SEO Guy Blog

This statement may shock, but SEO is based on backlinks. Page can not be any content, even his title tag can not occur, and still be rated the same, given that he has good links pointing to it (yes, even after the Panda update).

Why do I say this now? Because there were too many “SEO experts” and “SEO gurus” preaching to all kinds of SEO techniques, most of them are a waste of time. Do not get me wrong, the site content should still be quality and well structured, because even if your site ranks high it will not mean anything if you do not have sales. Your content is what counts the sales.

However, in terms of  SEO, there is only one important variable – Links. Need proof? Search in Google for “Long Island Jobs”, the site appears first is a site that is not active for several years and there is nothing on him. All he has, are these strong backlinks that he got over the years. However there are many sites that are active and have great optimization (not very difficult, compared to this site), but these sites are of course not in the first place.

Also, do not forget that the content you write is just for your visitors, not for search engines. Robots still can not distinguish between a shopping list and recipe for cheesecake, but visitors can. So do not even think about writing something just for search engines if it does not add value to your visitors – this is a waste of time, and your readers time.

Want to know more about building links? I recommend on: choose article directories to publish articles and just ask for links.

In this post I will present several theories of various SEO companies. Nonsense of SEO companies, how to identify good SEO companies more or less?

1. They tell you that they promise to place your website at first place.

Double-check the keywords they offer to you, not once I heard of SEO companies that offer only long tail phrases. You do not want to be number one in query that no one was search for.

2. They tell you they can do it for 50$ per month.

A. Well that’s easy. You want to get results, and you know it takes time. How many hours do you expect them to work on your site for this price? Of course they will not work full one day a week, because then they lose money.

B. Often, all you get for this price is submission to 100 web directories sites that you do not mind them because nobody uses them. What that you really need is to get your website to top of search engines and not just crap web directories.

3. They tell you if you will build your website with us, you will get free SEO.

All it means is that they will not do the search engine optimization, but at least they sold you the site building. Website building companies and SEO companies must be separate companies, such as that there are  surgeons for each area of the body (eyes, back, etc.), the same thing on the Internet – each one is expert in his field. You can always do other services, but is it effective? Even your hosting company can build you the site, but do you let them do this?

4. Do they offer full SEO services or they just SEO consultants?

Get a clear definition, or that the company will take your project and do all the work, or advise you how to do it. It is important to clarify all these issues when you get the price quote, there are many SEO guys that are only consultants.

5. Ask them examples of there clients projects.

Ask for examples of different SEO projects. Try to ask for projects close to your project niche in order to understand the quality of the company.

Paid text links were common among a lot of SEO guys, just pay a lot of money for links, and you will receive the reward at the SERP. All this things changed when Google announced that they going to fight against all the paid text links market. Google said that if you decide to advertise at websites (and not buying links) so the tag “rel = nofollow” should be implemented to stop the flow of Page Rank.

In fact many SEO guys back to the planning to think of innovative ways to attract links, part of the SEO guys continued to play with the paid text links technique.  Who am I to judge them, I am one of those that buy and sell links on the web. If you buy links, you take a risks, if the benefits overriding the risks that then go for it.  There are many large brands who have purchased paid text links, but it seems they never punished, although in fact they seem to have great position at the top of some keywords.

You’re probably asking, “is there a safe way to buy links?”. Well, the short answer is no – but there are ways which the sites give evasive and reduce risks. Here are some important things about buying links and Google:

1. Paid links websites — they give access to a variety of sites who are willing to sell text links for SEO. Usually the system is automatically, you write code on their sites and impressive intermediates distribute links to networks.  This method best known over the net that can be recognized by Google. Also, I actually recommend doing it all manually, don’t do anything automatically.

2. Content not related – if you buy links on  website that does not have any relation to your content, so what benefit it gives to users? Anything.  Natural or organic links often link to relevant websites and add value to their site and visitors visit this links.

3. Anchor text – in ideal world every link added naturally to include your keywords and expressions that logic to give them high priority.  Unfortunately, this happens very seldom, nofollow tags are include natural links, banners, brand names and keywords not entirely useful as “Clicky” or “this webssite”.

4. Relationships between links – a situation in which there are links that are all “dofollow”, with targeted keywords that regime to attention from Google. Natural links will include a variety of parameters “dofollow”, “nofollow”, etc.

5. Links location – the best way to discover the fact that you bought your links is a link at the bottom of the page where there is no longer relevant links or too many external links.  If you are naive enough to think of that it will give you better ranking or traffic, think again. Natural links usually appear in the blog or in the links section.

6. Search for Page Rank links – that’s true, people still trying to get page rank, but it’s not contributing anything. The content and organic ranking of the site a more important role in these days.  If a new website gets page rank 6 suddenly with many links to it, so I’m afraid that his ranking at the top will be short.

Eventually, as you can see, trying to create a paid text link strategy is a long process that requires a lot of time and some risks.  If you will do it smart, you can get beautiful rankings (as many top sites do). But the most rewarding and morally method is, of course, to create a site with quality content that people will want to link him.  Google have 101 other ways to identify paid links, and already have the option to report paid links by Google Webmaster Tools.

Want to build backlinks to your site but you’re tired of spam sites? There is another way to build backlinks. Not all methods of link building should be done is fixed as competitors, you can create different ways to get links and useful ones without much effort. In this post I will write about the way I call “Natural links – just ask for links” the way to get one-way links, and in this post I will call her simply “The method”.

All SEO guys wherever they are like to get natural links, and why? Because these links are the best quality links for various search engines and they are one-way links. Natural link has more impact than exchange links between sites or spam sites link building performed using three ways (you link to my site and get a link from another site) and other methods of link building. The method is Easy and simple, it’s very simple to request from various sites to place a link to your site.  Sounds a bit bizarre but it works! turn to your niche or a niche close to you, offer him a link to add your link at the his links page or just in the sidebar off the page. True, not always you will get a link with the anchor text (your keywords) you want, usually you will get a link with the anchor text of your URL, but these links giving power to your site.

It’s very important to know which websites to send requests, don’t send request to sites of other SEO guys (you can see link to SEO company at the footer), sites with google adsense ads or affilate banners and sites own by your competitors. All the examples I mentioned are sites  that most likely will not link to your site at no cost at all. So which sites to send requests? Sites that attempt to more marketing-free sites, sites such as: private blogs, associations, academic sites, free content sites.

Why do they will add link to my site? Sure you’ve asked this question during the reading. Quite simply, they want to give their users more resources than their site content. If your site is very high quality and contributes to users so these sites will link to you gladly to help their users. The request to these sites should be as much personal and as much as possible nice, do not forget you actually ask them to link to your site for free. You should find a way to make the request pretty reasonable depending on the site.

I will give a personal example from one of my sites, the site Sample Resumes got a link from the Arizona State University website, this page links to job search sites and career help websites. I sent a very simple request using e-mail, with proposal to add a link to my site, the site agreed to placing the link. Although the link I got has different anchor text but this is .edu (academic) link, so it can only give strength to your site, this site gets a lot of credit from search engine as well.

Do not hesitate to contact sites, but please do it sensible and smart.

Last month, Google made a very large update to their algorithm, the update was mainly a change in the ranking of poor quality reference content web sites. The change hit on article directories and sites with large amounts of content (not news sites). This algorithm updatecalled by everyone – Google Panda, you can read here why this update got this name.

History

Google recently received a lot of complaints about the existence of  very poor quality content on web sites, web sites with poor quality content appeared at first results actually instead of quality content sites. These sites are known as “content farm” (from the lovely home of the name “links farm”). Most affected web sites are the one’s that offer everyone to post content in thier website, these web sites did actually want that people will write content for SEO reasons. Among the sites that appeared in the first places for  popular keywords are: “how to”  web sites such as ehow.com, articles directories, news sites that take content from various sites (not unique content) and web sites that used not unique content.

The Results

After the change made Google’s algorithm, there was a drop of tens of percent of the amount of traffic these sites that came from Google (complete information on changes in post “Google Farmer Update: Quest for Quality“). Many SEO guys argue that compare to other google algorithm changes,this time google punished “content farm” web sites manually. Large content web sites were affected by the algorithm change, that why many SEO guys claims that big web sites punished manually by google search team.

Although the change in the algorithm (Google Panda), these web sites are still very “must to” websites for the link building job. It still a good idea to publish articles and content on these web sites but you should create only unique content and quality content. The first site that already made a change at the day after the algorithm change is Ezinearticles.com articles site – he made two important changes in requirements: 1. Minimum contents of the article must be over 400 words (before that it was 250 words) 2. More control over each articles that people send (in the past a lot of the articles was published without a complete review of the content.)

First a few words about SEOMoz, this is an international site that began as a SEO news website but now mainly offers: SEO blog, an active marketplace, Q & A and PRO area with a variety of unique software tools. The site is the largest website in SEO niche, many SEO freelancers and SEO comapnies use the site every day to get update about SEO and use existing SEO tools.

SEOMoz Announced in recent days about the 30-Day Free Trial for there PRO account. By signup to the 30-day free trial (yes, must enter payment information, but you can cancel your account after 30 days), you get acsess to all PRO  features in the site(cost: 99 $ per month). Among the tools I recommend for use in the PRO are: Juicy Linkfinder, Link Acquisition Assistant, Competitive Link Finder.

I highly recommend SEOMoz PRO experience even if you SEO amateur or SEO freelancer or even you have a SEO company. There are many tools that can serve you in your daily activities in your SEO projects. Good luck!

Today after my regular decrease at the local railway station, I encountered with an old man holding a box of matches trying to catch bees near a small field of flowers. The older man had a lot of patience and really managed to catch bees with a box of matches, I asked him what he was doing and he replied “That’s my job, I collect bees and sell them later to clinics”.  Patience and much thought before action, reminded me of the process I make before choosing a articles directory to publish articles, for all the articles I publish. Today, every SEO guy working with SEO link building method known through publication of articles, in this post I will present considerations, which I think are very important before choosing the most appropriate articles directory for publishing articles.

Like the story at the beginning of the  post, choosing the most appropriate articles directory to publish articles  is process with a lot of thought behind it. You can just publish articles in any directory that offers to send articles for free, but it will not help you with the link building of your website.

Here are my considerations for choosing a perfect article directories to publish articles:

- Ranking in SERP – Of course it’s the most important consideration for me, to see how strong the articles directory in Google’s organic results. I like to check before publishing an article how the site ranking in the specific niche where I’m going to publish an article, for example when I want to publish an article about Pilates I do a Google search for “Pilates articles” / “Pilates article.” As you can see the first articles directory that comes of these searches is ArticleBase Pilates category and that why I should post the article in there.

- No-fllow or Do-follow links – Before publishing articles it’s important to check, if the link we receive from the articles directory is a direct link that will help us in terms of promoting our site (do-follow link). Not all article directories allow to get do-follow link, there are many article direcotries locate the tag No-follow in the links.

- Page views for articles – Enter the articles directory to find articles and press the last article published at your category, check how many page views were for the article. Publishin articles is not helping us only with link building, it is important that the articles we publish will help us also to bring direct traffic to the site, so it’s important to choose articles directory with the high amount of pageviews on her articles (among other articles directories we consider to publish in them).

- Articles for real human or for serach engine robots – Recently I came across a lot of articles directories, that the links in the articles content are with same color and design as regular text. So the links are basicly for search engine robots and not for real human visitors so we do not receive direct traffic from this sites!

- Publish articles in theme articles directories – Recently I see a lot of new theme only articles directories, like for example Sportarticles.net articles directory that is in the field of sports. Not all themes have there own articles directory for publishing articles, so if you do not have exist articles directory yet, you should choose post your articles in general articles directory. Publish an article on specific theme helps us a lot more than general articles directory, because we get a website theme link from the article and not just a link from one page theme (page with our article).

After all the considerations I mentioned, you can now choose the list of articles directories to publishing articles that most appropriate for your campaign. Do not forget that the process of publishing articles, is like any link building process – with many considerations and many thought before every move.

Everyone heard about the colors hats and SEO, every SEO’s categorized to 4 kinds of hats: White hat SEO, Black hat SEO, Gray hat SEO and Pink hat SEO. Here are more info about each one:

White hat SEO – Referrs to ethical practice of SEO methodologies that adhere to search engine TOS. The pure SEO that getting angry when he compete with Black hat SEO.
You won’t see these SEOs in projects like: porn and gambling.

Black hat SEO – This is Unethical SEO. Search Engine Optimization techniques and methods are employes which fall outside of the guidlines issued by the Major Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Implementation of this tyoe of Search Engine Optimization may provide short term gains for your site(s). If you are discovered as using these techniques you can be placed under a penalty by the Search Engine.

Gray hat SEO – The following tactics fall in the grey area between legitimate tactics and search engine spam (white hat and black hat). They include tactics such as cloaking, paid links, duplicate content and a number of others. Unless you are on the correct side of this equation these tactics are not recommended.

Pink hat SEO – It’s the girls power in the SEO field. Most of the pink hat SEO use blog (most of the time WP), and the design made the name – The design is all pink, girls style. They use the girl technique to building links (In there own way), They have alot of traffic blogs (again in there own way), They nice and help to other SEOs and make the SEO work in “pinky” way.