It finally appears that Google has gone around the table and handed out their punishments for paid links. This has been discussed by the seo community for some time as one or two big websites have had 2-3 page rank drops.

I have clients that have purchased links on various sites that have now been reduced to links equalling their own page rank. I’ve always said you shouldn’t buy links if the only point you look at is PR, I always recommend that if you do buy it should be on trust and traffic.

I logged on to www.textlinkads.com to see what else has changed and to my disbelief ads for links of PR 6-7, costing over $150.00 most of the time have inaccurate page ranks! So I urge Text Link Ads to update their system or they will be receiving many unpleasant emails from unhappy customers. I would also say hold off to any more purchasing until this has settled down.

Another point I have also been considering of late is now we know (98% sure) that if you sell links you will receive a PR drop, what happens if you buy those links – do you get punished? Evidence at the moment says no but with this latest update finding links to buy will be harder and this news cannot be good for link brokers such as www.textlinkads.com.

I was going to write a piece on this subject when I came across some findings on Search Engine People. According to a recent survey by Prospero Technologies, nearly 9 in 10 marketers already using social media said they plan to “increase” or “increase significantly” their spending.

As you can see by these results 88% of people expect to spend more money on social media spending in 2008. I had already suspected that business heads and directors of small and medium sized businesses had started to catch on to the social media “craze”.

So how will it work in terms of SEO companies making money?

Well, like most blogs, including this one explain, it’s really not hard to get traffic from these sites – it just takes time. I do currently control social media campaigns for various companies which are still in the early phases of development and the clients are purely billed on time taken on the project. As well as time you may need to kit your blog/website/feeds out with social bookmarking options, this can cost a small amount if you need custom layouts etc, but generally the price will still be low.

I personally think you will start seeing a lot more “seo” companies offering numbers for cash, for example 10,000 hits via social media for $1000 or something as equally unrealistic. Like all good seo methods the social media and bookmarking requires constant attention and time to build up relationships with users and profiles. Of course its no good if you sell health insurance that you buy 100 “Diggs” either – you have to know what kind of users view each different social media site – you have to know your audience.


If any reading this is considering creating a campaign please don’t be tempted with quick fixes, you won’t see a ROI – it’s simple. Speak to agencies or trusted seo workers that charge you by there hourly rates and provide you with proposals and reports on all results. Remember if they’re good they will get large amounts of relevant traffic, not all at once but on a gradual increase.

I’m open minded when it comes to blog posts and I’ll give anything a 2 minutes of my time (if I have the time). I’ve always been a big fan of Seomoz.org and mattcutts.com as they generally provide accurate new information and discoveries to the SEO world.

However…

Recently I’ve started to notice completely non relevant posts cropping up which, quite frankly I have no interest in. There are thousands of SEO blogs out there (this one included hehe) and the majority of them repeat old news or attempt to put a spin on an old theory so what have the “top dogs” been discussing recently?

1. My favorite pedometer: Omron HJ-720ITC – Matt Cutts

2. Snippets from 30,000 Feet – Seomoz.org

3. Suggested schwag: triple-tap AC adapters – Matt Cutts

4. 13 Things to Do When Your Loved One is Away at Conferences– Seomoz.org

So this must be an indication that in the world of these two sites must be well on top of things. Ok I know Matt Cutts has a gadget section so I can’t be too hard on him but seriously the majority of your readership is after SEO related info – please indulge us! Seomoz.org I am disappointed with you guys, if I want to read about what Rand gets up to on a plane trip or what to do when my “loved one” is away I’ll read the entertainment section of Digg.


I understand you can’t make up new findings but I can think of 101 different topics to write about that would be more interesting and related to seo. This is not a personal attack in any way and I do enjoy reading the material posted on the sites, but Seomoz.org especially with the amounts of money you guys must be floating please have some sort of quality control on your blog pieces.
Thanks

For you that don’t already know and have spent the last few years in a nuclear fallout shelter, Alexa is a company that measures web traffic. They run www.alexa.com which is becoming more and more visible to web users.

I have always been taught and read many blogs that you should never judge a websites traffic performance based on the data collected by Alexa. Why? Well Alexa only registers traffic that has downloaded and used their very own toolbar. So in theory the data collected should only be a portion of your websites real traffic as the majority of “normal” web users have no need or really understand what it’s used for.

So as I performed my daily task of looking at websites information, looking for possible link opportunities I quickly noticed a trend in the data. It goes without saying that most web savvy people do use Alexa, if for anything an indication of possible traffic.

So what’s your point Matt?

Well my point is that if you are in the SE/SEM/SEO industry and you are specifically looking to target webmasters and like minded people then the Alexa data is spot on. You know if an seo website says they are performing well, then in fact they are listed at 2 million there are some white lies being told.

I still believe that Alexa is not a worthy tool of measuring non-internet related websites, simply because more people don’t have the toolbar installed than people that do. I did a small test to show these results. I looked at well known www.seomoz.org our website, www.seounique.com and a very popular gadget website in the UK www.firebox.com. In terms of traffic, reach and page views I would have said that Firebox would have been top, followed by Seomoz and last but by no means least my website.

The results clearly show Seomoz miles above the rest, and at the beginning of September Seounique was very close to beating Firebox. Now I’m not going to lie about my traffic, it’s regular and ranges from 5000 unique visits per month down to 1000 per month, it really depends how I promote the site in that particular month. However I can guarantee you that Firebox will almost certainly have three or four times more traffic than I have in a good month at their lowest point. Seomoz is so far ahead because the traffic that flows to their site will be almost all webmaster based.

What’s your final thought on this Matt?

Well my feelings on this subject have slightly changed. I still advise people not to look at Alexa data on non-seo/sem/se websites because it’s still not accurate by any means. However if you are looking to reach the webmasters out there then Alexa should be used and the data collected analyzed.

Creating a link building campaign is a long on-going time consuming process but there are a few simple rules that you should always follow. I have been creating link building campaigns for various clients for years and the basics I used back then to qualify a link still remain good practice to this day.


1. Use www.whois.sc to find out some basic information on a link location, this site is great when looking for dns information.

2. Check the domain age, a lot of people believe that this carry’s no additional “weight” for a link this may or may not be true but I can assure you that have a good “trusted” domain is a good start for finding a quality link location.

3. Check page rank - and before you start crucifying me I still believe the little green bar has some value when deciding where to put a link. People have to start understanding that google has ranked these pages by its very own scoring system, however don’t think for 1 minute that just because a website is PR 7 you will see a positive effect of linking on it.

4. I always create links on relevant websites, look for content that is relevant to your brand or product, it makes sense.

5. Make good use of anchor texts on your links, have around 7-10 good relevant keywords or phrases and stick to them.

6. I always use directories when creating a backlink campaign, just treat the actual page your link will appear on as a separate website and follow all previous steps up to this point.

7. Look at the current backlinks on the proposed website, make sure they have good “trusted” links too.

8. Spread your links over the month, don’t develop 100 one day and 3 the next, a gradual increase is key.