Influencers. Love ‘em. Hate ‘em. Depending on who you’re talking to, and talking about, influencers are either the sponsored scourge of social media, who fake it to make it, or they are beacons of marketing genius, sponsored or otherwise, idolized by millions for their authentic content. (Sometimes even for good reason.) Either way, influencers have been in the market for as long as people have been trying to sell stuff. Santa Claus helped sell Coca Cola back in the Thirties. In the Nineties, Joey from Friends helped a Japanese firm sell Ichiban lipstick for men. (Yes, we are entirely aware that Friends wasn’t real life, but we stand by this example.) In the Noughties, Grumpy Cat influenced millions to buy everything from cat food, to clothing, to soft
Popularity; being well-liked is important to some people. It’s also important to businesses. Generally, one can assume that if a business is popular that it is good and provides a valuable service or product. But, is that always the case? If you can make a thousand people say you’re the most popular person, are you really the most popular person? If you can create a system to have a thousand websites link to your website, does that mean your website provides the most valuable information? That was something Google and other search engines had to fix when link-building was at its height of popularity. If you own a website and have undertaken any sort of SEO over the years, you’ve likely heard the term ‘link-building’. When SEO first became a method of marketing, link-buildin
According to marketing consultant Mathew Barby in his recent article How to Rank Number One in Google: A Study of 1 Million Pages, some of the most common elements of top ranking websites in Google are:
- Backlinks
- Anchor text
- Page titles
- Target keywords
- URLs
Backlink Quantity
Barby found that backlinks outperformed any other aspect of the study with the Top 2 Google results sharing 38% of all backlinks of paBacklinks and the process of link building has reached a unique position where website owners are being told two very different messages. The first is that Google says to avoid backlink building because it can do more harm than good. The other message is that you can’t rank without backlinks. So what is a website owner to do? We have recently come across three great articles about Link Building and thought they are worth sharing here on our blog to help you better understand the right way to naturally go about obtaining backlinks to your website.
Link Building: No Longer about Manipulation
In the last couple of months Open Site Explorer released a new Spam Score Metric as a way to evaluate your backlink profile and measure penalization risk for unnatural backlinks. The original purpose of the tool is to check spammy backlinks to your website, evaluate potential links, conduct link cleanup and help with disavowing files in Google Webmaster Tools. However we think you should also look at the Open Site Explorer Spam Score metrics to review your own website for spam factors that you may or may not realize are even affecting your website. How does your website compare to what Moz, Open Site Explorer and Google would consider a “spam” site?
The recent buzz over Search Engine Land is about how a group of researchers at Google are proposing new ways to determine the trustworthiness of a web page. The Google research team published this paper on Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT) which explains how Google may soon look at the accuracy of the web page to determine the quality of the web page rather than backlinks which are easily manipulated:
“The quality of web sources has been traditionally evaluated using exogenous signals such as the hyperlink structure of
In a recent Google+ Hangout John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst of Google Switzerland, answered the point blank question, “Is link building in any way good?” Depending on your opinion of backlinks you may or may not be surprised by his answer:
That is a good question. In general, I’d try to avoid that. So that you are really sure that your content kind of stands on its own and make it possible for other people of course to link to your content. Make it easy, maybe, put a little widget on your page, if you like this, this is how you can link to it. Make sure that the URLs on your web site are easy to copy and paste. All of those things make it a little bit easier. We do use links as part of our algorithm but we use lots and lots of other
This morning I was browsing some information about the Google Penguin update and happened to notice that it was officially launched on April 24, 2012 but only got its endearing name on April 26, 2012. That means somewhere in the last 2 days Google Penguin had its first birthday. For those who have not heard the term "Google Penguin" is a code name for Google's algorithm update designed to lower the rankings of websites that violated Google Webmaster Guidelines by using black-hat SEO practices such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, link schemes and duplicate content. So in honor of this important milestone for the Google update that sent the SEO community into a frenzy this past year here are five highly informative SEO Google Penguin resources that cover everything you need to kn
Does the task of developing a new strategy for natural link building keep you up at night? The truth is that good, 100% natural link building requires time, effort and creativity, but the end result is much better and much more long term than any other type of link you could acquire. Your natural links must add value across the web:
- Add value to the website that is providing the link
- Add value to the visitor who clicks on the link
- Add value to your website in the form of highly qualified traffic
Let’s admit it … getting your customers to write reviews can be very difficult no matter how outstanding your products and services are. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you can ignore the fact that you need reviews. A key component of a successful Google+ Local (formerly known as Google Places) listing for your local business is getting several positive reviews. Before you rush off to run a contest or offer bribes in exchange for reviews make sure you fully understand Google’s Policies and Guidelines as they relate to soliciting customer reviews:
“Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. Even if well-intentioned, a bi
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