General

I just received the Search Engine Facts newsletter in my mail which comes with a very nice guest article from Stoney deGeyter (Pole Position Marketing). I have no idea what polepositionmarketing.com is good for but the guest article is a nice call for ongoing action in the link love section of SEO.

Reciprocal links are (still) not dead

Reciprocal links are not dead. Weren’t dead before. Aren’t dead now. I know it and you know it. But for just a second let’s pretend otherwise.

A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going around the SEO industry about how reciprocal links were dead. I had a potential client once tell me that so-and-so-big-name-in-the-SEO-industry told them that reciprocal links were dead. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it here again.

There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links. It’s all about how you use/implement them that matters. No, reciprocal links are not dead and now I have the proof.

Last year I decided to run my own test so I could refute what I already knew to be true. Yeah, I know who cares about reciprocal links now, right? (…)

Source / Read the rest of the article here: Reciprocal links are (still) not dead

Just read the whole thing and go on to link back to people you like and make sure that the linked sites offer quality to your readers.

My good old three golden rules

Basically the onpage SEO is what it always was:

1. See every single permalink article in a blog as ONE single website which has to build up link love and reputation for a very narrow subject. My tip: Use internal keyword linking if you don’t do it yet. Every single keyword will result in an internal keyword search result page (with excerpts!) pointing back to the main article.
2. Don’t have too many links on every page (the typical sidebar) linking everywhere. Make your internal links for the article (keywords, categories) show up first followed by the article body containing valuable external links.
3. Show link love and receive link love but make sure that the landing page content fits to the ONE single page or article.

Side Kicks (building external links)

And I still love my article 10 Tips for More Blog Traffic which is one of the best ways to create external backlinks with a high authority yourself.

The important comment backlink

Never forget when commenting on another blog that it is always worth the extra seconds to post a fitting backlink and not only a link to your homepage!

Fact: you need backlinks to your blog/ site, but link exchanges have little value PR-wise (pagerank). So what can you do instead?

Here are a few ideas in brief:

1. Syndication through guest blogging.
2. Syndication by having a blog conversation with other bloggers, which Liz Strauss talks about and does a lot on her Successful-Blog.
3. Inducement to link with flagship or viral content.
4. Article directories, which generate a sort of viral backlinking phenomena.

Let’s focus on item #4. What are article directories and why do you want to use them? Firstly, article directories are a repository of articles contributed to by writers/bloggers. Rules vary by directory, but let’s assume that you have to be a member to access other writers’ articles. An article directory then lets you republish other writers’ articles, provided you follow the rules and include the necessary backlinks.

So if you have an archive of articles that meet the submission quality and rules of a good article directory, make them work for you. You might find other people publishing your work and thus linking to your website/ blog, building up your backlinks. Here are a few points to keep in mind (I use ezinearticles.com, so the details are geared to their rules).

1. Get exposure.
   If you actively post on a certain topic, your author profile and some articles in that category stay high on the directory’s front page, driving additional traffic to your site.

2. Revise your work.
   I never submit exactly the same article I’ve written for my site. I rewrite it, and remove all links from the first 2-3 paragraphs (not allowed, by the rules of most article directories). Some sites only allow links in the last paragraph and in your author’s resource box. Articles should be informative. Opinion pieces are unlikely to be republished. Most directories will have a human editor look at and approve your work. The more articles you submit, the faster you’ll probably be approved. (Don’t let that cause you to slip into poor writing.)

3. Revise your title.
   Good titles help decide how often you’ll get viewed and/or republished. Most directories give good examples. I suggest you also follow Brian Clark’s advice at Copyblogger for great headlines.

4. Refine your bio.
   You author resource box can have your mini bio (customizable per article) and 3 promotional links. Usually you are not allowed affiliate links anywhere in article.

5. Count your words.
   Ezinearticles.com has a 250 word minimum but suggest 450-750 words.

6. Ease of republishing.
   If the directory’s republish panel is easy to use, it increases the chances of your work being republished.

7. Duplicate content.
   If you’ve rewritten your archive article, you don’t have to worry too much about dupe content. Some directories allow republishers to add an intro and extro around your article, but not to rewrite. The dupe content issue, at least in Google’s search engine is more a matter of whether you’ll get any visible ranking in the SERPs. Getting your revised article republished all over the place should not affect the ranking of your original article. As well, your site will have all those backlinks.

8. Copyright issues.
   Republishers must include your copyright/resource info. They don’t always, however.

So if you’re not convinced article directories are for you, what are your plans for linkbuilding to your blog?

Quite some time back I wrote about Google Search Hacks that you could use to check the health of your blog. I promised at the time to look at Yahoo hacks but never got around to it. Well, lets put that straight now shall we? Here’s a short list of some of the more fun things you can do with Yahoo Search…

1. Use the Real Interface

Just so that we’re all on the same page, search.yahoo.com is the url you need.

2. Find ALL Your Links

Finding links to your blogs is easy enough in part. Google will show you some of them, but only to specific pages, and technorati will also show you some of them, though they’ll arguably be a little fresher than Google. What you can do with Yahoo though is better, much better:

Enter the linkdomain command in the search box like this: linkdomain:mydomainsanswww.com. You can see how it works in the image below:

3. Yahoo Blog Search

You can do a Yahoo blog search by hacking at Yahoo News. Try the Search box below:

If you want to put that code on your own site, just paste the code below onto a blank html page or put it on a post.

</p> <div id="#yahooblogsearch"> <strong> <span style="color: #C00;">Yahoo!</span> Blog Search</strong></p> <form action="http://blog.news.search.yahoo.com/blog/search" method="get"> <input type="text" name="p" size="30" /><br /> <input type="hidden" name="fr" value="moreblog" /><br /> <input type="submit" value="Search Blogs"></input><br /> </form> </div> <p>

4. Search Creative Commons

This made a big splash when they first announced it, but i’ll bet it’s news to some of you reading this right? You can search for only material licensed under creative commons, which means that if you’re looking for content to mix into topic then you can do so without fear copyright violation.

You have to go to the advanced search page and tick the appropriate box. Easy eh?

Tip: The advanced search page is only one click away, and can REALLY help you search better.

5. Get Search Results as RSS

Unlike Google, Yahoo make it possible for you to subscribe to regular search results. There is no button on the page, but if your browser does not pick up the RSS via auto discovery, you can check the souce for a url like this: http://api.search.yahoo.com/ WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml?appid= yahoosearchwebrss&query=performancing&adult_ok=1 (note i put a couple of spaces in there so the line would break).

Anyone Else?

I’ll be the first to admit that my search skills aren’t what they once were, so I’d love to see any other hacks you can come up with specifically for Yahoo search!

powered by performancing firefox

I’m usually all numbers and Adsense and affiliate links yada yada yada, if you haven’t figured it out by now (and some people have) let me spell it out for you: I’m not very creative.

But Perfomancing member Cigar Jack is.

I’ve put together a flyer that says “You’ve Been Jacked” and sending it out with a few cigars to different people on cigar websites. The rules on the flyer ask that they replace two of the four cigars and either hand it off or mail it to another cigar smoker. It encourages them to log on to my site to find out where the package has been.

This is the kind of out of the box thinking that rarely ever comes to me. And when it does, I usually try to ‘crunch the numbers’ in my head, and probably over-conservatively, talk myself out of it. This is a major weakness.

In keeping with my uncreativity, I’d like to suggest there are three levels of execution in this game:

• Creativity + little elbow grease — have some fun maybe, make a pittance
• A lot of elbow grease + little creativity — make a decent living, but not getting [really] rich (I’m here!)
• Creativity + a lot of elbow grease — at this level, several years in the game can net you seven figures

So what do yah’ll think of Cigar Jack’s idea? And what other creative marketing campaigns have you done? Discuss at Performancing forums: Word of Mouth Promotion