More Internal Linking thoughts….

A couple of days ago, there was a post on Real Estate Webmasters about someone who said that the ideal site had equal PR across all pages. I indicated that this was not the case. (I am looking for the specific thread and when I find it, I will cite it.) You want the emphasis link love wise to match the pages that you want to serve as landing pages. Plain and simple. I received an email from that asking if Google viewed it that way–in other words–Is it OK to use available tools to move the link love around your site to optimize things for reader experience and Google.

ABSOLUTELY.

I just noticed a conversation between Matt Cutts and Rand Fishkin that caught my attention since we were recently on the subject of internal linking. Check it out. Pay attention to Question #2 that Rand posed to Matt and his answer. Rand is one of the best at extracting relevant info from the “horse’s mouth”. The BASIC thing we can derive from his answer to question #2 is that Google not only says it isOK, they want us as webmasters to guide them to the pages that we want to rank. Links are political capital. Use them wisely.

More advanced thinking on this same subject coming once I get more time to post.

Roadmap to Profitable Blogging

I am a regular fan of many blogs that I am quite sure are popular (and profitable) for their owners. Many of these folks have converted their passion for writing into a full time  venture that pays them well, while others languish in the throes of Mt Dew, coffee and an upset spouse without making a dime. What is the difference between these people in my opinion?

A plan.

The profitable blogger is simply one who plans his or her moves carefully, works hard and builds an asset that compensates them for their time. Blogging (and especially business related blogging) should not be relegated to those who are passionate professionals, but professionals nonetheless.

Amateur: He who does not cover his costs and compensate himself for his time, no matter how accomplished he may be.

Professional: One who understands the business well enough to understand their worth and charge accordingly.

There was a rather lengthy and interesting debate on the Bloodhound blog recently about real estate bloggers and how they count their success. I would posit that the only way that you can fairly judge a blog or ANY form of promotional activity is the old fashioned way:

Revenue (Comminssions) – Expenses (including labor for your blogging time) = Profitability

If you are an expert and you blog to gain readership of your ideas and to promote your way of doing things, then the only way to measure the success of that is  in the numbers of converts created. True in evangelism. True in sales. True in life.

Hits. Schmidts.

Pageviews. Schmageviews.

As the song says. “It don’t mean nothing til you sign it on the dotted line…”

So you start by creating a plan. Plan the number of readers you want. Visualize them. Plan what it takes to provide them what they CRAVE. (Often it is something unique that they are not getting elsewhere) **cough** Solid, easily digested information **cough**

Look for ways to find partners in providing the info to your target audience. Complimentary industries are a GREAT source. Current vendors are good. Provide information and sale will follow. Do not provide a sales pitch and hope to convert many. People are not coming to see a sales pitch. They are coming for authoritative info.

NEXT Post on the Road map–planning your time…

SEO 101: Link diversity…a good thing

One of the surest signs of a less than adequate SEO effort is a lop sided, or less than diverse source of links. Search engines can (and do) see who links to your site (and everyone else who wants to rank for “your” keywords). They see who you are linking to as well.

They can see the anchor text with which you have linked. They can see the title tags of the page that linked to you. They know whether that page is a home page on the site that linked to you. In short, if it is text and on your site or someone else’s, TRUST me. They know about it.

Some of these linking strategies have gone out of “style” with certain search engines **COUGH** Google **COU GH**

Now that we all agree on that, doesn’t it make sense to have someone do your search engine optimization campaign who can a) provide a DIVERSE set of links from literally ALL available sources b) provide insight into COMING likely changes as search engines to help you move away from techniques that are out of favor with Google c) who knows not only what Google SAYS be what they are DOING about which types of links.

We commonly use 10 different TYPES of links here. (No, I am not mentioning them here…grin…and these are just the ones that come to mind easily). Then we use MANY different types of anchor text. We proactively try to help you make sure that you are not HEAVY into a type of linking that has gone out of vogue or may get you penalized. The NET result is that we try to create a broad-based link portfolio that will stand the test of time. This gives you the best ROI you can possibly acheive.

Just like the wonderful melting pot that we call the USA, diversity is a good thing in link building.

WordPress versions Out of Control

I’m a HUGE fan of WordPress as both a blogging platform and (to some extent) a CMS for websites. But there is one thing that threatens my support:

Too many version changes. 

Lately WordPress has been changing versions literally once a month. Here are some cliches for the folks behind WP…

Less is more.

There is a reason why it’s not Windows Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…etc (OK-bad example. They have updates-grin)

It takes a really good change to beat no change at all.

Measure twice. Cut once.

Is the reasoning behind the change SO critical that it must be rushed out?

Etc.Etc. Etc.

It takes an immense amount of time to upgrade blogs with each version change. This is true even for the most prolific and seasoned of us. So as a favor to those of us loyal users out there, can we PLEASE keep “stable release” from being something besides and oxymoron?

Thoughts?

Using Alerts for Reputation Management- Part Deux

Ok, if you went to part 1 and read it, you have your Google Alerts set up. Another step is to do the SAME thing with Yahoo!! Why? (I knew you’d ask.) Well, yes it will give you some duplicate content, but the fact is that between Google and Yahoo, you are covering the vast majority of searches made about you or your company…

There are other things as well (like monitoring relevant forums, social media participation, positive spin control and many more advancd techniques), but these are a good start. So here’s how to get your yahoo alerts set up. Same method as Google except that you go to http://alerts.yahoo.com

Then you simply fire up yahoo for the same alerts as you did for Google.

You will get a lot of email if you are active on the web…Oh, did I mention to put your url in as well. It will help inform you when someone new is linking to you or talking about your sight! Works like a charm!

Quick Tools to Manage your Online Reputation

Over the next few days, I’d like to post some small tips on how to do BASIC level Online Reputation Management. It is something that we do here at the Web Works, but for those who want to learn the basics–here’s where to start….

Remember in the old days when you went to the library? The were card catalogs to help you find things. They were sorted by Title, Author and Subject. Today’s search engines work in much the same way. Think of your online reputation in terms of Title, Subject and Author. Mine would be Eric Blackwell, and then the titles and subjects of things that I have written about. Using different combinations of those words is how one would find out about me online. This is also where someone would go to try and co-opt my reputation online.

One of my favorite first steps in handling online reputations is to set up Google alerts for the titles, names and subjects that you associate with. “Google alerts” are emails sent to you from Google to let you know when something new is out there regarding a specific subject…

See http://www.google.com/alerts

I’d recommend setting them up for your website(s), your name, company names, and main keywords that you rank for in the search engines…What does this do? It provides you a semi -good alert system that tells you when someone may be adding content on the web regarding your reputation.

Give it a try and tell me what you think!!

Best;

Eric

Supplemental on Supplementals…

Just a quick note for those of you who are STILL looking at supplementals (and I think that is a good idea…). Here’s a quick way to find them:

Google       site:www.yourdomain.com/&      (It gives you your pages in the supplemental index.)

Google       site:www.yourdomain.com    (Gives you your total pages)

The difference is what is contained in the main index. More changes to mention, but not enough time!

Best;

Eric

Supplemental Results a Thing of the Past?

 

I noticed a few days ago that Google has apparently “done away” with Supplemental Results. OK, to be more precise, they have done away with the label. Yeah, the nice little red bottle above doesn’t have a label either, but what is inside? (grin)

Found my first look at it HERE. But just because the label is gone, does not mean that the index is gone. Nor does it mean that its effects are less (or more). There have been MANY debates about the consequences of Google’s hell or more correctly the hell formerly known as Supplemental .

Google tends not to want webmasters to focus on certain things (pay no attention to the man behind the screen)…but that is EXACTLY what those who optimize sites are paid to do. We must understand not only what is being done, but the effect it will have. I think Jim Boykins latest discussion of ” How to detect supplementals” in the new label free world of Google is a good start. Hopefully this link will help keep his page out of them. Kudos Jim.

Actually, that’s a serious thing. Those who have not taken seriously the call for deep linking and proactive internal link management are missing the boat. Google (and other search engines) are always on the prowl for better ways to sort relevance. That is their job. If you want your site to be taken seriously by them, then adapting to their ever changing requirements is a must. Part of that is having a diverse link portfolio. And a big part of a diverse (and defensible) link portfolio is WHERE that is linked to and HOW those links (and their stength) are managed.

I REALLY liked the method using Webmaster Central to grab the internal links and stack them up against your pages…so how did you fare? If you are leaving your web ass(ets) uncovered by not providing them enough link love to keep them out of the cold, the time is now. It’s summer now and you may get away with it, but winter is coming…

Best;

Eric