it was shown that only three of those results competed with fewer than one million search results according to Google, with the remaining 48 pages competing with one million to 533 million pages.
Ole boy tore up Google trying to track how it was possible for me to have accomplished what I claimed. He finally concluded that since Google would not show HIM how I was able to rank so well in their search engine results, that I must have been lying.
According to Yahoo, we have over 12,000 links from third-party websites. According to our site statistics, we received traffíc from more than 16,000 unique web pages during 2006. And Google still swears that we only have 42 inbound links to our website!
Magic Fairy Dust
My nemesis concluded that since HE could not prove through Google how I was successful in getting good search rankings, then I could not have accomplished such results by the methods I claimed.
Okay, I admit it.
I used the exact same method that Adobe used to get to the top of Google's search engine rankings. I have a pocket full of magic fairy dust. Whenever, I do not like how my websites rank in the search engines, I sprinkle my magic fairy dust on my modem.
If you don't like where you are ranked in the search engines, then I suggest you forego the search engine optimization companies altogether and instead run over to the corner store to get your own magic fairy dust. You might have to shop around a bit, but it is out there.
About The Author
Bill Platt has been involved with link building since 1999 for his own promotion and for search engine marketing purposes, and he has been doing it professionally for clients since 2001. Visit LinksAndTraffic.com to learn more. If you would like to talk to Bill in person, he can be reached at (405) 780-7745 between 9am and 6pm CST, Monday through Friday.
and the Magic Fairy Dust
By Bill Platt (c) 2007
There is only one thing that all webmasters agree upon... They all want to be at the top of the search engine results for search terms that will drive traffíc and consumers to their website.
The truth is that the search engines are like our childhood game of King Of The Hill. Only one person can be at the top of the hill and the top of the search results. Only ten websites can be on page one of the search results. When a new website moves into the top ten, another must be removed.
For any given search term at any given time, there are only ten web pages on page one of the search results, and there are millíons of web pages that did not make page one, who may or may not catch a few stragglers from the search engines.
How Can A Website Break Into The Top Ten?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an industry that has sprung up around the concept of helping their clients improve their rankings in the search engine results.
When you talk to SEO professionals, they generally point to a two-pronged approach to search ranking optimization. A website owner needs to optimize their on-site real estate for the search engines, and they need to build inbound links to their website.
On-Site Search Optimization Challenges
The trick with on-site search optimization is that you must cater to multiple audiences on your website.
You must provide simple navigation and an attractive interface to the human visitor;
You must provide good salës copy to your human visitors, for the purpose of converting them from shoppers to buyers;
You must provide text copy for the search engines to read; and
You must optimize your content to help the search engines know what topics and keywords they should pay attention to, so that they can give their users the right web page for the right search terms.
A web page that draws good search rankings is useless if the web page cannot convert the human visitor to a buyer. Many website owners get caught up in the process of optimizing a web page to get it to the top of the search results, and they forget that the human visitor knows where the Back Button is in his or her browser. Once your visitor has hit the Back Button, they will go to someone else's website and buy from them, instead of you.
Most website owners have the alternate problem. They consistently convert a significant number of visitors to buyers, but they have to rely on various forms of paid advertising to get visitors to their websites, since they do not rank in the search engines.
I recently spoke with an individual who spends ,000 per month on pay-per-clíck advertising to get targeted traffíc to his website. He said he consistently earns back his monëy, but he was still looking for a better way to get ranked in the search engines, so he joined my client líst.
On-Site Search Engine Optimization Basics
According to the search engine companies, there are more than one thousand calculations that determine how well a website will rank in their search engine result pages (SERPs).
The Google engineers are fond of saying that if you build your website for human beings instead of search engines, then your website should rank well in their algorithms. To a certain degree, this is a good strategy.
Think about how magazines are constructed:
The Table Of Contents shows story titles, brief descriptions, and page numbers telling you where you can find a story.
On the story page, the title will be in a big, bold font. Sometimes, the magazine will include a brief blurb about the story, in italics or font that is a bit bígger than the story font.
Pictures support the story with captions that further develop the story, by describing the picture.
Major subsections of the story have their own subheadings. And, the primary body of the story is in regular plain text, with only an occasional bolded or italicized word or phrase.
By analyzing the title and other large text on the page, a person who is flipping through the pages of a magazine can quickly assess the story content and make the decision as to whether they want to read the full story.
In the most simplistic way, this is how the search engines analyze a website's content to decide which web page will best serve their users' needs.
Off-Site Search Engine Marketing (SEM Basics)
Since the inception of Google, and with Yahoo and MSN recently, the number and quality of links pointing to a website play a significant role in determining how well a web page will rank in the search results.
I have heard people suggest that as much as 75% of the value given to a web page in the search results is based solely on the number and quality of links pointing to a web page. I tend to believe a more conservative number (50.1%) will apply.
Inbound Links Are More Important Than Page Content
To prove this point, type "clíck here" without the quotes into Google, Yahoo and MSN and chëck the Adobe pages that come up in the search results: Number 1 in Google, #2 in Yahoo, and Number 1 in MSN. When you pull up those pages, search the page to find the individual words "clíck" or "here" in the text of those pages. They are not there. This has happened because millíons of people have linked to these Adobe pages with the embedded anchor text, "clíck here".
Next, let's analyze those specific web pages from the perspective of each of the search engines:
Google's Number 1 result - Google PageRank 8.
(www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) Links to this web page: according to Google (31); according to Yahoo (nearly 12 million); according to MSN (6,400).
Yahoo's #2 result - Google PageRank 10.
(www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer) Links to this web page: Google (15,200); Yahoo (700 thousand); MSN (32).
MSN's Number 1 result - Google PageRank 8.
(www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash) Links to this web page: Google (0); Yahoo (2.9 million); MSN (778).
On Google's top result, they show 31 inbound links total for that web page. But, Yahoo claims that there are more than 12 million links to this page. That is a huge difference.
On Yahoo's #2 result, MSN gives 32 links, Google gives 15,000 links, and Yahoo claims it has 700 thousand links! That is another huge difference between the link counts from the search engines.
On MSN's Number 1 result, MSN shows a strong link count, but still nowhere near Yahoo's 2.9 million links. But, how does a web page with zero links in Google get a PageRank 8?
What Do These Numbers Mean?
Google has always said that they will nevër show us all of the links that we have pointing to our websites, because anything we can see in the public search results, our competitors can see also. So, for me it really is no surprise that we cannot see all of the links that point to Adobe pages, or to the links we have created that point to our clients and ourselves, by querying the search engines.
Also, the sheer numbers of inbound links do not rule the roost. Google's Number 1 result (PR8) is actually shown in Google, before Yahoo's #2 (PR10) result.
The Proof For Link Building Is In The Search Engine Rankings
Recently, a fellow who works as a SEO "professional" told me that be believed my link building system was a sham.
I showed him that on the top 51 keyword phrases we use to market our original commercial website, we had 11 number one results, 31 top five results, 34 top ten results, 47 top thirty results, and 51 top 100 results within the Google search results. Additionally, it was shown that only three of those results competed with fewer than one million search results according to Google, with the remaining 48 pages competing with one million to 533 million pages.
Ole boy tore up Google trying to track how it was possible for me to have accomplished what I claimed. He finally concluded that since Google would not show HIM how I was able to rank so well in their search engine results, that I must have been lying.
According to Yahoo, we have over 12,000 links from third-party websites. According to our site statistics, we received traffíc from more than 16,000 unique web pages during 2006. And Google still swears that we only have 42 inbound links to our website!
Magic Fairy Dust
My nemesis concluded that since HE could not prove through Google how I was successful in getting good search rankings, then I could not have accomplished such results by the methods I claimed.
Okay, I admit it.
I used the exact same method that Adobe used to get to the top of Google's search engine rankings. I have a pocket full of magic fairy dust. Whenever, I do not like how my websites rank in the search engines, I sprinkle my magic fairy dust on my modem.
If you don't like where you are ranked in the search engines, then I suggest you forego the search engine optimization companies altogether and instead run over to the corner store to get your own magic fairy dust. You might have to shop around a bit, but it is out there.
About The Author
Bill Platt has been involved with link building since 1999 for his own promotion and for search engine marketing purposes, and he has been doing it professionally for clients since 2001. Visit LinksAndTraffic.com to learn more. If you would like to talk to Bill in person, he can be reached at (405) 780-7745 between 9am and 6pm CST, Monday through Friday.
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