TJantunen.com

Links, and in particular one-way links, have always been thought to be one of the top metrics that search engine web sites look for when ranking websites.

Although the spirit of linking to another website is to show a tacit recommendation for that website, there are many ways in which this metric can be exploited. One way is to simply buy links or pay a search engine optimization company to buy links for you. The temptation of saving the time and effort of having to build relationships and court the opinions of webmasters is quite a strong one, yet many people swear off buying links for their websites, including many search engine optimization experts.

The main reason is that the search engine algorithms can somehow tell the difference between paid links and organic links and will heavily penalize sites which have paid links pointing to them. However, many people still pay for links or allow the search engine optimization companies that they hired to do the same thing. Why? Why do people go for the quick rise in metric rather than the long-term comprehensive social media and blogging strategy? And most importantly, is it worth it?

What you will find if you ask anyone who has used paid links for any significant amount of time is that the practice is not worth it. The major search engines, especially Google, make the punishment for paid linking much worse than any benefit that you would ever gain from it. The practice is known throughout expert circles to be packaged and easily found out, mostly because people tend to become lazy about where they placed their paid links, eventually placing them on irrelevant pages with low page ranks.

It should be noted that Google, or any of the other major search engines for that matter, are not strictly against paid links. It is the lack of quality that accompanies most paid links that the search engines have a problem with. Because the search engines have a responsibility to their “customers” above all, they do not want to see your paid links from your shoe website on a blog about politics just because that blog happened to be an extremely popular one.

This also tends to protect webmasters who do not have the time to police large websites, giving them a sort of quality protection over their customers. The overall quality increase is what the search engines are going for, and as they are the gatekeepers of your visibility on the web, they are the rulemakers.

All in all, paying someone to do paid links for is not worth the trouble even in the short term. The search engine algorithms are becoming more and more accurate at identifying paid links with every paid link that they find. The penalties for using paid links too often can include banishment from the major search engines, which does absolutely nothing for your business or your brand in the long term.

What search engine optimization specialists recommend is a comprehensive search engine optimization program which takes management of social media, twitter and blogs to actually reach out to and find your true audience. In the long term, this is a much more effective strategy for business that are trying to build a brand. Keeping yourself focused and your marketing strategy, intently focused on building and maintaining a brand with a target audience has long been known as a much more successful marketing technique than simply throwing spaghetti on to a wall and seeing what sticks to it.

Jeff is an internet marketing consultant, a blogger and he often writes about SEO. He likes to share his knowledge and experience with others, and helps them with their online presence. Jeff is also the owner of nPromote, a well established SEO company in NY.

from Performancing.com – Helping Bloggers Succeed

Links, and in particular one-way links, have always been thought to be one of the top metrics that search engine web sites look for when ranking websites.

Although the spirit of linking to another website is to show a tacit recommendation for that website, there are many ways in which this metric can be exploited. One way is to simply buy links or pay a search engine optimization company to buy links for you. The temptation of saving the time and effort of having to build relationships and court the opinions of webmasters is quite a strong one, yet many people swear off buying links for their websites, including many search engine optimization experts.

The main reason is that the search engine algorithms can somehow tell the difference between paid links and organic links and will heavily penalize sites which have paid links pointing to them. However, many people still pay for links or allow the search engine optimization companies that they hired to do the same thing. Why? Why do people go for the quick rise in metric rather than the long-term comprehensive social media and blogging strategy? And most importantly, is it worth it?

What you will find if you ask anyone who has used paid links for any significant amount of time is that the practice is not worth it. The major search engines, especially Google, make the punishment for paid linking much worse than any benefit that you would ever gain from it. The practice is known throughout expert circles to be packaged and easily found out, mostly because people tend to become lazy about where they placed their paid links, eventually placing them on irrelevant pages with low page ranks.

It should be noted that Google, or any of the other major search engines for that matter, are not strictly against paid links. It is the lack of quality that accompanies most paid links that the search engines have a problem with. Because the search engines have a responsibility to their “customers” above all, they do not want to see your paid links from your shoe website on a blog about politics just because that blog happened to be an extremely popular one.

This also tends to protect webmasters who do not have the time to police large websites, giving them a sort of quality protection over their customers. The overall quality increase is what the search engines are going for, and as they are the gatekeepers of your visibility on the web, they are the rulemakers.

All in all, paying someone to do paid links for is not worth the trouble even in the short term. The search engine algorithms are becoming more and more accurate at identifying paid links with every paid link that they find. The penalties for using paid links too often can include banishment from the major search engines, which does absolutely nothing for your business or your brand in the long term.

What search engine optimization specialists recommend is a comprehensive search engine optimization program which takes management of social media, twitter and blogs to actually reach out to and find your true audience. In the long term, this is a much more effective strategy for business that are trying to build a brand. Keeping yourself focused and your marketing strategy, intently focused on building and maintaining a brand with a target audience has long been known as a much more successful marketing technique than simply throwing spaghetti on to a wall and seeing what sticks to it.

Jeff is an internet marketing consultant, a blogger and he often writes about SEO. He likes to share his knowledge and experience with others, and helps them with their online presence. Jeff is also the owner of nPromote, a well established SEO company in NY.

from Performancing.com – Helping Bloggers Succeed

TNX.net is a relatively new program that pools advertisers and publishers to aggregate advertising links into publisher’s websites. With TNX.net, you’ll be able to sell advertising links on every page of your website, instead of just the main page. The more pages you have indexed by the system, the more money you will make. When you add the TNX code to your website and submit it to the system, a spider will go out and index all of the pages on your website and disperse ads across the pages. Each time an ad is place and viewd on your site, you earn TNX points which can be redeemed for advertising in the system or for cash value. The current value of TNX points is .70USD for 1000 points. It doesn’t take very long to build up thousands of points if you have a site with a lot of pages that has reasonable activity. The best part about this program is that you earn residual income withouthaving to do anything more than login to your account and sell your TNX points back t the system. Payment are made in Paypal and usually are funded within 72 hours.

From their site, here is a description of their service…

While it’s a well-known fact that Google has been cracking down on buying and selling text links, many of these affiliate programs are still bustling with business. Possibly the main reason is many webmasters are choosing to ignore Google’s guidelines and manage their own websites the way they want to manage them, not the way that Google tells them to manage them. Essentially, it’s fostering a community that is no longer dependent upon Google PageRank and placement in Google search. For many webmasters who have no rankings and are merely looking at text links as an advertising medium, or for webmasters who are unaware of Matt Cutts and his grandstanding on using the “nofollow” tag on advertising, the answer is quite clear, that bloggers and webmasters alike are growing tired of being dominated by sponsored listings, black hat SEO’s and the Google Dance.

With TNX.net, we’ve found them particularly useful to monetize forums. Hand in hand with Kontera Content-Link, TNX.net can add value for most forum owners becuse the text links are easy to slip into a forum context and are virtually undetectable from normal content.

For publishers interested in buying advertising links in the TNX system, you can automatically place millions of non-reciprocal links to your site and your links will be placed on relevant pages (of which you’ll be able to choose it’s quantity and quality). Additinally, SEO specialists and consultants get discounts up to 50%.

If you’re interested in joining this program, click the banner below to sign up.

Links, and in particular one-way links, have always been thought to be one of the top metrics that search engine web sites look for when ranking websites.

Although the spirit of linking to another website is to show a tacit recommendation for that website, there are many ways in which this metric can be exploited. One way is to simply buy links or pay a search engine optimization company to buy links for you. The temptation of saving the time and effort of having to build relationships and court the opinions of webmasters is quite a strong one, yet many people swear off buying links for their websites, including many search engine optimization experts.

The main reason is that the search engine algorithms can somehow tell the difference between paid links and organic links and will heavily penalize sites which have paid links pointing to them. However, many people still pay for links or allow the search engine optimization companies that they hired to do the same thing. Why? Why do people go for the quick rise in metric rather than the long-term comprehensive social media and blogging strategy? And most importantly, is it worth it?

What you will find if you ask anyone who has used paid links for any significant amount of time is that the practice is not worth it. The major search engines, especially Google, make the punishment for paid linking much worse than any benefit that you would ever gain from it. The practice is known throughout expert circles to be packaged and easily found out, mostly because people tend to become lazy about where they placed their paid links, eventually placing them on irrelevant pages with low page ranks.

It should be noted that Google, or any of the other major search engines for that matter, are not strictly against paid links. It is the lack of quality that accompanies most paid links that the search engines have a problem with. Because the search engines have a responsibility to their “customers” above all, they do not want to see your paid links from your shoe website on a blog about politics just because that blog happened to be an extremely popular one.

This also tends to protect webmasters who do not have the time to police large websites, giving them a sort of quality protection over their customers. The overall quality increase is what the search engines are going for, and as they are the gatekeepers of your visibility on the web, they are the rulemakers.

All in all, paying someone to do paid links for is not worth the trouble even in the short term. The search engine algorithms are becoming more and more accurate at identifying paid links with every paid link that they find. The penalties for using paid links too often can include banishment from the major search engines, which does absolutely nothing for your business or your brand in the long term.

What search engine optimization specialists recommend is a comprehensive search engine optimization program which takes management of social media, twitter and blogs to actually reach out to and find your true audience. In the long term, this is a much more effective strategy for business that are trying to build a brand. Keeping yourself focused and your marketing strategy, intently focused on building and maintaining a brand with a target audience has long been known as a much more successful marketing technique than simply throwing spaghetti on to a wall and seeing what sticks to it.

Jeff is an internet marketing consultant, a blogger and he often writes about SEO. He likes to share his knowledge and experience with others, and helps them with their online presence. Jeff is also the owner of nPromote, a well established SEO company in NY.

from Performancing.com – Helping Bloggers Succeed

When you are looking to build links and drive traffic, one of the time tested methods that continues to work is creating “how to” style posts. In this article, we’ll look at some examples and discuss how to get the most out of the tactic, how to take advantage of seasonal search/traffic volume, and some potential trouble spots to watch out for.

From the earliest days of the internet, people have turned to search engines to find information and to solve problems. When you create “how to” posts, you fill this “information vacuum.” If your posts are good, interesting, funny, informative or otherwise noteworthy, you will be rewarded with links and/or Facebook likes, Twitter mentions or other social signals. While you will have to do a little promotion to “prime the pump” and start the sharing and exposure, people will share it on their own if your piece is good enough.

But enough theory. Let’s look at some “how to” examples.  First up is from the Huffington Post: “How to Tell When Chocolate Goes Bad”

How to tell When Chocolate Goes Bad

We’ve all picked up the old Valentine’s, Halloween, or Christmas chocolate and wondered if it was safe to eat. This post answers that questions and lets you know what that white stuff on an old piece of chocolate really is. This post could have been improved with some picture examples, but it’s fine as it stands. This kind of post would work in a food-related website, gift-related website, or mom/family website.

Next up: “How to Tile a Bathroom”

How to Tile a Bathroom

Tiling a bathroom is project that requires some skill, but it is within the reach of most DIY weekend warriors with some technical abilities. It’s also something that’s highly bookmark-able and shareable if it’s easy to understand. This type of content would work on DIY sites, home repair websites, building material websites, or tile stores. That article had good picture use. Adding a video or two could help, but it’s something that could be done down the road.

The previous two “how to” articles are examples of evergreen content (ie content that doesn’t need to change or be updated often). Next, I’d like to take a look at “how to” posts that will change over time.  Take a look at “[How to setup a wireless network]“.

If you look at the SERP you’ll see three of the results don’t have a date and one post that does–and it’s an old date, in this case 2003. If I’m looking to solve a computer problem, I probably don’t want information from 2003; I want something from within the last 12-18 months (for more information on how Google determines page dates, see How Google is Reverse Engineering Page Dates). If you are writing a “how to” post and it has a limited shelf life, having a dated post isn’t a bad thing (ie how to format a Windows XP hard drive). However, in most cases, you will want your “how to” posts to rank for longer periods of time, so either don’t show the date on the page or update the information and update the publication date. If you choose to update the post, use a living URL implementation to preserve your existing links and social proof.

Unless you are running a news website, it’s very likely that there are plenty of opportunities to take advantage of “how to” posts. If you run an eCommerce website, you should start with your most popular products and create “how to” guides for each of them. If you think you are going to have a large library of “how to” posts, you may want to put them in specific directory. I’d also suggest using a slightly less commercial template: people tend to link and share posts that don’t look overly commercial more often. I’d also avoid numbers in your URLs to avoid the problem of search engines mis-interpreting dates. Doing so also doesn’t box you into an editorial mismatch if you change numbers/steps in the future. I’d also look for ways to maximize seasonal search volume by updating your seasonal content. For example, a “how to” post on carving a turkey will get more traction, links, and traffic if you publish it in the beginning of November instead of the middle of March. Lastly, try to phrase your “how to” posts to match the queries users are actually typing into a search engine. For example “How to Save Some Sheckels When Getting Hitched” is not going to drive the same amount of traffic as “How to Save Money When You Are Planning a Wedding.”

So what are the takeaways from this post:

• Look to create “how to” posts for your most popular products or search terms
• Use natural language that matches what consumers will use
• Be careful of dates on evergreen posts
• Decide if archiving old information or updating them with living URLs is better for your situation
• Avoid using numbers and dates in URLs
• Time your posts/updates to tie in with peak search volume or interest
• Have a separate template for informational posts to increase linking and sharing

photo credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Suzdalev

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Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads – New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Directory Journal – Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
6. LinkWheel SEO – Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
7. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
8. Article-Writing-services.org – Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
9. Link Building Services – Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation.
10. Join 500+ top agencies & publishers who rely on The HOTH every day. US based, enterprise-grade support. High quality, contextually relevant links. 100% money back guarantee. Try it now.
11. Krystal Glass Whiteboards – Glass writing boards for offices, boardrooms, and classrooms.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Building Links & Driving Traffic with How To Posts

from Michael Gray – Graywolf SEO Blog

Gab Goldenberg wrote the Beginner’s Guide to Remote Usability Testing and about the mobile usability of text fields for Usability Post.

Due to a surgery that’s left me unable to sit for the time being, I’ve recently been in the position to make much more extensive use of my iPod touch for browsing the web. And besides for realizing that the WP core needs a mobile friendly backend, I picked up on the darker side of mobile detection in sites. Namely, cloaking.

Or at least, that’s the unwitting, painful result of certain forms of mobile device detecting software. Instead of serving the page someone requested by clicking on a search result listing, people get taken to the mobile homepage or directory/folder index.

While it’s not done with ill intent like all the hacked, cloaked and redirected pages on harvard.edu et al hawking “OEM” software (@Matt Cutts, please crack down on that cheeky junk already), the end result is users are mislead. And I am sure it shows in the bounce rates.

A better approach is that taken on sites like Lifehacker where mobile detection yields an optimized experience with the page you requested being served, in a narrower format and without sidebars. It’s a user friendly experience we can all get behind.

[edit: You can see that form of mobile experience here on Wolf Howl too.]

Tapped from my iPod

photo credit: Shutterstock/Red Riding Hood

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Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads – New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Directory Journal – Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
6. LinkWheel SEO – Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
7. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
8. Article-Writing-services.org – Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
9. Link Building Services – Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation.
10. Join 500+ top agencies & publishers who rely on The HOTH every day. US based, enterprise-grade support. High quality, contextually relevant links. 100% money back guarantee. Try it now.
11. Krystal Glass Whiteboards – Glass writing boards for offices, boardrooms, and classrooms.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Detect Mobile Devices? Are You Cloaking Your Way To Bad Usability?

from Michael Gray – Graywolf SEO Blog

If there’s one industry that has a mismatch between its potential to perform in organic search and its actual performance, I’d argue that it is the pharmaceutical space. In this context I’m talking about the legitimate players that have significant budgets for product development and marketing. And while many in [...]

Pharmaceutical Companies Are Years Behind With SEO was originally published on Infolific. All Rights Reserved.

from All Things SEM Blog