PR for your PR: Publicity for Improved PageRank
After a company has engineered their website to enable search engine spidering, they may then graduate on to understand the importance of link-building. But, businesses often look for quick technical tricks to achieve those vital inbound links without looking towards classic offline business strategies. Press releases and similar types of publicity can significantly help with linkbuilding, and should be a major component of a business’s search marketing arsenal.
One question that frequently comes up in search engine optimization is “How can we get a new domain name to rank well and rapidly?” You may have heard of “The Sandbox” in relation to SEO — this is the concept that newer domain names will not be trusted by search engines, and so pages hosted on those domains may not rank as well as would be expected for unique keyword combinations. Getting good numbers of inbound links can break a domain out of the sandbox effect, but linkbuilding takes time. Most shortcuts won’t work in this area, and you should run screaming the other direction if someone promises otherwise, since participation in link networks can get you penalized with major engines.
But, there is one shortcut that not only can work, but is allowed by the search engines: publicity. While the sudden appearance of hundreds and thousands of inbound links to a new domain name could raise redflags with search engines, the exception is if those inbound links are coming from recognized news sites and blogs. The search engines recognize “burstiness” — the sudden influx of links — in cases where a site has attracted popular attention, and lots of articles and blog postings have come out on a particular subject.
Whether you’re trying to found a new domain name, or increase your site’s overall ranking in the search engines, publicity is one of the most effective methods around. Read on and I’ll outline some tips for getting good PR — both kinds!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/23/2007
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Filed under: Link Building, Marketing, PageRank pr, Press-Release-Optimization, Press-Releases, publicity, seo-sandbox
Leveraging Wikipedia for SEO: it’s no longer about the link juice
Recently when I blogged about the SEO benefits of contributing to Wikipedia, I alluded to some of the complex strategies and tactics around creating entries, keeping your edits from getting reverted, etc.
One of the benefits that can no longer be gained is link juice. That’s because rel=nofollow has just been instituted across all of Wikipedia and its sister sites (such as Wikinews).
Does that mean you no longer need to concern yourself with Wikipedia? Heck no! It is still a valuable source of traffic and, just as importantly, credibility. To have a Wikipedia entry for your company show up in the top 10 in Google for your company name gives a nice credibility boost. Even better if the coverage on your entry is favorable!
Wikipedia is still key to the discipline of “reputation management.” By understanding the ins and outs of Wikipedia — navigating the landmines of notability criteria, not contributing your company’s entry yourself, disambiguation pages, redirects, User pages, Talk pages, etc. — you can potentially influence what is said about you on Wikipedia. Furthermore, if web pages that are critical of your company occupy spots in the first page of the SERPs, you can push them out and replace them with your Wikipedia entries. Because Wikipedia holds so much authority and TrustRank, it’s easy to get an entry into the top 10 for any keyword.
Back to the nofollowing of external links… I don’t think SEOs will leave Wikipedia any time soon due to this new development. Even though that was Jimbo Wales’ hope.
There is still significant incentive for SEOs to edit (and manipulate) Wikipedia so long as Wikipedia holds the top spot for important keywords such as “marketing” in Google.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 01/23/2007
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Filed under: Link Building, PageRank Link Building, link-gain, PageRank, reputation-management, TrustRank, Wikipedia
Hey Google: Nofollow is for when I don’t vouch for the link’s quality
I’ve said before that I don’t agree with Google’s tough stance on link buying and use of “nofollow” to mark it as a financially influenced link (here and here). One of my favorite white-hat SEO bloggers, Rand Fishkin, is also on Google’s case for it. A key argument that Rand makes:
Nofollow means “I do not editorially vouch for the quality of this link.” It does NOT mean “financial interest may have influenced my decision to link.” If that were the case, fully a quarter of all links on the web would require nofollow (that’s a rough guess, but probably close to the mark). Certainly any website that earns money via its operation, directly or indirectly is guilty of linking to their own material and that of others in the hopes that it will benefit them financially. It is not only unreasonable but illogical to ask that webmasters around the world change their code to ensure that once the chance of financial benefit reaches a certain level (say, you’re about 90% sure a link will make you some money), you add a “nofollow” onto the link.
You go, Rand! Tell those Googlers a thing or two! 😉
Despite all this, Google is the one who holds the keys to the kingdom. So we have to abide by their rules, no matter how “unreasonable” and “illogical.” That’s why my January column for Practical Ecommerce goes into some detail explaining Google’s stance on link buying and the risks. I’ll post a link once the article comes out in a few days.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 12/28/2006
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Filed under: Google, Link Building Google, link-buying, nofollow
MicroSoft’s Ms. Dewey Linkbait: Avatars for Blogs & Other Uses
MicroSoft has launched an avatar-fronted search interface called
Ms. Dewey, in order to promote their MS Live search service. An avatar is a term coopted from virtual reality which is used to describe the graphic representation of a person within the VR environment.
The Ms. Dewey avatar is a clever piece of Flash engineering coupled up with various video files and the MS Live search engine. Ms. Dewey is played by an actress named Janina Gavankar, who apparently prerecorded a bunch of video snippets which are queued up contextually for various responses to search terms that are typed into the submission form field. After you submit a search keyword, she says (and sometimes does) something witty, then the MS Live search results scroll down in an AJAX menu beside her.
Try out these particularly funny search terms on Ms. Dewey:
| Congress gmail President Bush Dick Cheney weather forecasts Yo Mama |
Painting Lord of the Rings UFOs MySpace FireFox Halo 2 |
A “share this with a friend” link is included, making this qualify even more as some nice linkbait, as some online marketing folx refer to it. While quite a few folx have turned their noses up at Ms. Dewey as not being a serious search service contender, they’re perhaps missing the point that she’s pretty fun to interact with, and as a promotional effort goes, it’s probably pretty effective linkbait. Within just a short timeframe, many people will have emailed links to Ms. Dewey to their friends, getting a whole lot of people to use MicroSoft’s search engine who otherwise wouldn’t have tried it out.
I’d only say that the design group has dropped the ball a bit by not highlighting their MS Live brandname on the search results. (They also dropped the ball by advertising Ms. Dewey’s email address through the interface, ms-dewey@hotmail.com, because it’s inoperative, at least when I tested it. “Status: 5.0.0 – Remote SMTP server has rejected address”. They should have had someone responding to those notes, or they should’ve created an intelligent agent to respond to submissions to it.)
It’s maybe mentionable that Ask dropped the Jeeves butler mascot from the frontend of their search earlier this year, and here MicroSoft is adding a human mascot onto their search. Ask was never this attractive, though, and this ploy doesn’t seem in the least retro. Slick!
Interfaces like Ms. Dewey actually aren’t all that hard to do, and there’s one company that has made it really easy to incorporate interactive avatars similar to this within your blogs and other websites. Read on and I’ll describe how you can use avatars.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 10/30/2006
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Filed under: Link Building, Marketing, MSN Search avatars, linkbait, MS-Live, virtual-reality, VR
Using Linkbaiting & Social Engineering to Get Tops on Digg
Seoblackhat posted a great article on Ten Steps to Guarantee You Make The Digg Front Page.
I like his tips particularly because he cites some methods that use social engineering or linkbait to gain Digg votes, and he also suggests using headlines which are more attractive to the big Digg demographics.
I’m calling some of Seoblackhat’s tips “social engineering” because he seems to’ve studied Digg users’ behavior, and quantified the sorts of titles and themes that would result in Digg users voting for an article.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 10/04/2006
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Filed under: Link Building, Social Media Optimization digg, linkbaiting, social-engineering
Fishing for “link love” with “link bait”
Yum…. Link Bait.
I agree with Eric Ward: the phrase “link bait” just sounds UGLY.
But the technique works. Who can resist linking to the uproariously funny “The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs“. Apparently I can’t, because I just did!
One of my favorite “link bait” morsels of late has been this how-to post about link baiting, by the inimitable Rand Fishkin. Go and gobble it up!
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 07/30/2006
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Filed under: Link Building Link Building, link-bait, Links
How much is a text link ad worth?
Text-Link-Ads.com recently came out with a link calculator to help you estimate the value of a text link advertisement on a publisher’s website.
Just supply the URL to the site and a couple of other bits of information and it will tell you a ballpark price for a link on that page if that site were selling links.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 07/07/2006
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Filed under: Link Building, Tools link-calculator, text-link-ads, text-link-ads.com, text-links
Photo Image Site Referrals Valuable
In an earlier posting on image search optimization, I mentioned how image search utilities and photo album sites could potentially be tapped for great referral traffic. Some people have ridiculed the idea, on the false assumption that only porn sites can get good referral traffic from such sites. However, this is really naive thinking — there are many, many reasons why people use and explore such sites. Providing many images related to your site content and optimizing them can result in some really great referral traffic — some accidental, and some purposeful. It can take some experimentation to use it successfully in a way that can convert.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/14/2006
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Filed under: Image Optimization, Link Building Image Optimization, Image-Search-Optimization, Photo-Albums, SEO
Talkin ’bout RSS… on the Chris Pirillo Show
Want to listen to me rant and rave about the power of RSS as a content delivery channel for search marketers? That was a rhetorical question. Frankly, who wouldn’t! 😉 So now you get your chance, on my interview on the Chris Pirillo Show, which was just podcasted today. Chris interviewed me last week at Search Engine Strategies. Have a listen.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 03/11/2005
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Filed under: General, Link Building, Tracking and Reporting
Be careful who you link to
There is an interesting and amusing thread over at SEW. A punter asks, on the surface, an innocent question as to why his mate’s site has dropped out of Google.
A bunch of the regulars offer some suggestions for possible problems, and then on the second page, GoogleGuy appears and really wades in, revealing the site is linking to some very bad evil affiliate spammers.
Interesting that GoogleGuy would take the time to do some research on the site. Interesting that SEW allow such specifics to be discussed. Interesting that a good number of other SEO’s didn’t catch the real problem. And amusing that the punter gets his butt kicked from very high up in such a public manner. At least he had the good grace to admit he’s been a bad boy.
The lesson here people, is to be careful who you link to and who they link to in turn. Reciprocal linking is bad, you don’t know who else they have requested a link from. And do you have the time and skills to research those link properly. It took GoogleGuy to find the real problem and a bunch of professional SEO’s missed it.
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Posted by dave of dave on 12/14/2004
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Filed under: Link Building, Worst Practices
